Drystan opened his hand and dropped her.
She hit the ground hard, slumped onto her side and didn’t move. Fenix hurried to her, his heart lodged in his throat as his senses locked onto her. She had to be all right. He couldn’t live without her. Didn’t want to.
He sank to his knees beside her and pulled her onto her back, so she was resting with her head on his thighs. “Wake up, Aderyn.”
The mage stared down at them and Fenix struggled to keep his focus on her as her eyelids fluttered. Her pale golden eyes opened, a glassy quality to them that he didn’t like as she struggled to lift them to meet his. He stroked her cheek, wishing he could give her strength as she could give it to him. If he could, he would drain himself to the brink of death to save her from it.
His eyes misted as he gazed down at her, as he fought to believe that she would make it through this death and that the mage hadn’t taken too much precious blood from her. Her power was in that blood and if the mage had stolen too much of it and she died—
“She will die,” Drystan said. “There is no way of stopping that now.”
“Shut up.” Fenix kept his focus on his mate. “Come on now, sweetheart. Do not do this to me.”
Her eyes slipped shut and his chest constricted.
But then they fluttered open again.
“I loved as deeply as you do, and that love was ripped from me.” The mage came to loom over him and Fenix looked up at him, that tight feeling growing in his chest again as he saw the darkness in the male’s red eyes.
The need for revenge.
Fenix shook his head, silently imploring the male to leave her alone, to leave them both alone.
“I will ensure she does not come after you again. Please. Let her live.” Fenix’s brow furrowed as he gathered Aderyn closer and crossed his arms over her chest in a protective gesture that he knew was futile. If the mage wanted to get to her, he would. Fenix wasn’t strong enough to stop him.
“Oh, she will live. As will you.” The white-haired male raised his hand and closed his eyes, muttered words in a foreign tongue that had the hairs on Fenix’s nape rising and charged the air around him.
Tiny sparks of electricity skittered over his arms and he shook his head as Aderyn moaned and tried to curl up into a ball.
The mage crouched and reached for her.
Fenix batted his hand away and glared at him.
Locked up tight as the male’s crimson eyes collided with his.
Fenix unleashed a frustrated snarl when he tried to move and found he couldn’t. Damn this mage. He tried to yell at the male, to make him leave her alone, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
All he could do was watch as the mage pressed his palm to her chest and continued to mutter something over and over again.
The mage’s red gaze lifted to meet his.
Blazed like fire as the static charge in the air grew stronger.
Aderyn disappeared.
The mage rose to stand before Fenix, his gaze never straying from him, burning like an inferno but as cold as ice.
“I condemn you both. Her to die and forget you if she ever recalls her love for you. You to forever chase her ghost, desperate to make her love you again.”
Drystan turned his back on him and strode away. He disappeared before he reached the door of the room, but his words lingered in the icy air.
“Enjoy your eternity.”
Chapter 1
Eight Deaths Later
It had been that dream again. Fire. Shadowy figures. The feeling that she was burning up and about to explode into flames.
Evelyn tried to shake it off as she sipped water from her violet bottle, each cool drop of it quenching her thirst and feeling as if it was lowering her temperature. She nodded to a few of the men and women she passed in the bright corridor on the third floor of the sprawling building in the heart of London, not stopping to talk to the ones she had worked with in the past.
She was on a mission.
Her black T-shirt stuck to her back as she hurried towards her destination and she grimaced as she tugged at it. Maybe she should have let herself cool down after her training session and the shower that had followed it before pulling all her clothes on, but she had overheard one of the other women in the changing room mention that the alpha team was finally back from their latest trip to Hell.
Evelyn hadn’t seen Archer in close to six months, not since she had been forced to rest up following the incident in the Fifth Realm of the demons. The doctors had refused to sign her off for duty, had kept her locked inside headquarters, stopping her from heading into Hell with one of the teams working there to chart the realm. She had tried petitioning the higher-ups but had met with the same result.
Boring rest.
She wasn’t even supposed to be training, but Rob, the man in charge of the gym and practice rooms, was sweet on her and had turned a blind eye.
For the first time in weeks, the cream corridors didn’t look dreary and dull, and she wasn’t desperate to get out on patrol.
Well, maybe she was a little desperate.
Might be thinking up ways to bend her partner around her little finger and make him agree to take her out. No one would argue with her heading out if her partner was with her. Surely?
Evelyn reached the end of the corridor and glanced at the sign above the twin doors. The Central Archive. He was bound to be here. Her partner was nothing if not predictable. She pulled the door on the left open and smiled as she spotted him sitting at one of the computers spaced along the double row of desks that ran down the centre of the room, his back to the wall of black cases that contained the servers. The screen reflected off his black-rimmed glasses as he leaned on his elbow, his chin propped up on his palm as he worked the mouse with his other hand.
“Couldn’t have guessed I would find you here.” She let the door swing close behind her and ignored the looks the other hunters in the room gave her, ones that told her to be quiet. It wasn’t a library. She was allowed to speak here.
Archer glanced up from the screen, his dark eyes dropping to it again before he lifted them once more and sat up this time. He rubbed his left shoulder through his tight black Henley, his lips quirking towards that side as he massaged it, and then sank against the back of the chair and pushed his glasses up his nose with his index finger.
He pulled off the handsome geek look, had half the women in HQ panting after him and envious of her for being assigned to him as his partner. She’d had more than one run-in with a jealous woman in her time here, something that wasn’t helped by how close she was to Archer. There had been a few times when she had thought about them romantically, but she had never acted on it. It wasn’t that the timing had never been right. It was just a feeling she had that they weren’t right for each other and making the shift from partners to lovers would only ruin this good thing they had going on.
Archer was absolutely her only friend in Archangel, had had her back more times than she could count and was the reason she was here working for them, had joined their mission to protect people from dangerous non-humans.
Because he had saved her from one of them.
She didn’t want to mess up their friendship.
So she had never acted on the occasional spark of desire she felt for him.
Archer ran a hand over his dark brown hair, mussing the longer lengths, and stretched, clasping his hands together as he raised his arms above his head. When he was done, he sank deeper into the chair and placed both hands behind his head, supporting it as he looked at her and drawing the gazes of the other women in the archive.