Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
That felt nice, to be thought of as family by his brothers. She knew she couldn’t get complacent, but she was exhausted, and she was willing to take anything good at this point.
She felt warmth moving through her head. Weirdly, it felt good. And just like that, the pain vanished. It was completely gone.
Sarika closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You do have your uses.” She’d give him that. No meds, the migraine was gone, and the relief was tremendous.
His hand went to the nape of her neck, and he began a slow massage of her shoulders and neck, helping to ease the tension from her. Her exhaustion settled around her like a heavy blanket. She felt the weight of it, the physical and emotional toll on her. As a child, she had never been in the best of health. Her adoptive parents had worried far too much about her, but she refused to allow anything to slow her down. She went after the education she wanted and went from country to country interning in as many places as possible in order to learn as much as she could to become better at taking care of the animals and their habitats.
“I’m going to have to fight with you later, Tomas. Right now, I just want to sleep,” she confessed.
“Good plan, sivamet.”
She hadn’t asked what that meant for a reason. Whenever he called her that, his voice softened. The velvet deepened, stroked over her, got inside where she didn’t want it. She didn’t want T. Smolnycki Jr. inside her anywhere. Not her head, not her body. Still, she turned into his warmth, wrapped one arm around his rock-hard abs and drifted off.
Chapter
9
“Is she okay?” Luiz asked the moment Tomas emerged from the bedroom.
Tomas nodded. “She’s finally asleep.”
He glanced at his brothers. Sarika believed they couldn’t read her thoughts unless they took her blood or were standing very close to her. In truth, for him, it was easy to read her. When he did, his brothers were just as aware. They’d been sharing information automatically for centuries, and it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
Sharing his new emotions, they had almost been as upset as he had been. As he still was. His lifemate knew zero about Carpathians, and the one man, her cousin, who was both jaguar and fully Carpathian should have filled her in.
“You had to have known there was a possibility of her being a lifemate to one of us,” he said, pinning Luiz with his flat, cold stare. A demon lurked in him. A dangerous monster, one that lived for battle and blood. He knew Luiz was a De La Cruz. In their world, that name was nearly as powerful as Dubrinsky and as powerful as Daratrazanoff or Dragonseeker.
That Luiz didn’t do right by Sarika infuriated him. He tamped that down. Emotions had to be swept aside, put away, if he was going to handle this the way a lifemate should. Calm. In control. Making a statement that couldn’t be mistaken.
“I did,” Luiz conceded. “Although I thought only of her as my cousin. My only living relative. I saw her in that capacity, not as a potential lifemate. That came later, when I took her blood.”
“Knowing she was a potential lifemate, she should never have been allowed to leave the safety of this house.”
“The safeguards were secure. Percy would never have been able to get in.”
Tomas wanted to fly across the room and rip out Luiz’s heart. So much for compartmentalizing his emotions. Control was fast disappearing. He seethed with the need to punish Luiz, who answered every question with that same arrogant attitude that must have made Sarika crazy.
Tomas. Mataias, the oldest triplet and their acknowledged leader, was a breath of fresh air, blowing through the ragged, dark thunderclouds in his mind. You have not had time to process these emotions. Shut them down completely.
I won’t lose her.
You aren’t tied to her through unfamiliar emotions. You’re bound together. Your soul is one. Let them go completely before you start a war. Luiz might be one of the oldest ancients, but he feels something for his cousin. He will fight, and every one of the De La Cruz brothers will back him. That won’t matter if it becomes necessary, but it is not at this time.
Mataias was always the voice of reason. Tomas usually was as well, but he’d been shaken from the moment he laid eyes on Sarika. The instant she spoke and he heard her voice, his world had changed. Color poured in, blinding him. Right in the middle of an intense standoff with Rud. Right when he needed to save a child. He couldn’t see clearly. Worse, he hadn’t been able to think clearly. Every sensation that filled him was too intense, especially anything having to do with Sarika. Evidently, he was still feeling those emotions with that same intensity.