Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
The eyes were open and staring ahead. Unblinking, as if death had already claimed the spark that warmed and animated the flesh. Except that wasn’t true. There was a little life… still in there.
For the moment.
“Make it fast with the medical help,” Qhuinn said over his shoulder.
And then he mentally checked out for what was probably only a couple of seconds, but felt like he’d been gone an hour: In a hideous flashback, his mind replaced the unknown male and the chair before him with an oil drum filled with the black, oily blood of the Omega. Instantly, he could smell the sweet, cloying scent of the enemy, sense the hunting cabin around him, feel the cold air and the weird, tickling fear that something big was coming for him.
Something that would change him.
And that was when he’d seen the ever-so-subtle glow of gold in the depths. A signet ring. The one he had always hoped to receive from his own sire, the acknowledgment that a son was a valuable contribution to the bloodline, something important… something that was loved. But no, the badge of acceptance had been given to his brother, in a private celebration that he’d walked in on.
What the fuck was it doing in that drum?
That was what had gone through his mind first. And the question was answered fast: Luchas, his brother, had been in there, the male’s body—that prized body, the one that had no defects—had been shriveled, pretzeled, and preserved in stasis.
He, too, had been barely alive after the torture—
“Qhuinn?”
He jerked to attention, pulling a pivot toward Tohr. “Yeah—sorry. What?”
The brother’s face was set with the kind of mask that made your adrenal system wake up with bells on. And then he got the dreaded forefinger crook, the order to come-with-me.
Oh… shit, he thought. This could only mean one thing.
He was just vaguely aware of walking out of the hidden room, through the study, and into the hall.
As soon as they were alone, Qhuinn exhaled. “Fuck, I should have been there.”
Tohr frowned and shook his head. Because he was a male of worth who knew way too fucking much about missing last moments. “You didn’t know. How could you have?”
Are you kidding me, he wanted to say. It’s been coming for months now.
He glanced back into the study, at Wrath. Serving the King was a sacred duty, but he had to be there for his hellren.
“Can I go?” He met Tohr’s navy blue eyes. “Even though I don’t know how I can leave. It’s just Blay’s going to need me—”
Tohr reached out with a solid hand to the shoulder. “Your daughter’s fine.”
Qhuinn blinked. Blinked again. “I’m sorry… what?”
“Lyric.” Tohr put his phone front and center. “She was saved by a miracle.”
Trying to catch up to the conversation, Qhuinn bent in and focused on the video that was playing on repeat on the little screen. It took a couple of run-throughs before things sunk in—and when they did—
He was fucking horrified. His beautiful daughter standing in the middle of the street, in front of the club she and her friends always went to. She was looking up and to her right, her arms raising—
A huge shape bolted into the frame just as some kind of sheeting or part of a building—wait, was that a fucking billboard?—fell out of the sky, right on top of her.
Except somehow, whoever the hell had come out of nowhere managed to hold the thing off of her.
Holstering one of his guns, he grabbed his phone and checked on Lyric’s location.
“I gotta go,” he heard himself say as he started running for the front door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a total fucking blur.
Standing in front of the step and repeat, Lyric smiled on command as one of the event’s assistants wielded yet another pair of cell phones like they were proper Nikon cameras. The two women who’d been brought up on the shallow stage were beautiful in their own right, their clothes off-the-rack versions of what was on the runways of Paris, their hair done up with extensions, their makeup flawless.
As soon as the pictures were taken, the conversation re-bubbled:
“—craziest thing I’ve ever seen! And I can’t believe—”
“—and then he came out of nowhere—”
“—out of nowhere, this guy—”
“—saves you.”
Marcia ushered them off to the left with a firm tone and an engaging smile, and a threesome took their place. Which meant there was all kinds of you go here, no I’ll go there, I want to be here, wait, how about I kneel? While they worked things out, Lyric let herself get positioned and repositioned like a garden gnome, her detachment so deep and complete, she felt like she was staring at herself from across the VIP area.
The good news? The conversation was always the same, so after stumbling through the first couple of interactions, she’d landed on some appropriate repeatables: