Page 3

“I need to talk to Zalen,” she said, and headed into the hallway on shaky legs—heedless of her lack of pants or underwear.
I stood frozen for the space of a heartbeat, then I lunged for a drawer and dragged out an old turtleneck, pulling it over my head to cover myself and hide the bite mark on the side of my neck. Gritting my teeth against the pain of overused muscles, I hurried after her.
We found Zalen in the kitchen, talking in hushed, serious tones to someone on the phone. He glanced up as we approached, and my queasy feeling increased as I took in the dark circles forming under his dark circles. After several days in a heat nest with two omegas, he should have been fast asleep in his room, recovering. Instead, he looked like he hadn’t so much as closed his eyes for a solid week.
He held up a finger as we entered the room, a request for a moment’s patience.
“Okay, thanks Jen,” he said into the phone. “Please give me a call if he shows up, or if you hear from him.”
Princess gave an unhappy meow and struggled out of Mia’s hold, leaping lightly onto the countertop as Zalen disconnected the call. The unpleasant dip in my stomach turned into a barrel roll.
“Zalen, where’s Emiel?” Mia asked, fear audible beneath her words.
Zalen closed his eyes for a moment. “That’s a little complicated,” he said quietly. “Are you two all right?”
Mia glanced at me briefly before nodding. “Yes, just tired and sore.” She paused, rolling her lower lip between her teeth. “I, uh, think I may have done something terrible.”
But Zalen shook his head. “No. Mia,no. All you did was go into heat. So, you remember what happened with Emiel, then?”
She nodded, looking ill. “Not everything, but enough.”
Zalen blew out a breath. “Okay. Look... you probably know that Emiel has some issues around sex and heats. He was concerned that you might consider what he did with you to be nonconsensual. I told him I didn’t think that was the case, but he was still upset. He left the house, and I wasn’t in a position to try to follow him at the time.”
Because he and Byron had been stuck here tending to the two of us, I thought.
“Oh, no,” Mia breathed. “Zalen, where is he? I need to talk to him!”
“That’s the thing.” Zalen scrubbed a hand over his face, pulling at the skin. “I’m not sure.”
The awful sense of wrongness threatened to swallow me whole.
“What day is it?” I asked.
“It’s Tuesday morning,” Zalen said.
“And when did Nat come here?” Mia demanded.
“Friday morning,” Zalen replied, sounding defeated.
“And Emiel’s been gone this whole time?” I whispered.
Zalen nodded. “He left Princess with an entire bag of cat food in the self-feeder, four huge bowls of water, and half a dozen makeshift boxes full of cat litter. He hasn’t been to the Hope Project, and he isn’t answering his phone.”
A terrible, sick certainty settled in my chest like lead.
“I know where he is,” I rasped. Two sets of eyes landed on me as my hands started to shake.
“Where, Luca?” Zalen asked. “Where would he have gone?”
“The fights.” My lips felt numb as I struggled to form the words. “He’ll have gone to wherever they’re holding the cage fights this month.”