Page 58

Marlowe’s eyelids fluttered open, and her voice cracked with exhaustion as she spoke. “Is it time to go?”

I kissed the top of her head.

Never.

“We have a few more minutes.”

She sighed and went back to sleep, nestling back into my chest.Soft light filtered in through the windows, illuminating her long eyelashes and pale cheeks. I lifted myself up slightly on my elbow and leaned over her, counting each one of her freckles.

“Twenty-three,” I whispered. Same as there had been in Chicago and San Francisco.

The only thing different on her skin was the new bond mark from Julian—a still-healing, crescent-shaped scar on her ankle.

A deep foreboding took root in my gut, souring the moment I wanted to cement in my memory. Why did it feel like we were constantly on the verge of losing Marlowe? As though the Moon had let us borrow her for longer than she’d intended, and was finally taking her away. Like she had been too good for us from the beginning, and we should have known she’d never be ours forever.

Especially not with Nolan making every wrong decision possible.

I bit back my growl so as not to wake or scare her. She told me she’d forgiven him, and logically, I knew I would’ve made the same initial decision he had in contacting the Conclave to intervene with the vampyrs on our behalf. That had been the right call.

At least it would have been, if Marlowe weren’t the only omega left in the world, a prize too tempting for a pack of alphas with egos the size of Lake Michigan.

My knot had finally shrunk enough that I could pull out, and the loss of her warmth on my cock was immediate and soul-crushing. She turned around so we could face each other, nuzzling her face into my neck, breathing me in deeply.

The alarm on my phone told me we had five minutes left.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I hated this so much. I nudged her gently. “Hey California, you need to get dressed.”

Archer had left an outfit for her outside my door, and it took every ounce of my will power to get out of bed to grab it.

She gave me a sleepy, encouraging smile as I slipped the UW-Madison sweatshirt over her head and kissed her on the nose. “It’s just for a few days,” she said.

She spoke with the same tone she’d used with Cam before we’d left for San Francisco. Placating me, like this was just a trip, and not my worst nightmare realized.

Archer had thoughtfully left a brush with her clothes as well, and I picked it up to run through her hair in an attempt to tame the wild bed head she’d been left with after a night with all of us.

“Just a few days,” I repeated, helping her up once I wasfinished.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek and scurried into the bathroom to brush her teeth, just as Linda’s car pulled into the driveway.

My heart shattered into smaller and smaller pieces with each step we took down the stairs, and I joined the rest of the pack in line by the door so she could give each of us a hug. The smile on her face was frozen in place, the glistening in her eyes betraying her feigned optimism.

“It’s going to be alright,” she whispered in my ear. “Support Julian however you can, okay? He needs to feel like you believe in him.”

“I will. I do.” As much as I hadn’t gotten a chance to know the pup that well yet, he’d risked his neck to save Marlowe before she was even his. Now that he knew exactly what was on the line, I was sure he had the skill and the motivation to bring her back home for us.

We stood outside and watched as she got in the alpha female’s car, waving until we were no longer in sight.

I rubbed my hand down my face, the stubble on my cheeks and chin scratching my palm. Then I turned towards Nolan and punched him in the gut.

The house had taken on the quality of an airport lounge from hell. We were stuck with nowhere to go, time ceasing to have any meeting aside from when the Rite would finally commence. Until then, I was too exhausted to do anything productive, yet too wired to sleep.

After taking a shower, I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat at the table. All I could do was drink and stare into space.

Three days.How the hell could we survive three days without her, knowing what might happen when Julian finally met Eamon Frost in the ring?

“Can we finally talk about what I found?” Archer called through the halls, trying to get everyone’s attention.

Nolan went straight to the table and sat obediently, still eating too much crow to cop an attitude with any of us.