Page 3 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

But then a gurgling sound—a horrible, wet, blood-curdling gurgling sound—reached her, just before a loud thump accompanied it.

Turning her cotton-filled head, she found Merrick’s body crumpling to the ground, the sword he ripped from his gut clinking as it fell to the stone. His arms and legs splayed out in strange positions across the grass-peppered path, almost as if he’d taken a great fall.

Lessia wasn’t certain if the sound that split the air came from her own mouth.

It was animalistic, a primal roar of pain that should break worlds apart, that should carry all the way to the Old World… perhaps even to the gods.

And when that thread she’d just begun to notice, the flicker of awareness between them, went dark, something broke inside her.

Hands flying to her chest, she fell to her knees beside her mate.

“Merrick!” Lessia’s voice sounded as if from far away, as if it wasn’t her own anymore, as if the pain was too great to let anything else in. “Merrick!”

She dropped her hands to his face and forced it her way, but the eyes that met hers…

There was no light behind them.

No dancing silver flecks.

No deep darkness.

And his face?

There were no hard lines that she loved to watch soften.

There was no twist of his mouth to hide a smile.

“Merrick!” She snapped her head down to his chest, but no heart thumped against it, and no air drove it up and down.

Another eerie, spine-rattling sound exploded through the air.

“Now you know,” her father echoed. “Now you know how it feels. What you did to me.”

She couldn’t look at him.

Not when anger began working its way through the pain.

Not when that anger turned to rage, and her magic flitted to life behind her eyes, burning under her skin.

He’d killed him.

Her father had killed Merrick.

A hiss flew through her clenched teeth.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she gripped Merrick’s bare arm to keep herself from storming toward her father and from allowing the voice in her mind to urge her to avenge her mate.

To kill like he’d been killed.

As Lessia dug her nails into Merrick’s smooth skin, something touched the edge of her consciousness.

Don’t lose focus.

Her forehead scrunched.

How many times do I need to tell you not to lose focus?

Merrick’s deep voice bounced within her mind, and her eyes flew open.