Page 5

Sarina .

The moment my brain starts to pull itself out of the foggy, messy blackness, I can only think of my daughter.

Frantically, I try to piece together what happened to me before I blacked out—everything at the market.

Sarina having what appeared like a premonition, shedding the spells I’d cast around her. The fight.

That meaty man, swinging his arm toward my face.

And the flash of red-gold hair. Hair I’d recognize anywhere.

I fight to open my eyes, to sit up against the aching in my body. Pain throbs heavily, consistently, through the bone, making rounds around my occipital nerve and swirling under my brain before returning.

It’s enough to make me start retching, but I hold it back, stuffing the nausea down at the bottom of my stomach, where it’s more manageable. Finally, I manage to get my eyes open, and the first thing I see is Emin Argent, sitting next to my bed, leaning in with a glass of water.

The sight of it instantly makes my chest warm, so I swat my hand out, knocking the cup from his hand and using my shaky arms to push myself to standing. Karma acts immediately, as the cup spills all over my lap, soaking through the thick cotton blanket and onto my thighs, but I don’t care.

“Sarina,” I try to say, but my mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. Maybe a sip of that water would have been good, after all.

But I’d die of dehydration before accepting a single drop of water from Emin Argent. He stands over me, mouth slightly open, eyes wandering over my form as though he’s still trying to figure out what just happened—what reason I could possibly have to knock the water out of his hand like that.

If my throat didn’t feel like one of those twelve-pound, iron shot put balls, heavy, ice-cold, and rolled in dirt and sand, I might just scoff at that idea.

“Mom!”

The sight of Sarina is immediately soothing, my fight-or-flight settling down when I see that she’s in one piece and okay. There’s another, strange woman with her, and I wonder for a second why I couldn’t smell my daughter—in fact, couldn’t smell her, this strange woman, or Emin.

Then I try to take a breath through my nose, realize it’s completely stuffed with blood and snot, and understand why my throat is so dry—I’ve been breathing through my mouth.

“Sarina,” I try to say her name again, but it comes out as a dry croak. The strange woman—shorter, buxom, a set of curves that makes me instantly jealous—gives Emin a strange look and crosses the room, filling a glass with water at the tap.

When she hands it to me, I drink greedily, one hand still wrapped protectively around Sarina’s back, like I might need to tug her out of here at any moment. I wish I could smell, that any sense of scent was coming through my nose, but since it’s not, I have to rely on context clues.

If Emin is here, if he brought me somewhere after the fight at the market, that means I’m probably in Ambersky territory. The last place in the world I want to be. And the woman standing beside my bed, staring down at me…is it Kira Argent ? Emin’s sister?

“Hey,” Kira says, reaching out and putting a hand on the bed next to me. “Take your time. Need more water?”

I shake my head, set the glass down. She looks completely different from the dowdy girl I knew back when Emin and I were messing around. Over the years, I’d heard whispers of what happened to her, but she was two years under me in school, and I was long gone by the time everything went down.

According to some of the people in the camp, a woman with a description like Kira spent some time working for Jerrod Blacklock. So how in the world did she get away from him, back here?

When I’m able to pull my gaze from her, and back to Sarina, I realize Emin is staring right at my daughter, that look on his face like his wheels are turning. And that’s the last thing I need right now.

“Emin told us about what happened,” Kira says. “Dorian and I would like to offer you succor here until you’re healed.”

Now that I’ve had water, I could probably say something, but I don’t.

Instead, I just tighten my hold around Sarina, pulling her closer to me, nearly onto the bed, and nod again.

I’m already trying to work it out—Sarina and I can’t go back to the camp.

Can I even get word back to Willow? To get our things?

I think of the money under my mattress. Willow is the only person the magic won’t blow out of this century if she tries to retrieve it for me.

On the chair across from my bed is my leather jacket, the outline of the remaining gems in the pocket. I calculate how much I can make from them—some of them highly specific, difficult to sell to anyone except the person who ordered it.

“Kira,” Emin says, his voice with a strange twist to it. “Can I have a moment alone with Veva?”

Kira, once again, gives him a strange look, then glances at me.

“I have nothing to say to you,” I say, heart beating double-time. In a perfect world, this would be enough to get him away from me, but his face hardens, his gaze darting to my daughter again.

“Well, I have some things to say to you ,” he says, setting his jaw. “And I’m saying them, whether you want to hear them or not.”

The look on Kira’s face tells me that her brother hasn’t told her a thing about what happened between us. The entitlement of it—the way he’s looking at Sarina as if she’s something he can lay claim to.

He can’t. He made that choice ten years ago, and he doesn’t get to take it back now.

Sarina pulls back from me, rubbing her eyes and pushing her hair over her shoulders. She’s a tough girl, but this has been a lot, even for her—and the last thing I want is for Emin to be putting ideas in her head.

If he remembers that night, he’ll be thinking Sarina belongs to him. It lines up perfectly with the day I told him I was pregnant, the day he sent me away without so much as a backwards glance in my direction.

“Fine.” I suck in a breath, run my shaking fingers through Sarina’s hair, pushing it back from her forehead. To her, I say, “Go out in the hallway with Kira. We’ll be leaving soon, but I’ll have to talk to him for a second.”

Sarina holds my gaze. She’s smart, knows better than to ask me questions now. Now and then, in my spare moments of downtime, I’ve thought about what to tell her about a father. That time might be coming sooner, rather than later.

“Okay,” she says, and before she goes, I take her wrist in mine, raising my hand and casting a protective spell on her with every ounce of energy I have left in my body.

It’s not as strong as I’d like, but it will keep her from going anywhere she doesn’t want to go.

It will keep her from getting too far from me, a meta-magical tether between our two bodies that will wreak havoc if broken.

Kira tries to hide her surprise at my casting, then takes Sarina out into the hallway, gently closing the door behind her.

The moment it shuts, Emin crosses the room, comes to the side of the bed, and says, his voice deathly quiet, “That girl belongs to me, doesn’t she?”

I bristle immediately. Nobody belongs to him—and certainly not my daughter. In the time between her leaving and Emin asking his question, I’ve already figured out what to say. It won’t do me any good to point out the truth—that he made his choice. Turned me away when I told him I was pregnant.

He’s an alpha. And we’re in his pack’s territory.

Even when I was an Ambersky, I didn’t belong. Emin Argent has always been able to pull rank on me, and I’m not going to let him do it to get my daughter out from under me.

Instead, I’m just going to lie to him. With my casting and the scent-blocking on Sarina, we should be able to keep him from knowing until we go.

“No,” I say, simply. “She doesn’t.”

He frowns. “How old is she?”

“She’ll turn eight in a few months.”

At that, he blinks, and I watch his mind turning. The key to this is how small Sarina is—line her up with the other eight-year-olds, and she’ll fit right in. I need him to think of her thin little arms, her height—or rather, lack of it—and believe me.

“But…she’s so smart,” he says, slowly, brow wrinkling. I wonder if he’s also thinking about the implications for that fake first baby—that I must have been wrong about being pregnant, or I must have lost it.

The thought of that—of having lost Sarina before getting to meet her—is so painful that I push it away, crossing my arms and ignoring the sting of the movement. I choose instead to focus on what he’s just said. “She’s my daughter. Of course she’s smart.”

“So, you were with someone else. After me,” Emin clarifies, and when I see a flash of jealousy in his eyes, I want to murder him.

“Oh, Emin,” I whisper, leaning closer to him. “I was with a million people after you. Each of them better than the last. And I’ll be with a million more, seeing as how it’s none of your fucking business.”

His eyes flash exactly how I knew they would—despite his denial, despite the way he threw me out years ago, I know the truth. Emin Argent is my mate, and I’m his, and no matter how much he wishes it weren’t true, the idea of me with another man makes him want to claw his eyes out in frustration.

“Now,” I say, defiantly turning my gaze from his. “I want my daughter, I want my things, and I want to get the fuck out of this territory.”