Page 30 of Tethered Souls

“I like burgers.”

Fucking hel.

My jaw clenching and unclenching, I say softly, “What if I can’t save her from the pain of losing a child?”

“Then save her from everything else.”

My eyes snap to him even as I keep my head forward. He stares ahead too, not looking at me, giving me privacy in the close confinement of the car. I turn my gaze back to the road as my hand squeezes and releases the wheel.

We drive in silence, that single sentence playing over and over in my mind.

He makes it sound so simple. So final.

To him, Micha is already my girl.

But to me…

“I like burgers.”

And my mark is all over her body.

xxx

The car stops outside the house of one of our landscaping clients. A rich fucker who’s only here a couple times a year but pays us thousands to keep his gardens tended. It’s a two story, Spanish-style mansion lined with pillared terraces and an attached seven-car garage for vehicles they never drive.

Opening my door, I get out. The sound of crickets mixes with the rush of water – a walk-in waterfall out back that runs into a heated saltwater pool. Italian stone paves our way to it, leading through a shimmer of blue. Like a heat wave rippling through the air, just the slightest tinge to it that humans can’t see. As soon as we step through it, our bodies heat as the magic wraps around us, searching our souls to see if it’s allowed to kill us.

I tense automatically despite knowing I shouldn’t, that doing so will make it worse. And as if on cue, the magic digs its claws into my chest, sharp pain that has me nearly collapsing to my knees.

The wards have been made to keep out every sup but a witch, to stop Aleric or any other born vampire from being able to phase inside. But due to my lack of magic, it always takes a few passes for a ward to accept me as a witch.

Gritting my teeth, I force my legs to lock. The feeling of knives slashing across my body intensifies, and sweat beads down my face as my limbs shake from the agony. But if I try to push through, it’ll end in certain death.

Khalid stands on the other side, having passed through without a hitch, and now he turns to face me. He holds my gaze, giving me strength in his proximity, and I latch onto that, focus on it to turn the pain into something bearable.

But then the magic slams into my back, straight into my heart, and my eyes snap open as a memory hits me. The cut of a blade in a dark alley. The smell of soap before the rush of blood. Electrified agony sweeps through me, spreading out from that cut, and I cannot decide if it’s from now or then. If it happened when whoever tried to kill me struck me from the back.

In an instant, the magic releases me, and I stumble out the other side, my breaths ragged, my body slick in sweat and still burning from the trial of the ward. My hands on my knees, I struggle to hold on to the smell I recognized, but it is already fading.

“You okay?” Khalid asks, and the smell vanishes, wiped from my mind completely, like the fading senses of a dream.

As I straighten, my eyes dart over to the group of people already inside the ward, waiting for us. Two of my brothers and our only uncle, but their gazes aren’t on us – used to giving me privacy whenever I pass through a ward.

Still, I lower my voice, not wanting any of them to hear. “I knew them,” I say, staring at Khalid.

Whoever it was who tried to kill me over a year ago got close. They didn’t know I can sense a heartbeat or smell the adrenaline seeping out of their skin. They didn’t mask the beat of their pulse, the musk of their body as they snuck up behind me. I noticed they were there. Ismelledthem.

And I simplydid not turn.

Because I trusted them at my back.

Trusted them like a brother?

My eyes shift to the two behind Khalid, their backs to me as they stand around the swim up bar, their attention on the writhing vampire strapped to it. Their voices carry, words of urgency as they try to keep Jerry, the bloodsucker, alive.

I look at Leno – my Underboss. My second in command. The brother who might take my place and my fiancee…

Then I look at Maddox – the youngest of us. A psycho who likes seeing what he can get away with. Did he leave me alive on purpose? Only want to see if he could get past Khalid for the fucking hel of it? No harm meant?