Page 134 of Third Offense

My soul cried out in agony.

Pain.

The link fraying, making my eyes go wide.

He’s dying, I realized, my insides shattering.Auric…

My vision blinked. Fading.I can’t breathe. My mind… it’s… it’s…Everything went black. My world was dissolving into nothing.Auric…

My mate…

I can’t feel him. I can’t sense him. I… I can no longer feel anything.

He’s… he’s gone…

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

KETOS

I ranmy fingers through my hair and paced the courtyard outside my home. Similar to the one in Italy, we were on the water surrounded by greenery on every other side of the estate. I also had a myriad of guest quarters, but not as many as Vasilios and Gaia had.

Novak and Layla had taken one of the rooms in my wing. Not that either of them had slept. They both refused to eat, too.

Given what we’d been through, I understood. But we needed our strength, too.

Home should have been a refuge.

But it wasn’t.

The grassy scents of my Dublin Estate weren’t the comforting medley that they usually were, even out here in the open courtyard where I preferred to think.

Nothing seemed capable of ridding my stomach of this leaden weight that made me feel sluggish and sick.

Even my powers were off. The energy of my grounds often rejuvenated me. All of the plants and hidden animals contributed to a thriving ecosystem that fed me consistent vitality.

Not to mention the undercurrent of wires that ran through the soil with a subtle electronic frequency that aided the garden’s growth and often helped me recharge and reset. Too much electricity could prove overwhelming, but a subtle amount was rejuvenating.

Sometimes I’d come out here and just focus on the hum, but my wings repelled the vibration right now. Each feather had gone stiff and rigid, resulting in an inability to do anything other than reject energy I should have absorbed.

I felt like a tuning fork that had bent the wrong way.

Perhaps my near death experience had weakened me. Or maybe it was Layla’s pain that held me captive. I wasn’t sure. It had never happened to me before.

I remembered Queen Gaia’s advice just this morning when I’d found breathing particularly difficult.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear Prince, or we will all be lost.”

She seemed to think it wasn’t the near-death experience holding me down, but my own guilt.

Maybe she was right.

I wasn’t accustomed to feeling so…helpless.

That was a word that I had never understood, not truly.

Not until now.

My betrothed was suffering. My family was suffering. And now, instead of being able to do anything about it, I numbly stared at the sky as I tried to digest the past twenty-four hours of my existence.