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I pushed aside the present and dove into the past until tendrils of memories slunk forward. Lena and Thane had been with me, standing in a hallway—the DEA’s hallway. A phone in my hand showed Kit’s picture and a string of texts from me with no reply, followed by a bright light and a boom.
Like a broken dam, the remaining memories returned in a flood, and I snapped my eyes open. “This isn’t real.”
The Master Vampire chuckled and pressed his fangs into my neck until I winced.
It sure as hell felt real.
“You must choose who you’ll save,” he said, his voice light and teasing. “Your mate or your brother.”
That was a choice I could never make. “Me.”
Behind me, he stilled. “What?”
“Take me and let them go,” I said.
“You would give yourself to me? For life?” His words slithered down my spine, winding around my heart and squeezing. “Centuries under my control?”
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for either of them, no matter what it cost me.
“Yes.”
“Done.” His dark chuckle rumbled through his chest and against my back. As his fangs pierced my skin like butter and sank deep, stinging pain radiated outward from my neck. I cried out as he sucked my blood, my life, from my body.
Fighting against the attack, my inner flame rose fast and furious until I shoved it back down, quenching the fire. I had chosen this willingly to let them live. The pain lessened with each tug at my neck, subsiding into a dull, yet weirdly pleasurable, ache, and my life force dimmed.
My body grew limp and tired, my head rolling back to rest on his shoulder, my eyelids fluttering with heaviness. I met Maddox’s sorrow-filled gaze and smiled sadly.
I wanted to tell him how proud of him I was for everything he’d done before his life ended much too soon. Like Thane, he was everything to me.
I love you so much, forever and always, Maddie. As I whispered the nickname he’d pretended to hate, I exhaled my last breath, and my vision went dark.
Smooth, cold flooring formed beneath my hands and knees. I took a long, shuddering breath and opened my eyes.
Through a curtain of white-blonde hair, I saw the DEA’s linoleum floor beneath me. My limbs shook from the terror of losing my loved ones to Xavier, who was dead—allegedly. My brain knew it hadn’t been real, but my body still needed to catch up.
I scrambled to my feet, my pulse racing from whatever had just happened. Thane stood by the conference room door, unmoving, his hand outstretched for the handle. Lena stood frozen beside me with her arms crossed.
Lightly, I touched her arm. “Lena!”
She didn’t move, still as a statue and firmly rooted in place. Her eyes stared straight ahead, no recognition flaring to life. Whatever she saw, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t here.
I stepped in front of Thane, studying his unmoving face. “What’s happening?”
No response, not a blink or a peep or a twitch. Not that I expected him to, considering his fixed stance, but I hoped my voice would break whatever spell he was under. The same magic that had me trapped only a moment before.
My eyebrows drew together, and I glanced inside the conference room through the wall of windows. Everyone, including Adam, sat immobilized, stuck midway through whatever they’d been doing before the spell hit.
This had to be a spell. Nothing else could explain what was happening. I ran down the hallway, peeking my head inside offices, finding reapers and angels exactly as the others were. I scanned the reapers’ faces in the middle of the rows of cubicles, hoping someone would move or blink.
Anything that would give me a sign.
A deafening boom shook the building, scattering paperwork and toppling books from shelves. I grabbed the corner of a desk to avoid going down myself. More explosions and colorful sparks lit up the sky outside an open office window.
I rushed to it and looked out. Two floors down in the courtyard, a line of mages faced the DEA building, casting spells at the eight-story structure. Several pairs of pointed ears peeked through satin-like hair, and my jaw dropped.
These weren’t just any mages—they were fae mages. An oval portal swirled behind them, ready to whisk them away to safety. Or worse, send even more through if they cracked the DEA’s defenses.
Holy fuck.
