Haunted by Your Touch

A brow rose. “Changes?”

“We’ll start with the front hall,” I said, letting him lead me out of Bonecrushers. “Really, Rafael, ‘medieval chic’ is so last century.…”

Mated Shayla Black

Chapter One

Mathias attacked the Lowery estate and burned it to the ground. The family is dead.”

Raiden Wolvesey staggered and fell against the nearby wall. Those terrible words repeated over and over in his head.

The entire family dead? Including Tabitha… and the child she’d been carrying? His child?

He’d never said good-bye, held her one last time.

The pain swept over him, fast and unmerciful, like a forest fire out of control. He struggled to stay upright, deny the news. Though he’d been witness to the aftermath of other such attacks, he refused to believe it until he saw her body himself.

After wreaking havoc on magickind for months, Mathias d’Arc, an evil wizard recently returned from exile, had been quiet for weeks, his indiscriminate raping and killing of magic-kind paused. He claimed to commit his crimes against the wizarding upper class, the Privileged, in the name of lifting the Deprived, magickind’s lower class, to power.

Liberation based on blood and pain and torture? Rubbish! Raiden shook his head.

“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not going alone,” the bearer of the bad news said from the doorway.

Bram Rion. He led the Doomsday Brethren, a handful of warriors devoted to stopping Mathias. They’d taken to hiding in this series of caves like damn underground rodents scurrying for shelter. While others above them died. Like beautiful Tabitha.

Her fiery hair, her laughter, her hazel eyes… all gone?

Fury assailed him, and it was all he could do not to charge across the room and rip Bram’s blond head off. “I’m going. I have to see if there’s any way…”

Raiden raked a hand through his hair. He couldn’t even talk about the possibility of Tabitha’s death, much less accept it.

“The neighbors reported fires. When Caden and Ice”—Bram referenced two of the Doomsday Brethren’s other members—“teleported over to investigate, they found no survivors. You won’t solve anything by going there.”

“If someone had attacked Emma’s house, wouldn’t you investigate personally?” Raiden snarled, referring to Bram’s mysterious mate. She’d bonded with him, then disappeared after just one night.

Bram raised a brow. “It’s different. Tabitha wasn’t your mate. In fact, didn’t you spend last night with another woman?”

Raiden steeled himself. Yes, he had. A human whose name he couldn’t recall. And didn’t he regret that now? While trying to avoid Tabitha so she could have a safer, better life, he’d left her to face Mathias alone.

Self-loathing ate his stomach like acid.

He shot Bram a menacing glare. “I’m going. I don’t care if you come with me or not.”

Forcing himself to concentrate, Raiden took a deep breath, centered his magic, and teleported to the Lowery estate.

The grand home lay in ruins, blackened, ransacked as if someone had searched it high and low. The devastation was absolute—and like a fist in his gut. Bodies were strewn on the lawn. Her mother, father, two brothers.

No Tabitha.

Raiden prowled through the charred remains of the house, which still smoldered with the aftereffects of the fire. No one in the foyer, the sitting room, the bedrooms. Upstairs—or what was left of it—downstairs, servants’ quarters… all empty. With every step, his fear for Tabitha burned hotter. Panic rose.

He could think of only two reasons Tabitha’s body wasn’t among the dead: either she’d miraculously escaped, or Mathias had taken her with him. If the latter, the bastard would torture the beautiful witch unmercifully before ending her life in a cataclysm of humiliation and pain.

Suddenly, he heard a little whooshing sound and he whirled, heart chugging, anticipating a fight. Hell, he welcomed one. Instead, he found Bram. Again.

“She’s not here.”

As Raiden could plainly see. But he wouldn’t rest until he found her… one way or the other. “You didn’t mention that.”

“You didn’t let me.”

Fucking semantics. Raiden had no time for them. “I must keep searching. Maybe… she escaped and sought refuge elsewhere.”

“Maybe.”

Bram didn’t sound convinced, and Raiden stifled the urge to rage at him. Doing so would make him feel better, but it wouldn’t bring back Tabitha.

With a sigh, Bram clapped him on the shoulder. “I know she’s expecting your child.”

“Yes,” Raiden choked.

God, yes. She wasn’t very far along, three months at most. If any other woman had ever conceived by him, he’d know exactly when because he never spent more than a single night with any of them, never went back for seconds. No attachments, ever. For Tabitha, he’d broken that cardinal rule. Repeatedly. He’d been unable to stay away, no matter how much better her life would have been without him.

“Rightfully, you’re concerned about the baby,” Bram placated. “Children are difficult for magic-kind to conceive, and I—”

“Shut up.” Not for anything would he confess his feelings about Tabitha to Bram. Hell, he barely understood them.

“Or is this about Tabitha herself? If you loved her, why didn’t you mate with her?”

Raiden didn’t want to have this discussion.

“I’m not wired like you or the others. You know my family was cursed so that we can’t sense our mates. The mating instinct was bred out of us generations ago,” he said, referring to the sixth sense that allowed a wizard to taste a woman and know if magic intended her for him.

Bram raised a golden brow, his blue eyes laser sharp. “That didn’t stop your twin. Ronan looks quite settled with Kari. For months he hasn’t looked at another woman.”

Nearly two years, if Bram wanted the honest truth. Oh, prior to mating with the pretty human Kari, Ronan had bedded other women. Magic must be powered by a strong exchange of emotion, and sex always worked like a charm. Playful encounters with many partners were expected until one mated. But almost from the start, Ronan had fixated on Kari, finally mating with her, despite the fact that the rest of the Wolvesey family, eternal bachelors all, thought him mad.

Raiden understood. Meeting Tabitha had been almost surreal. His first thought had been that no witch could possibly be so lovely. Once he’d talked his way into her bed, his second thought had been that no witch could possibly be so sweet.

It had taken great effort to leave her that next morning, but he’d vowed never to return. She’d been too