“I know.” After all this time, Helena remained pure of heart and soul. Her piety was so unassailable; she seemed untouched by the world they lived in. He envied her that serenity.
“Does she truly bring you solace?”
“Solace and torment, pleasure and pain. All of it in the extreme. It is sublime and it is hell, and I need it to exist. I need her.” There were few Sentinels he could speak so freely to. Helena’s unwavering faith gave her an impartiality few could lay claim to.
A waiter intruded and they ordered. They would push the food around for appearance’s sake, then box it up for their lycans. When they were alone again, Helena leaned back in her seat and suddenly looked very weary.
“How can I help you?” he asked. He didn’t show how her unrest affected him, but it did. Deeply. She’d always been one of the immutable things in his existence. But then, so had Phineas.
“By commiserating.” Her delicate hand rested on the table. “Have I told you that one of my lycans, Mark, claims to be in love with me?”
Adrian stilled. “No.”
“Yes. Well, that’s what he believes.”
Recovering, he said, “I’m not overly surprised by the possibility. You’re a beautiful woman with a gentle soul.”
“You know where the praise for such things should be directed, but thank you.” Her fingertips drummed lightly into the tabletop, a revealing action she seemed to be unaware of. “I made every attempt to be respectful of his feelings, however inconvenient they are. He’s done his job very well because of them. Mark has risked himself in ways and situations no other lycan would have.”
“Has he become a problem for you?”
“No.” She sighed. “
Reaching out, he caught her hand, stilling its fidgeting. “I’m listening.”
“I knew he had… needs. I understand the lycan breed. It’s just… I refused to see how he handled those needs and he made every attempt to hide his activities.” Her fingers tightened on his. “But the other day, when I heard about Phineas, I called Mark in after I’d already given him the afternoon off. When he returned, I smelled-I smelled a woman on him.”
“Helena.” His chest tightened with sympathy.
“I was furious, Adrian. As I have never been before. I raged at him. Said cruel and deliberately hurtful things. Accused him of being weak and flawed. And more… so much more. I couldn’t stop. Ugliness poured from me and I couldn’t stop it. I made him hate himself. He was already suffering guilt and shame on his own, and I added the burden of my pain to his.”
“You were jealous.” And now she knew what few Sentinels did-that they were as possessive as the lycans and vampires could be. The trait, it seemed, was inherent in the seraphim and was passed on to the Fallen. “It could’ve been worse. It would have been, had you been sleeping with him.”
“And that’s the dilemma I come to you with.” Her chin lifted. “You, of anyone, know how I feel. All this time, I believed the urges of the flesh were beyond us. That lust was one battle we didn’t have to fight.”
“We’re meant to be tested-you know that.”
“Yes, but as I attempted to explain the situation to Mark, to apologize for the hurt I’d caused him and to prepare him for a transfer away from me, he caught something I had missed. We are forbidden to mate with mortals, Adrian. Lycans, vampires-even demons-are not mortals.”
He released her hand and sat back, removing himself from the role of friend and returning to that of her commanding officer. “You’re hoping for a loophole.”
“Don’t judge me!” she snapped, too upset to maintain courtesy. “How can you even presume to, after coming here with the scent of a mortal woman all over you?”
“What did you expect me to say? Ask yourself-honestly-did you come to me for commiseration? Because you know you have it. My heart breaks for you. But if you came for absolution, I can’t give it to you.”
“Why not?”
“If I gave you license to make the mistakes I’ve made I’d be no better than Syre. I won’t lead you to damnation, Helena. It’s my responsibility to do everything in my power to prevent your fall.”
“Do as you say,” she said bitterly. “Not as you do.”
Her fulminating glare cut into him. In just a few short moments, he’d become her enemy. As deeply as her anger hurt him, he could do nothing differently. “The answer to your question doesn’t lie with me. You know that.”
Helena’s lush lower lip trembled. “I ask, and hear nothing.”
“The conclusion I drew from that,” he said gently, “was that the silence was answer enough.”
She sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “I thought you would help me.”
“I’ll try. But not in the way you want.”
A tear formed, then fell down her flawless cheek. Her pain radiated from her and echoed through him. She slid out of the booth. “I need a moment to collect myself.”
He nodded and watched her weave her way through the dining room and turn down the hall to the restrooms. He pulled his cell phone out and dialed.
“Jason,” he said when the lieutenant answered. “Find Helena’s personal guards and recall them immediately.”
“I’ll see to it personally. What’s going on?”
“We’ll discuss it later. If you haven’t recovered both guards within a half hour from now, I need to know.”
“Gotcha.”
The food arrived and Adrian sent it back to be boxed. It took the waiter several minutes to see to it, and Helena failed to return during that time. But Adrian had known the chances of her doing so had been fifty-fifty at best. He understood what she was going through and he knew what he would do if there had been anyone capable of stepping between him and Lindsay-he’d grab her and run, buying what precious little time he could before they were caught.
He tossed cash on the table to settle the bill. He collected the bagged food containers with one hand while rubbing at the constriction of his throat with the other. He’d given Helena an hour’s head start. It was a pitiful concession, but the only one he could make before the hunt for her and her rogue lycan would begin.
Adrian hoped she’d had the foresight to have Mark waiting nearby. The alternative-that she might have thought, for even a moment, that he would condone her decision-was too painful to contemplate.
If he’d fallen that far in the eyes of his Sentinels, the trials they would face in the days ahead would be insurmountable.
CHAPTER 14
Vash wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and bared her fangs at the lycan she’d pinned to a pine tree with a silver-coated blade. Forced into his human form by the silver’s poisoning of his blood he slumped naked with his head hanging, breathing shallowly.
“You know whose blood this is,” she said again, nursing her own myriad collection of deep bites and gouges. She waved the rag with the telltale bloodstain on it under his nose. “Which one of your packmates took the pilot from the airport in Shreveport?”
“Fuck. You. Bitch,” he gasped, gripping the hilt of the sword but too weak to pull it free of the wood behind him.
“We’ll be at this all day.”
He looked up at her from beneath a hank of red hair that was lighter than hers by a few shades. “I’ll be dead in an hour. And you’ll have nothing.”
“You really don’t want to keel over before you tell me what I want to know.”
“Barking up the wrong tree.” He managed a croaked laugh at his lame pun.
“You’re a real comedian.” She gripped his chin and forced his head up. “I see recognition in your eyes. If you’d just spill the name, your pain would be over.”
