Wrath

I tilted my head up to look at him, and my breath caught at his beauty. How he could still do that to me was beyond my understanding, but I wouldn’t complain.

He curled down around me and kissed me on the forehead. “We also need to see what conversion missions Charlotte comes up with around the area so we can make the Council happy.”

Right. Our “main” mission.

Tristan’s lips moved along my temple and down my jaw as he rearranged us so I lay on my back and he leaned over me. His mouth traveled over my chin, along my neck and collarbone, and to the stone over my heart. As soon as his lips touched it, warmth zinged through me.

The feeling in my lower belly brought on a realization, and I groaned. “The tea mix. It’s gone.”

“We can’t let that stop us from trying,” he murmured against my chest. “We’re still on a mission.”

“At least this one is nice,” I said in agreement.

His lips moved to my breast and made all kinds of promises of exactly how nice it would be. Unfortunately, with everyone in the house, I didn’t quite get to enjoy it as much as I would’ve liked—I held back at the last minute so I wouldn’t share my orgasm with my team.

* * *

The next morning, we all set to work right away. Charlotte, Sheree, and Jax went hunting for potential converts in downtown Atlanta, while Blossom and I sat in the middle of Dorian’s old room, Tristan nearby to keep watch. Blossom began her chant, and we pushed and pushed until everything went black in my mind.

“That same thing again?” Blossom asked when I opened my eyes. I was surprised to find my head in Tristan’s lap, my body curled in the fetal position next to him on the floor.

“No,” I said as I pushed myself up. Dizziness waved over me, and I blinked against the gray trying to cloud my vision. My brows pushed together—I couldn’t remember anything but stretching my mind as hard and as far as it would go. “I didn’t hear anything this time. Why?”

“You’re bleeding again,” Blossom said.

Tristan’s thumb wiped over the curve of my jaw and came away with a smear of red. I rubbed my finger over my upper lip, and it also showed blood.

“I’m fine,” I muttered as I wiped my finger on my leathers. “It’s not like yesterday.”

Blossom looked at me with a raised brow.

“I promise.”

Although it didn’t feel as if an ice pick were lodged in my gray matter, my head did throb, but I refused to admit it. At least it didn’t feel as bad as before, and this time nothing strange had happened. I began to wonder if I’d imagined that part yesterday.

“I think you’re trying too hard,” Tristan said. “Pushing your boundaries.”

He reiterated what I’d told Blossom yesterday, and the idea may have been truer than I’d thought.

“What else am I supposed to do?” I demanded. “Our son is out there somewhere. We have to find him. And unless you have a better solution, we have no other way.”

He pulled me into his arms and soothed his hand down my back. “Pushing your boundaries isn’t a bad thing. I’m not saying that. Just don’t push too hard too soon. It’s like a Norman weightlifter trying to exceed his max. If he goes too hard too fast, he gets injured. You injure this head of yours, you’re no good to Dorian or the rest of us.”

So we treated my ability—and Blossom’s—as though we were training, pushing a little further each time but not to the point of my passing out. My ears did stop bleeding, but my patience wore thin. Nothing was working. Using my old house as a home base, we physically rode the streets of Atlanta, its suburbs, and beyond while I searched for Dorian’s mind signature—and Kali’s, Owen’s, Victor’s, and Lucas’s, too. But we found no sign of Dorian or any of them. We questioned new converts, but they could only tell us that both Kali and Lucas seemed to have been up to something, but they didn’t have the status to know what. Days grew longer as we moved into spring, and they turned into weeks with still no progress.

Dorian’s birthday came, and Tristan and I spent the day like every other—searching for him, both physically and mentally. But in the end, all we could do was promise that we’d celebrate it with him as soon as we had him home. I refused to let myself cry even on that day. Worry and fear of what the Daemoni might have done to him tried to squeeze my heart, but I let the wrath smother them.

Sasha never showed either.

“We have to do something else,” I declared, thumping my fist on the table as my team stood around the kitchen one morning. “He’s been gone a damn month already, and we’re no closer.”

“Where are we supposed to go, though?” Sheree asked. “What else can we do?”

I pushed myself off the table and threw my hands in the air. “I don’t know. Somewhere. North, I guess, since that’s the little bit of feeling we get.”

Charlotte’s phone rang, and she grunted when she saw the number.

“Alexis, we haven’t really felt that for weeks,” Blossom said as she watched Char leave the room to take the call.

“Maybe you haven’t, but I have.”

The witch cocked her head, her blond hair falling over her shoulder. “Really?”

No, not really. If I’d felt anything at all, it had been only the tiniest of nudges, which I couldn’t know for sure meant anything. “Well, it’s more than anything else we know.”

“Come on, Alexis,” Charlotte said, returning to the kitchen. “We have a job that will take your mind off things for a few days, then we can regroup on this.”

“Char—” I started.

“Don’t Char me.” She stepped in front of me and crossed her arms over her chest as she pierced me with sapphire-blue eyes. Eyes like her son’s. “Sheree and I have been handling almost all of these conversions, but it’s time you get to work doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And it sounds like this is too big of a group for me to handle on my own anyway.”

I scowled.

“You need the distraction,” she said.

I looked around the kitchen at all the pairs of eyes on me. I’d missed most of the conversion attempts Charlotte had made because I’d been focused on finding Dorian, but I had promised Rina I’d make this a priority, too. So far, though, our conversion opportunities had only been onesies and twosies, enough for Char to handle with Sheree’s help. No big groups that would make a difference to the Daemoni.

“How big?” I asked, trying to let the idea excite me. Char was wrong—I’d never be distracted from my main goal of finding Dorian—but maybe going out on a conversion attempt, especially a big one like this, would give this one part of my mind a chance to rest. When I used to write and I’d have writer’s block, doing something mindless or using a different part of my brain would help me unstick myself. The overtaxed part of my mind could wander freely without pressure, and lo and behold, my brain would often trip over the solution to my problem on its own. So maybe this could work. Besides, I really did need to show some effort in this area.

“There was a vamp party in Buckhead last night,” Charlotte said. “Our guys saw at least twelve people turned, but they’ve been abandoned in an old apartment building.”

“Twelve?” I asked, my eyes widening. “How are we supposed to convert so many on our own?”

“See why I need you?” she asked before letting out a sigh. “We’ll be lucky to get them all anyway, but we have to give it a shot.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “All right. Fine. Let’s do it.”

We went over the plan, and then we moved out to a shoddy area near Buckhead. Charlotte and Blossom cloaked and shielded us when we came closer to a nest of Daemoni vamps. A coven of mages wasn’t too far away, either. I tried to keep my mind open to everyone so we could hear our enemies’ thoughts, but all the noise in their heads was too much for everyone to handle.

Rina had taught me that in battle, she’d monitor the enemies’ thoughts and direct her people with her mind, allowing everyone else to focus on their fighting. I’d experienced this myself the day Tristan disappeared. Unlike her, though, I couldn’t stay far away from the battle itself. Not this time anyway. Charlotte did need me. So when we went in, I’d have to keep part of my mind roaming the area surrounding us to listen for danger while keeping another part focused on our potential converts.