Ecstasy Unveiled

“Haven spell? Get the fuck off me and I’ll leave you alone.”

He kept her wrists pinned with one hand and used the other to tear away her tank top’s shoulder strap, revealing her dermoire all the way to her neck. “You had this applied. How? Magic?” He rubbed his thumb over one of the symbols. “Permanent ink? Tattoo?”

“Fuck you.” Pain streaked up her arm from the tear in her biceps, which was gaping open from the awkward grip he had her arm in, and blood was pooling on the floor next to her.

She wriggled, but he held her tighter, squeezed her more firmly between his thighs even as he slapped his palm over the laceration and applied pressure. “The top symbol is my father’s. Were you mated to him? To Khane?”

Mated? To a Seminus demon? Eew. Still, she put on her best honest expression. “Yes. Love those hot, sexalicious Seminus males.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re lying. Wrong arm for mate marks.”

“If you already knew the answer, why’d you ask?”

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Unless… you could be bonded to Lore, since the markings are the same. With his human genes, the bond could have gone funky.”

“Yep,” she said, feeling nauseated at the mere thought of being bonded in any way other than birth to Lore. “We were wondering what happened with that.”

His gaze cut sharply to hers, and in the long, tense silence, they stared at each other. It was weird, looking at the complete stranger who was her brother, as he tried to puzzle together both the obvious and the impossible.

Blood pumped from her wound in a warm rush between his fingers, and his dermoire lit up.

“No!” she snapped. “Don’t heal it. It’s mine to deal with.”

Ignoring her, he slid his fingers into the wound. She rocked her head up and bit him in the biceps.

“Ow!” He jerked his hand away. “Damn you. At least let me stitch it.”

“I’ve hit you, kneed you, bitten you… and all you can think about is fixing a scratch?”

“It’s more than a scratch, and I am a doctor. So, go figure, I’ve got this crazy desire to help people.” Warily, he released her. “You going to play nice so I can close that wound?” He scanned her body. “And the one on your leg?”

Shit. This had gotten way out of hand. She could promise to play nice and try to escape again, but she had a feeling she’d end up in the same situation she was currently in. And he wasn’t going to let the dermoire thing go. The fire in his eyes made that clear enough.

Damn you, Lore. You just had to find these guys, didn’t you?

“Fine,” she growled. “But don’t you dare use that stupid healing thingie Lore says you do. I want stitches. On my arm. You can zap the leg scratch.”

“Stitches will leave a scar…” He trailed off as he took in the hundred other scars running the length of her arm. “Though I guess that’s not a big deal for you.”

“Duh.”

He shook his head in exasperation, but he eased off her and offered her a hand up. She refused. Her arm hurt like hell, but she managed to get up and plant herself on the bed while he gathered a tray of supplies.

“So. You’re mated to Lore. Since when?”

Her heart shot into her throat at the seemingly innocent question she knew was really a grilling. Low-level heat, but still. “It was recent. Still honeymooning, you know?” God, it actually grossed her out to say that.

“Really.” He drew a chair and the tray around the bed in front of her. “And you say you’re looking for him?”

“Yeah. I’m worried.”

“Is he in pain?” His dermoire lit up, and he channeled an excruciating amount of power into her leg.

“I have no idea,” she gritted out. “How the hell would I know?”

He leaned forward to look her in the eye, and she started to sweat, because he’d just turned up the heat a notch. “Because,” he said, “if you were bonded, you’d feel his pain. You aren’t mated to him. So why don’t you tell me the truth?”

“And what would that be, Dr. Smartypants?”

“That you are somehow his sister.” His voice went low. Dangerous. “Which means you’re somehow mine.”

* * *

Eidolon shut off his healing power and waited for the female’s response, his mind working overtime to believe what it insisted made sense, despite the utter impossibility. A sister? How?

“There are no female Seminus demons,” she said finally. “You should know that, brainiac.”

His movements were jerky and brisk as he swabbed the area around her arm laceration and prepared to inject her with anesthetic. “I do know that. But unless this is a trick, the evidence is telling me otherwise.”

“Well, aren’t we the logical one?”

“I try.”

He eyed her, noted that she had their family’s dark hair, though hers was so black that it had a blue cast to it. She had their dark eyes, tan skin, and the markings on her arm were fucking perfect. Of course, any of those things could be manufactured. Only her size was odd—she was short, maybe Tayla’s height, and though she was toned, she was petite, and in that way very opposite Eidolon and his brothers.

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re wrong. And don’t put that shit in me. I can take the pain.” She shoved his hand away as he attempted to inject the numbing medicine.

“Funny how you sound just like Wraith, Ms. I’m Not Related to You.” Ignoring her Wraithlike string of insults, he paged a nurse, and while he waited, he prepared a suture kit and let what he’d learned sink in. Lore’s markings were identical to hers… faded, with no personal symbol. Lore was a cambion, born of a human-Seminus mating, and those went screwy a lot, so even though it was unlikely that a female could be born of that kind of mating, it might not be impossible.

The door opened, and Chu-Hua, a Guai nurse who resembled an upright wild boar, stepped in. “Yes, doctor?”

He gestured to the female. “Take a blood sample. I want DNA results compared to mine ASAP.”

The little female jerked away. “Oh, no. Stay the hell away from me.”

“You got something to hide?”

“No.”

He nodded to the nurse, but his patient hissed and backed away. He grasped her wrist. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I strongly recommend the easy way.”

Her glare drilled holes right through him. “I hate you.”

“I’m hurt.” That earned him a middle-finger salute. He held her arm while Chu-Hua started the draw. “How is the patient?” he asked the nurse, referring to the one who’d been bleeding out while doctors Pon and Rivers went at it.

“He’s being prepped for surgery,” she said, dragging out the “y” in a grating piglike squeal.

“Keep me informed.” He’d have dealt with the patient himself, but the elflike blanchier demon was one of the few species that didn’t respond well to Eidolon’s healing gift. “And make sure Rivers and Pon don’t leave my office.” On any other day, he’d have fired the doctors, but Eidolon suspected that whatever was making the rest of the staff snap was affecting the two physicians as well.

Chu-Hua left with the blood sample, leaving him alone with the female, whose glare hadn’t eased up at all.

“What’s your name?” He pinched the base of her laceration and started the first stitch.

“Ouch! Fuck. Where did you get your degree? Online?”

“I told you it was going to hurt. What’s your name?”

“Sin.”

“Short for?”

“How do you know it’s short for anything?”

Because a human wouldn’t name a child Sin. “Answer the question.”

“Sinead.”

“So… Loren and Sinead. Twins, I’m guessing?” It wasn’t a longshot of a guess; their father had been the rape ’em and leave ’em kind, and Eidolon seriously doubted he’d impregnate the same female twice. When Sin didn’t answer his question, he sighed. “The DNA test will confirm what I already know. So just admit it.”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Lore is my twin brother. You must have been at the very top of your online class.”

He ignored the barb. Tayla had broken him in to a female’s sharp tongue a long time ago. “Why hasn’t Lore mentioned you?”

She snorted. “I told him not to tell you about me.”

“Why keep it from us?”

“Why not?”

Gods, she was exasperating. She was like a female Wraith. “Are you going to answer the question?”

She sighed. “I have one pain in the ass brother already. I don’t need more, okay?” There was a defiance and a wariness in her eyes that indicated there was more to the story than what she was telling him, but now wasn’t the time to push.

Working carefully, he put the final stitches in place. “So if you didn’t want to know us, why risk coming to the hospital?”

“I told you. To find Lore.” She bit her lip, and he gave her a moment to decide if she wanted to say anything more. “He’s sort of missing.”

Yeah, Eidolon was achingly aware of that. But before he told her what he knew, he wanted as much information from her as possible. “He’s after a friend of mine. You know that, right?”

For the first time, something other than anger flickered in her expression. Fear. “What did you do to him? I swear, if you hurt him—”

“I didn’t do anything to him. Yet.”

She swallowed audibly. “It’s not Lore’s fault. He has to do it. There are severe consequences to failing a mission.”

“You sound like you know this from experience. Are you an assassin, too?”

“Another gold star for you.”

“My online degree has served me well,” he said dryly. “So who hired him?”

“Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you, nosy-ass.” She swung her legs to the opposite side of the bed and leaped down. “Now, unless you plan to tackle me again, I’m going to go find my brother.”

Eidolon blocked the door, fully intending to physically restrain her if he had to. “I just want to ask a few more questions. And maybe I can help find Lore.”