And didn’t that sum up the difference between them in a nutshell. Angeline had been all light and smiles and happiness, and he’d been a grumpy bastard.
Memories filtered through his mind, but this time he was able to smile now by the gentle way they wrapped around him. It had been good. She’d balanced his sullen nature, kept him from drifting too far into the dark. But as much as he’d love her, she hadn’t been meant to be his forever.
Gabby. Just thinking about her twisted him up in knots, both the good and bad kind. He loved her so much, would worship the very ground she walked on if she’d let him, but the thought of losing her was driving him mad.
He’d known he was bonding with Gabby. Known it was the real deal. Had thought he’d accepted that eventually his feelings for his mate would hit him on a level that, as much as he may have wished otherwise, he could never have experienced with Angeline. The compatible pair bond that he and Angeline had formed shadowed in contrast to what he felt for Gabby. He thought that would feel wrong, but it didn’t. Angeline and their unborn child would always hold a place in his heart, but Gabby was his heart and soul. And he knew Angeline would understand.
She would also have been the first one to tell him to stop being stupid and get off his sticky backside and go claim his mate.
He’d run this morning. Those chronic feelings of impotence raising their ugly head again as he realized that loving her was not going to be the cure-all to the darkness that had shadowed her life. Which was damn ironic considering how often he danced with the dark shadows of morality. Maybe it wasn’t about him saving her. Maybe it was about them saving each other.
But first he had to get back to the base and convince her to take on his sorry ass as a mate. They’d figure what they needed to do together.
More at ease than he’d been in a long time, he shifted, willing himself along the currents toward the base. He made it most of the way when something hit him: a feeling—terror—that ripped him right out of the shade and sent him smacking into pavement. He groaned, then screamed, arching as a darkness far different from the shade’s welcoming solace swelled around him.
“Dude, you all right?”
The darkness eased. Chest heaving, he lifted his head and stared through blurry eyes at the alarmed face of a disheveled teen and his two buddies hovering a couple feet behind him.
Not an attack. Not on him. But that meant…
<<Gabby!>> He struggled to rise, his thoughts far from here and the confused trio of teens, but with his mate who was not where he’d left her. <<Gabby, where—>>
For a moment they connected, a brief moment where her terror grabbed for him and clung like he was her lifeline. And then she was gone. Ripped away. The very pulse of her essence winking out as if it had never existed. Valin staggered, the stunning impact of loss curling around his heart and squeezing so hard he swore it stopped.
Not yours, hers. Told you this would happen… told you…
“Gabby, no!” He clawed at his chest, as if he could reach in and pump the organ back to life again. Only it wasn’t his…
“Gabby…” He’d lost her. Lost. Gabby.
His legs buckled. Someone grabbed him, helping him down to his knees. “Dude…you having a heart attack…”
Whatever else the boy said was drowned out as Valin began to scream.
Chapter 18
Valin materialized in his room, his movements quick and efficient as he gathered what he would need. Too long had passed since he’d fallen. He wasn’t sure how much time, just that the street had been empty when Valin finally screamed his vocal cords raw, the eerie silence suggesting that the teens and anyone else unlucky enough to be in the area had fled in fear from the crazy naked guy in the street. Probably best. When he’d lost the ability to express his grief, his emotions had switched to the next best thing: anger. It had fueled him on the journey back to the base, his only thought to find and kill the bastard who’d taken Gabby from him.
Clothes, shoes…his knife. Fuck, where was his goddamn knife?
Gabby’s room. He’d never gotten it from her after the merker attack that night.
Gabby, oh God, Gabby. He sucked a deep breath into his tight chest, bracing his hands on his knees to keep from hitting the floor with his already abused knees. He would scream again if he could, but since he didn’t think his vocal chords would respond, the only recourse he had left was to weep. He couldn’t do that now. Not until after he’d found her. And he would find her. She was alive. She had to be. The other option was not acceptable.
It had occurred to him when he’d come to his senses in that empty street that there were other reasons why their connection could have been severed, the most logical being that she’d lost consciousness and had simply yet to wake. Wasn’t that what happened to Roland when Karissa had been taken?
But he’d had the blood bond, so he knew and could find her. You have nothing.
No, not nothing. He knew approximately where she’d been. And whether he had to move heaven and hell to do it, he would find her, because if he didn’t?
Don’t go there. That was the road to insanity and a sure one-way trip to absolute darkness. If Gabby was truly gone then he would not be able to find his way back, and God help anyone near him if he were to reach that journey’s end.
Determined not to waste any more time, he sent out a general ping through the base for Bennett. Almost immediately he got Bennett’s absentminded return ping. He followed the response back to Jacob’s planning room, then stood in the doorway as he watched the two men face off amongst a handful of other soldiers.
Though a couple of Jacob’s soldiers noticed his presence, neither Jacob nor Bennett did, and since they were discussing something that, turns out, Valin was eager to hear, he settled in against the doorframe to listen.
It didn’t take him long to pick up the bits and pieces of the story he’d been missing. Annie had somehow disappeared, a ransom note delivered: Gabby for Annie. For a moment he saw red, his anger flaring and burning as it found a new source: Fucking selfish brat, if it hadn’t been for her…
He took a deep breath, focusing on the conversation again. Jacob, besides sending scouts out and a smattering of patrols to defend the area, had also sent out the command to prep everyone—new recruits included—for war. Bennett was arguing the wastefulness of such actions, demanding instead that they contact the Paladin council and ask for their aid.
“We can’t involve the council,” Valin said in a voice that sounded far calmer than he felt.
Bennett spun toward the door, fixing him with a lethal glare. “Why the bloody hell not? They may be our only chance of getting Annie out of there alive…wherever there is.” He mumbled the last under his breath.
“There is somewhere on the north edge of the city.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked over to the table the men had been facing off over, glancing down at the smattering of tack-heads on the map. The greatest concentration was near Prospect Park. “You’re not even in the ballpark if you’re concentrating your efforts there.”
“That’s where the note called for the exchange.”
He would have rolled his eyes if he could have mustered the effort, but he just fucking didn’t feel like it. “Yeah, and I’m sure that’s where they’re holding Annie.”