She didn’t move. She was lying face-down on the ground of the alley, unmoving and staring at patterns in the gnarled asphalt.
“Evie, can you hear me?” Flea shook her. She didn’t respond. He gently pulled her up so she could lean against the wall.
Flea was a mess. He was bleeding from several cuts to his arms and chest. It would be obvious to anyone he was in pain.
It wasn’t obvious to Evie. She stared right through him.
“They’re gone. Evie, they’re gone.” Flea stroked her arms, trying to get her to look at him. “Evie, are you—dammit.”
His phone was ringing, and he quickly answered it.
“You have impeccable timing, Natalya. We just—” Flea stopped, listening to the caller and frowning. “How did you know… Yeah, there was a situation. Evie? She’s out of it, but I think she’s fine. We’re in the back alley of a bar.”
Flea’s face twisted. Confusion and pain wore on his patience. “I don’t fucking know what it’s called. Old Lonnie’s or Donnie’s or some shit. I haven’t even had a chance to call backup. I—”
Flea put down the phone, looking baffled.
“Fucking fiend hung up on me.”
Cursing from pain, Flea eased out of his jacket and put it around Evie’s shoulders. There was blood on it, and it was hot enough that she didn’t need it, but when someone was unmoving and pale as a corpse, it was a safe assumption they needed the comfort of warmth.
Flea had just finished calling the Court of Chains, explaining where they were, when a blur of dark hair and furious, scarlet eyes rushed past him. In a blink, Natalya was crouching in front of Evie, her anger vanishing in favor of intense worry.
“Fucking hell!” Flea yelled. “Natalya, a little warning.”
“What happened?” she snapped.
“Someone tried to take her. Four guys. Humans. Definitely knew what they were doing. And they fucking stabbed me. Alot. How did you know to call?”
Natalya ignored the question. Her eyes were violet again, and she carefully put her hands on Evie’s.
“Darling? Can you hear me?”
Darling. The word, said so softly in Natalya’s voice, pulled a part of Evie back to the present. She blinked, making eye contact with Natalya, and under her gaze her body came alive. Horribly so.
“They…” No more words got out. She started trembling, then shaking violently as all the terror she’d just suppressed welled up in her. Pain from her hands and chin. Panic roaring in her chest so powerfully it hurt.
Tears rose in her eyes, her body shook, and she started hyperventilating.
Natalya started to lean in, arms extended to embrace her, but she stopped herself. She didn’t know what had happened exactly. She didn’t know if Evie wanted to be touched.
Evie didn’t. If somebody had tried to touch or hold her in that moment she would have hit them and screamed. But Natalya wasn’tsomebody. She was Evie’s friend and lover. Her Mistress and protector. She was who Evie felt safe with. Whose arms she fit perfectly in. The person she loved.
It didn’t matter that she shouldn’t think that way. It didn’t matter that she knew Natalya couldn’t care about her like that. Evie was too terrified to feel anything other than relief at seeing the woman she’d come to love more than anyone.
Right then, Evie didn’t need to be held by somebody. She needed to be held by Natalya.
She leaned against Natalya, crying and shaking, and Natalya hugged her tightly. She noticed, distantly, that Natalya’s hands were shaking too.
“I couldn’t feel you.” Her voice was uneven. Near a whisper. “I thought you were dead.”
She kept repeating that sentence, over and over, as Evie sobbed into her shoulder.
Chapter 36
Natalya wanted to kill someone. Preferably Varro or Stefano, but she would have settled for any creature nearby and somewhat connected with this attempt to take Evie. When they’d gotten back to the high-rise and she’d learned Sam was involved, Drago had to forcibly hold Natalya back to keep her from hunting down the woman and slowly tear her to pieces.
She had thought Evie was dead. She’d felt her fear, bright and terrible, and then she’d felt nothing at all. No trace of emotion. Nothing. The terror of that hadn’t left her, and it was constant, fresh kindling to her fury.
