Page 33 (2/2)

Honor put the letter on the table Seeing its contents, Illiued words, but their voices were drowned out by the crashing thunder inside her head “No one else,” she whispered and it was a vow “The bastards get no one else”

Dmitri’s response was a simple “They won’t” His hand curved around her napeand she didn’t jerk away

Tento one of his ot a call fro-dorled to wake at the fear-thinned sound of her voice He crushed the woht of Misha and Caterina “Where are you?”

“The park nearbirdbath” Shaken words, a spirit close to broken “I’o for a walk, that’s all”

“Stay where you are,” he said, those old, buried instincts atteed fro to fly to you—he won’t land,” he added, because he could feel her panic through the phone lines And whatever else he h to terrorize her in such a way “I’ll be right behind hiave him the details Dmitri then called Sorroatch detail to tell them where to locate her “Don’t approach”

“Shae,” Honor said when he hung up “She’s scared”

He saw coht-forest eyes, was rocked by her ability to feel the tender eood in him had burned as his son’s tiny body burned in the ruins of the cottage he’d built for his bride So fast Misha had disappeared, so impossibly fast The crackle of the flames, the whistle of the wind, none of it had drowned out the echo of the last words his son had ever spoken to hi the er contain theh to the living area where Shae hovered, he grabbed her chin “Say a word about what you learned here tonight, and you’ll be joining Evert as Andreas’s guest”

The vampire went sheet white “I on’t N-never”

“Dotten the point, and headed out the door just as the retrieval team drove up, a furious Honor by his side “There was no need to terrify her” The scent of wildflowers hit hiot into the driver’s seat of the Ferrari, scraping against the raound that was the memory of Misha’s funeral pyre

“She’s a victi vicious, he didn’t bother to sugarcoat his opinion as he guided the car away from the curb “She’s weak, a parasite A year, maybe not even that, and she’ll have found another Evert to bleed”

“You’re talking about a woued, stubborn in her belief, so like another woht with him, wild passion in her voice “It’ll take her time to break the cycle”

He heard what she didn’t say—that it had taken her months to crawl up out of that dark pit into which she’d been thrown “Shae,” he said, punching the car into higher gear, “has had the span of a mortal life to find her spine She hasn’t, and she never will”