The clock on the wall chimed twice.
“Is something going to happen?” Jack asked quickly, no longer able to stay mute. “If so, we need to know.” He pointed toward the window. “Our mates are out there.”
“There’s no time.” Antonio gazed at Ezra and me, then murmured softly, “Catch them.”
An explosion rocked the floor beneath my feet, shaking the whole building.
Heart in my throat, I instantly crouched, like everyone else in the office.
With the exception of Pearl and Jack.
Pearl doubled over, holding her stomach and chest, shrieking piercingly.
Jack grabbed his head and chest, arching, bellowing brutally.
They fell.
Without thought, I went to my knees, the floor still vibrating under me, and thrust my arms out, catching Pearl just as Ezra dove and caught Jack. They were both unconscious.
Frantically, I shook Pearl — the sounds of another explosion and the frightened cries from outside harsh in the air — trying to wake her, but it didn’t help. My breath seized in my lungs, unable to get oxygen over the fear that my best friends’ lives were in jeopardy. I rapidly studied her stomach and chest where she had been holding. There was no blood soaking through her gown. Nothing looked wrong at all. Hands trembling, a sickening feeling began to override my terror, and I ripped into her black silk robe the smallest bit right at her belly button.
“Goddammit!” I roared, patting her flesh repeatedly, trying to make it come back. “No, goddammit!” It didn’t reappear. My eyes tearing up, my gaze slammed to Ezra, and I shouted over the chaos, “Check Jack’s hand!”
Ezra was staring at Pearl’s unblemished belly — no mate mark — and he inhaled sharply, turning to his other best friend on his lap, and even as another explosion rocked the building we were in, the floor shaking violently under us, he slowly lifted Jack’s hand and turned it over, spreading his slack fingers wide. It was gone. Jack’s mate mark was gone.
Nikki and Gideon were both dead.
Tears instantly cut unrelenting, brutal paths down my cheeks. I stared at my best friends. When they woke… Oh, God. I didn’t want them to go through the gut-wrenching agony. Not them. Not my best friends.
Lifting Pearl protectively, I placed her on my lap. I rocked her softly. Sobbing on her golden hair, I rubbed her back gently, and my blurry vision found Ezra.
He was doing much the same, holding Jack’s back against his chest with his hand over his best friend’s heart, staring down at it. In slow increments, he gazed up at me. His spring green eyes held the same grief for them as mine did.
Our sorrow was deep for our late mates, but time had muted it somewhat. Jack and Pearl’s anguish was going to be so new and horrifying and profound that they would willingly drop into the bottomless pit of hell to escape it, just as it had tortured us.
“Wait!” Antonio’s voice boomed throughout the room, deep and commanding. Furiously blinking through misery-filled tears, I saw the Kings and Cahal on their feet, rushing toward the door with weapons in hand. From the ground, Antonio thundered, “One more! Get down!”
Cahal stalled, and then moved with Vampire speed, blurring, when the Kings didn’t listen, knocking each one to the ground and diving on top of their bodies haphazardly.
The next second, an explosion rocked the building so fiercely I screamed, holding Pearl tight as I fell on my side, Ezra landing next to me, protecting Jack as I was Pearl. The blast was so close it hurt my ears, ringing in pulses, and I watched as Ezra’s mouth opened wide.
He roared in my face, covering his own, much more powerfully sensitive, ears.
Reaching out a shaking hand, I covered one of his hands with mine, trying to help him, and gritted my teeth as the explosion reverberated in jarring shocks. Dust flew into the room, clouding the space deep gray. I choked on it and tried to breathe shallowly, but that didn’t offer any relief. Only when the dust started billowing out through the broken window was I able to breathe again, my lungs and eyes heavy and burning.
Ezra coughed as harshly as I did, and he lifted my hand I had laid on his, holding it between us as we peered around from the floor. The Kings and Cahal were beginning to rise, Mrs. Jonas and Vivian were watching from the ground under Mrs. Jonas’s desk, Antonio was lifting to his knees and digging through the duffels, and Pearl and Jack’s parents were slowly crawling to us. They had been on the far side of the room when the first explosion went off and had been trying to make their way here ever since, eyes steadfast on their children.
Antonio stopped their progress and started handing each of them weapons, shouting orders, “Go with the Kings. They’ll need your help.” They looked to Pearl and Jack, and Antonio barked, “They aren’t dead! Unconscious. Not dead. Go!”