He landed in front of her, slapping one hand against the wall, so close that his body pressed hers against the cold stone.
“Jesus,” he said roughly. “I thought he had you. I thought I was going to be too late.”
Any other time, she might have slapped him with a retort for thinking she couldn’t take care of herself. But this time, she felt a shudder wrack his powerful frame as he sucked in an unsteady breath, and she realized he had been terrified for her sake.
Leaning forward, she put her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m all right,” she told him in a soft voice as she rubbed his broad back. “Everything’s okay.”
Still breathing hard, he buried his face in her hair and held her tight.
An odd kind of peace stole over her.
Maybe they weren’t going to have sex again. Or even if they did, maybe they wouldn’t be together for long.
Maybe they would never get over what had happened before. Earlier, when she had given him her truth, he hadn’t said whether or not he had believed her. Even now, after so long, their conversation remained unfinished.
But she did believe in one thing now.
Wherever she was, and whatever kind of trouble she might get into, he would always come for her to make sure she was all right.
Because he really did care for her at least that much.
Eleven
A
fter a moment, she lifted her head.
He had calmed down enough so that he looked human again. She told him, “At least they’re all gone now, and we don’t have to watch over our shoulders for them.”
He nodded. “And I know I don’t have to come back to clean them out.”
This time, instead of taking point, he took her hand, lacing his long fingers between hers. The gesture stole into her heart, damn him, and she couldn’t make herself pull away. Instead, she fell into step beside him.
As they walked in silence for several minutes, she found herself thinking ahead. “Justine has to be local, doesn’t she?” she said. “Somewhere in the city, so that she can get back and forth from the tunnels.”
His attention sharpened on her. “Yes, unless she has come to some kind of agreement with Malphas. I wanted to ask you about that. Did you overhear them making plans or setting up some kind of arrangement?”
Biting her lip, she shook her head. “The only thing I heard them discuss was him getting you in the cell, and they weren’t careful about what they said in front of me, so I think it’s likely he’s still helping her, but I can’t say for sure.”
“Fair enough.” He frowned. “As soon as I can, I need to set up road barriers and search the city block by block if I have to. Maybe I can flush her out, unless she can fly.”
She raised her eyebrows. She would love to hear he was making a joke about that, but he sounded dead serious. “What do you mean?”
His mouth tightened. “We have all her assets frozen, at least those assets that we could find, but she might still have the funds to hire a helicopter. Either that or one of her allies on the council might have agreed to help her.”
Staring at his profile, she asked, “By now her allies must know what she did to her own household. Do you really think they would continue to support her?”
His expression turned cynical. “Anything is possible, including that.”
She tried to keep her response as quiet and noncommittal as possible. “You sound pretty fed up.”
He bit out, “I’m sick to death of the lot of them. Every year the council goes through the same damn arguments. Even Dominic is interested only in doing what is best for him.”
Unsettled, she chewed her lip. After a moment, she said gently, “Since it makes you so unhappy, would you ever consider stepping down?”
“What makes you think I can?” The sharp bitterness in his look lanced through her. “My sire set me on this task, remember?”
Melly sucked in a breath. Carling, his sire, had once been Queen of the Nightkind demesne, but a long time ago, she had set Julian to be Nightkind King while she became a member of the Elder tribunal.
So very much had happened since that long-ago political maneuver. Melly was sure she had only heard a fraction of the entire story. When she and Julian had been together, he hadn’t discussed it much, but even then she could tell there was tension between him and Carling.
Then last year, a series of fast-paced events had jolted through the demesnes of the Elder Races. Some of it had involved the Nightkind. Melly had heard the news from a distance.
All she really knew for certain was that Carling and Julian had had some kind of falling out, and he had banished Carling from the demesne. Carling had also lost her seat on the Elder tribunal, and she had even been incarcerated for several months, while Rune, one of the most Powerful sentinels from the Wyr demesne, had left his service and mated with her.