“Why would you do that?” I snap. The beast is chuckling, and I feel my hackles rising. What the fuck did you do?
“Because it is the only test I hadn’t run yet. I had also requested her files from Alden, who had been very helpful in obtaining them from the Guild,” he rambles nervously and takes a small step back as I turn my full attention on him. “I ran it eight times because the hormone levels were very low.” He continues, and I turn to look at the dais where their hands are about to be bound together.
“And?”
“All eight came back positive. Synthia is pregnant. She would have to have conceived within the last month. I wanted to be sure when I told you, sire. She can’t be the cure to our world as Ristan has seen. Not with Adam’s child anyway, because she’s already pregnant,” Eliran says, but I’m no longer listening to him.
Mine, she’s mine; I told you…I fixed it, she’s ours forever! The beast says with a victorious laugh.
I turn to head toward the dais. But, as I approach them, I feel it and can see the alarm and confusion in her eyes as she looks around the room. Something is wrong. The air is thick with evil. I watch in shock as she allows her brands to glow, and pulse with magic, but they don’t ignite, not enough.
She looks at me as her shield goes up around Adam and the Kings, and the dais erupts into a mass of blinding light; sharp splinters and stone projecting outward from an energy bomb beneath it. The beast lets out a roar and I try to sift, but something is stopping me from doing so. What the Fuck!? Null spell. No one is sifting, except those who cast the damn thing. I don’t have time for this shit. “Find her!” I shout at them.
My men run, following me as I move as fast as my legs will take me to her. For the first fucking time in my life, I’m afraid. Fucked, that’s what we are; fucked. Reduced to human strength, none of us can sift until the fucking spell wears off. The dais is gone now and nothing but splintered wood and stone remains. There is a choking fog of smoke and ash that tries to blind us as we dig through the wooden supports and stone. I can see and smell blood. I’ve tasted hers, and I can smell its crimson purity spilled within the room. She isn’t immortal yet. I see Adam, Kier, and Dresden struggling to their feet from the wreckage. My men and I shift through the rubble and can’t find any sign of Syn. Voices shriek in distress all around us.
“Dristan, anything?” I ask, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
“Yes, and no, Ryder. Savlian just said he saw another Fae sift out with her right as the dais exploded, but he could not prevent them from doing so. He was one of the Fae from her memory. Not the leader though; it was the one who questioned him. The one who tried to stop it from getting out of hand,” Dristan says, watching me closely.
“She’s pregnant, Dristan,” I let out a long rumbling growl, wrestling down on everything within me so that the beast is not released. He is fighting me, and I can’t allow him out yet; not even for her.
“So she is, but Ristan saw her giving birth to Adam’s child. Not yours.”
I close off all emotion. It’s fucking useless to me. “She has no fucking idea that she is pregnant,” I reply and fight the anger that radiates like a fucking oven out of my pores. She’s been pregnant this entire time, since the beast took over, and now she is in the hands of the enemy with my child in her womb.
“We will find her, Brother.” Dristan says, but his eyes fill with doubt and it sinks beneath my skin.
“Just fucking find her, now!” I shout, knowing that wherever she is, she’s alone and unguarded, unprotected and scared.
“Ryder,” Ristan says, coming up beside me.
“Unless you have found Synthia…”
“No, but we will find her, Brother. I’m not sure how this fits into the vision, unless there is more to the vision that Danu hasn’t shown me—or, Syn miscarries your child, and still goes through with the wedding. Which, given she was just attacked...” he replies with a look of guilt and hopelessness.
“I don’t care if we have to scour the entire fucking earth!” My men sense the beast fighting to get out and swarm around me as my voice shakes the building. “We fucking find her; we don’t sleep, and we don’t feed until Synthia Raine McKenna is safe in my arms. I don’t care who I have to fucking kill. I want her found!”
Chapter Forty
I landed hard on cold icy ground. I inhaled a deep breath, but it was as if this place held little to no oxygen in its air. I doubled over from a burning pain that was radiating up from my side. Strong hands wrapped around my waist and hauled me up from the cold ground and kept me firmly pinned against his body.