He breaks from her lips with a curse, pressing her into my arms, one hand in her hair, craning her head back as if offering her lips up to me.

It’s an offer I can’t refuse.

I capture her lips with mine, my tongue delving deep. I taste Adriel’s spice mingled with her sweetness, and my cock throbs.

She whimpers into my mouth, her body melting against mine.

“Listen to how sweet she sounds,” Adriel groans, pressing closer to her. “Faen. Every time she whimpers, my cock aches.”

“Mine too.”

The sound of footsteps echoing down the hall pulls Abigail from our arms with a gasp. She slips from between us like smoke, staring up at us with those wide, expressive eyes, her lips swollen from our kisses.

"We're going to talk when we get back, ást-meer," I growl, need and frustration churning through me. "No more secrets."

She blinks rapidly, but she isn’t able to hide the fear reflecting in her blue eyes. Nor can she hide the single tear that escapes down her cheek.

“Be safe,” she whispers. “Both of you.” And then she turns and flees, her red hair streaming behind her like a banner of flame.

Adriel curses under his breath, his hands clenched at his sides. "She's still hiding something, Damrion. And whatever it is, she doesn’t want us to know."

"I know." I sigh heavily, dragging a hand down my face. The heat of her lingers on my skin like a brand. "But we'll deal with it once Tori and the other Valkyrie are safe.”

He scowls at me, clearly not pleased with my answer. But I don’t know what else he’d have me do. We can only deal with one crisis at a time. And right now, freeing Tori has to take precedence.

“Who taught you to drive?” Rissa asks Stephan Anderson, one of the Blooded warriors who live and fight alongside us, as we careen around a sharp curve on the way back to Seattle hours later.

“I taught myself, Valkyrie.”

“Well, I hate to tell you,” she says with a sniff, sliding across the bucket seat into Dax, who grins and wraps an arm around her waist, “but you aren’t very good at it.”

Laughter erupts from the warriors in the vehicle as Stephan gasps in mock offense.

“Quiet before you wake my Valkyrie,” Malachi growls, not even glancing up from the petite woman nestled in his arms—the Valkyrie we rescued from Eitr. She hasn’t woken since we carried her out of there. Nor has Malachi let anyone else get close.

Tori and Reaper murmur quietly behind him, lost in their own world. Reaper hasn’t let her out of his sight, either. He might not ever again. I can’t say that I blame him.

I know what it is to feel as if you’ve lost a mate. I’ve been there with Adriel. Those memories still haunt me.

I close my eyes, leaning my head against the window, allowing their voices to wash over me. I’m weary, every inch of my body sore and aching. It’s been a long day.

When you’re immortal, you would think the passage of a single day would feel inconsequential, but most of the time, they drag on. Days like today are brutal.

Eitr was overrun with Forsaken and varulv. Rissa and Tori burned every one of them out of existence. But we have more questions than answers now.

And I’m more convinced than ever that Abigail is keeping secrets—dangerous secrets. When we get back to the safehouse, I intend to pry them out of her. I don’t care about protecting the sanctity of the future anymore. I care about protecting her.

Tori confirmed that they’ve been tampering with her visions for months, intentionally sending her false flags to confuse what she sees. It’s what we’ve feared. But I have a feeling she’s always known.

Is this what she’s been hiding? Is she afraid we’d turn from her if we knew?

I intend to get those answers.

But I can wait to pry my answers from her until after Adriel and I are able to wrap our arms around her again and reassure ourselves that she’s safe. I already ache to feel her in them. I ache to breathe her in, to feel her lips against mine. To listen to her moan as Adriel kisses her.

I want nothing more than the two of them in my arms and in my bed where they belong. I’m not a selfish Fae. I’m just one desperate to hold his mates and remind himself that they’re safe.

A sharp zing of emotion sears down our bond—fear so potent I can almost taste its bitter edge on my tongue. My eyes fly open as my mind grasps for the thread to trace it back, but it’s gone before I can.

Faen. She’s masked the bond again, hiding it from us. Until last night, I didn’t even know that she knew it existed. Hiding it from her was, perhaps, the only thing Adriel and I have agreed on in millennia. But with her visions, we didn’t want her to know that we felt her pain. She’s fierce but soft-hearted, and she already has a crushing weight on her shoulders. She should not have to worry about us, too.

I press my hand to my chest, rubbing as worry slashes at me. I feel Adriel’s gaze on me and glance in his direction.

"You felt it too, didn't you?" he asks, worry carving lines around his mouth.

I don’t need to ask to know what he means. He shares the same bond with Abigail that I do. He felt it just as clearly as I did.

“Ja,” I murmur quietly. “I felt it.”

Fear flickers in his eye, his scar standing out starkly against his pale skin as the lines of worry around his mouth deepen. My heart aches at the sight. Adriel fears nothing, but he fears for Abigail.

And who can blame him? If anyone understands the torment that awaits her if the Forsaken get their hands on her, he does. He spent years in Jotunheim, tortured almost to death, only to be brought back so they could begin again.

And it’s my fault.

Without thinking, I reach out to comfort him, touching his hand. "We'll make her talk," I say. “Together.”

Doubt flickers in his gaze as he stares at me. I can almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he tries to work out for himself if this is some trick instead of the olive branch I intend it to be. He trusts me so little.

Eventually, he nods before slipping his hand from beneath mine and turning his face away. He retreats back into stony silence—the same silence he wears like a cloak.

Guilt pricks at me, sharp and insistent. Gods. How did I let things become so twisted between us? How did we drift so far from what we once were?

Fighting with him is slowly killing me. It’s been killing me for millennia. I went from thinking he died on the battlefield to learning that he was one of the warriors the Jötunn took hostage. I desperately wanted to go after him. But before we even had the city empty, Álfheimr and the Fae fell. The warriors oathbound to Valhalla were all who remained.

No one believed the Jötunn had any reason to keep the hostages alive any longer. With our world in ruin and our people all but gone, there was nothing left for them to gain by keeping them alive.

And our numbers were too few—a race of millions, now cut to less than one thousand. I made the call not to send a rescue party. Risking the warriors we had left to recover bodies was a suicide mission I couldn’t ask them to undertake, not when Valhalla and Asgard were still at risk.

I didn’t know he was still alive, but I should have. And it fucking haunts me that I didn’t. Every single day, I live with the knowledge that I left him there to die. He spent seven years in captivity, being tortured over and over again because I made the call not to send anyone.

Every time I look at him, I see the reminder of what I caused—the scars he bears because I left him there. And the physical scars aren’t even the worst of it. He came back broken, a shell of the Fae he was before the war.

How am I supposed to forgive myself when he still wakes screaming at night? When he can’t forgive me?

All I want is to fix it. I desperately want him and Abigail in my arms where they belong, but I don’t deserve either of them. How can I ever? He is the best of the Fae, and she’s the brightest Valkyrie the realms have ever known. And I’m the Gods-damned bastard who left him to suffer.