“Smoke!” Jasmine was breathless when she found me in the library.

I had my nose buried in an old volume describing the movements of the Vikings when they first reached the New World, and it took a moment for me to come back to reality. I looked up at her, mind a little foggy.

Until I saw the abject horror on her face.

“What is it?” I waved her in, snapping the book shut.

She shook her head, chest rising and falling in quick, short bursts like she was about to hyperventilate. “I… I saw something… I hope I was wrong…”

“What? What did you see? Is it Pierce?”

“No!” She shook her head again, waving her hands. “I saw Alina.”

“Alina?”

“She was going to kill herself.”

“Wait. Slow down. How is this possible? Were you dreaming?” I almost had to force her to sit down. “You have to catch your breath.”

“I can’t sit! I have to find her! I have to go back to the mansion and stop whatever’s happening there!” She squeezed my shoulders. “I have to go before she does something terrible.”

“All right. All right. One thing at a time.” I eased her hands off my shoulders and held them in mine.

They were sweaty and cold. She was about to go into shock if she didn’t calm herself down—or, rather, if I didn’t calm her down first.

“How did you see your sister?”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s something I’ve always been able to do, but the images were never really clear. You know how Alina’s a healer, right? It’s a natural talent, something she was born with. We fae have all sorts of talents. Charms, the ability to communicate with animals, the ability to read minds. And my talent is sort of like that.”

“You can read minds.” I wasn’t asking a question. It was a statement. She wasn’t making any sense at all.

“Not the way others can. I don’t know how to dig around in a person’s memory. But I can see things. I can perceive emotion when it’s strong enough. I haven’t gotten a… I don’t know what to call it… a vision, in a long time. But just now, I was in the kitchen making something to eat, and all of a sudden I wasn’t anymore.”

Less sense with every word she spoke. “Where were you?”

“I was standing in Alina’s room. At the top of the tower. And I was about to throw myself out the window.”

I let go of her hands. Suddenly, my dragon—which had been sleeping peacefully up to that point—roused to wakefulness. “You’re sure about this?”

“I could smell the trees. I could feel the breeze in my hair, the sun on my skin. I even felt the fabric of my dress blowing against my skin. I felt all of it.” She crossed her hands over her chest. “More than that. I felt the deepest, most heartbreaking despair. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so deeply desperate. It almost knocked me over. Just remembering it is enough to make my chest ache.”

My palms went as sweaty as hers had. It wasn’t possible. Was it? I got up and shook out my hands, ran them through my hair, muttered to myself. Things like this didn’t happen. I was a man of logic, learning, books and history and reason. I didn’t believe two sisters could connect like that across hundreds of miles.

Then again, who the hell was I to say what was possible and what wasn’t? I was half-dragon. I had lived for more than a thousand years. Anything was possible.

“Did she do it?” I asked.

“No. I think I screamed at her in my head. I didn’t scream out loud, did it?”

“I would’ve heard it, with the door open.”

“Then, yes, it was inside. But I did scream ‘no’ when I realized what was happening. And then…” She shook her head. “It all went away. I was back in the kitchen. But I know one more thing—there’s no question. She’s leaving. She’s running away.”

The dragon roared so loud, I raised my hands to my head. He was splitting my skull open. I should never have let Alina go. She was going to kill herself.

I told you we should have kept her here. I told you she was ours! He would never let me live it down—and for once, I didn’t blame him.

There was only one solution. “We have to find her.”

Jasmine jumped up. “You think we can?”

“If you try hard enough to track her—I mean, wouldn’t her emotions be running at full-tilt right now? You got through to her once. You can try again. Maybe she’ll hear you, and she’ll know we’re coming.”

“What about Pierce?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“Where is he?”

“He had to go for supplies.”

“Then we don’t have much time,” I decided. “Pack a bag. Hurry. We’ll go out through the back entrance and take the Jeep. We’ll have to ride down the mountain to avoid running into Pierce on the main road.”

I went straight to my room, and she went to the one she and Pierce shared.

He would kill me for taking her without consulting him first, but I didn’t care right about then. Neither did the dragon. For the first time in weeks, he roared in approval. And the need for vengeance against whoever pushed Alina to the point where she was that desperate.

But I could wait for vengeance, so long as I had her with me.

It wasn’t ten minutes before we were on our way through the tunnel, running side-by-side.

“Did you leave a note?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. He would never forgive me if I didn’t. I told him Alina’s in serious trouble and we went to find her before things get worse.” She looked at me. “I mean, what happens to her out on the road? All alone?”

“I don’t know, which is why we have to hurry. I don’t want to give her enough time to get into any trouble.”

We’re coming, Alina. We’ll find you. Just hold on.

“Are you sure this will be safe?” she asked as I started the Jeep.

“It’ll be bumpy, but you’ll be okay.”

“I don’t mean that—not just that, anyway.”

“What else do you mean?” I hit the gas, and suddenly, we were plunging down the side of the mountain on the dirt path.

Any questions Jasmine had were temporarily forgotten as she squealed and groaned and gasped with every bump the Jeep hit.

“You’d better know what you’re doing!” she shouted.

“I do!”

“I hope so!”

I stole a quick glance at her at one point to find she was squeezing her eyes shut, her teeth clenched tight in a grimace.

It took less than twenty minutes to reach the base of the mountain, and when the ground leveled out, she let out a gasp. “Wow. Talk about a shortcut.”

“It comes in handy,” I agreed, as I thanked whatever forces were on our side for giving us a stretch of dry weather. If the ground was wet and muddy, it might have been a different story altogether. “What now? Where do we go?”

She chewed her lip, looking right and left. “I wish I knew. It seems to me that she’ll try to find us. Which means she’d be coming in this direction.”

“What makes you think that?”

She rolled her eyes and gave me a withering, are-you-serious look. “Where else would she go?”

“Fair enough. But she wouldn’t know exactly where we are. It’s a chain of mountains, after all.”

She tapped her fingers on the inside of the passenger door. “If I know my sister, she would most likely think back to how long it took to get home. That would at least give her an idea of how far she needed to go.”

“It’s pretty thin.”

“But it’s a start. And she’s desperate. So, it’s likely that she knows she has to cross through Roanoke to get to the other side of the city. She wouldn’t stop until she put at least the entire city between herself and the clan.”

“So, we should search the roads between the city and the mountains.”

“It’s a start, right? Hotels, motels, truck stops, service plazas. Whatever you come across. I’m going to need to concentrate on seeing or feeling her.”

The dragon roared its approval. Hurry. Find her. Claim her. She’s ours to protect.

Yes, and I would do a better job of it from that point forward. My jaw was set in a hard, determined line as I pulled out onto a side road which I knew would eventually lead to the highway.

Traffic was never a problem around the mountain’s base, though it would pick up once we got closer to civilization. I felt comfortable putting on a little speed—and it felt good to drive fast. My hands tightened on the wheel.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Jasmine reminded me. She sat with her eyes closed, head leaning back against the seat.

“What question? Sorry, I was a little busy trying to keep us alive back there.”

She snickered. “I asked whether you think this is safe.”

“Safe enough, right? We made it through in one piece.”

“I wasn’t talking about the trip down the mountain. I meant is it safe for you to leave the cave? Have you ever done it before?”

“I’ve made trips to the city when we needed things. Electronics, mostly. Generator equipment.”

“But you’ve never spent long stretches of time away from your family.”

The reminder put a damper on my adrenaline rush. “That’s true. I’m sure it’ll be fine. All the more reason for you to concentrate on your sister.”

She didn’t answer—a look at her from the corner of my eye told me she was back to focusing on Alina.

I drove on in silence, while the dragon told me not to worry about the family or the treasure.

We were finally back to taking care of what mattered. Our mate.