It’s gone.

Lance’s heart clenched as he searched Keeley’s eyes. Inside him, his snow leopard whined. It had been all but silent ever since he and the others escaped the explosion. He’d thought it had been bunkering down, saving its strength for the fight to come, but now he realized it had been focusing all its energy on hiding the truth from him. In his urgency to get back to the agency he hadn’t noticed, but now there was no hiding it.

His mate bond with Keeley was gone.

Across the room, Keeley’s eyes widened, and something like pain flashed in their stormy depths.

“Lance?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

The strange man she’d been yelling at glanced at Lance and swore. “Fuck’s sake. Briers said—”

“That I was meant to die in the warehouse explosion?” Lance’s voice was gravelly, a result of the smoke he’d inhaled as he escaped the blaze. Keeley stiffened, and Lance cleared his throat in a useless attempt to gentle his voice. “I’m surprised. His intel is usually much more reliable.”

“But I felt…” Keeley’s voice faded away, and her eyes went hard. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Lance’s jaw tightened. It doesn’t matter? Christ. What have I done?

He nodded to the strange man standing next to her, wincing as pain shot through his head. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

The stranger was the last piece of the puzzle that had begun to take shape in Lance’s mind as he raced back to the agency. And now he thought he was starting to understand.

When Keeley grudgingly introduced the man as her uncle—the words almost choking her—the picture became clearer. Lance’s gut crawled with self-disgust.

An inside job. His suspicious had been aroused when Briers had dropped off comms just as they were entering the warehouse. Then, the fact that his intel had led Lance straight into a trap had cast off all doubt. Briers had laid his plans carefully—including rounding up human scapegoats to take the fall for him.

Lance had been a fool, and Keeley had been the one to pay the price.

He flicked a glance at the meerkat shifter, lying unconscious on the floor. Whatever had happened here… he shook his head. He’d ask Keeley later.

If she forgave him and ever wanted to speak to him again. His heart ached. He’d never felt the emptiness inside him where his mate bond would be before it was there; now that it was gone, he couldn’t feel anything else.

“I know Briers is the one behind everything,” he said slowly, looking from Keeley to her uncle and silently alerting the agents elsewhere in the building. The rush of relief that surged back to him from his colleagues almost knocked him off his feet.

He turned his attention to Sean Bailey. “I don’t know how you’re involved, but if you give up now, I’m willing to be lenient—”

“Preep?”

Maggie’s gold-scaled snout poked over the top of Keeley’s shoulder. Seeing Lance, she jumped to the ground and flapped her wings at him.

A ribbon of questioning and uncertainty wound around Lance’s mind. He broke off, his attention momentarily distracted as he reassured the baby dragon, and Sean struck.

Keeley yelled, her voice cutting off as Sean wrapped an arm around her neck. He dragged her backward around the side of the desk, reaching out his other arm to grab the egg carrying bag.

“I’ve got another idea,” Sean said, baring his teeth in an expression that couldn’t be called a grin. He reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun, which he pressed against Keeley’s jaw. “I leave, with the dragon eggs, and maybe your girlfriend here doesn’t get hurt.”

Lance’s snow leopard bristled. “She’s your niece. You’re not going to—”

Keeley shook her head, just slightly. One look at the expression in her eyes, and his heart broke a little more. She was deathly afraid.

Lance raised his hands placatingly. “Okay. Okay. We can work this out. You don’t need to threaten her.”

“I do if I want you to do as I say. Don’t I? Briers said that she’s your mate, and that means you’ll do anything to protect her.” Sean squeezed his arm tighter around Keeley’s neck. “Shit, you’re growing more useful by the second, aren’t you, kiddo? Hatching eggs, playing the pretty little hostage… Told you that you were wasted at that hotel job.”

Keeley went white, and Lance was struck by a desperate need to comfort her. He reached for the golden cord that had connected them, that should have still connected them, and found only emptiness.

No. Lance’s shoulders slumped. Of all his failures, this was the worst.

A psychic nudge brought his attention to the street behind him. The others had finished dealing with the carload of Briers’ associates and were falling into position.

But he couldn’t risk them moving in while Keeley was in danger.

Suddenly, Keeley gasped and jerked her head. “No, don’t!”

Lance’s eyes flew to her. If he’s hurting her—

But Sean hadn’t moved. Keeley was staring at the floor, her eyes wide with panic. “Maggie, no! Stay away!”

The little dragon was crawling towards her. When Keeley yelled at her to stay back, her neck drooped in confusion.

“Aw, come on, kiddo. Give the monster a cuddle. We’ll bring it with us, anyway.” Greed shone in Sean’s eyes, and any sympathy Lance might have had for a human caught in shifter crime evaporated.

*Come here, Maggie.* Lance imbued his psychic voice with as much love and warmth as he could manage with the empty space in his heart dragging at his emotions.

Maggie’s head swung around, and she ran towards his psychic feelings-burst like a moth towards a flame.

Lance grabbed her as she leapt up and cradled her safely in one arm, her chest resting in his palm. Her tiny heartbeat thrummed against his hand, and this close, he was enveloped by her psychic aura.

She was scared, and confused and angry about why Keeley didn’t like her anymore, and her emotions buzzed in the air around her like heavy black flies.

Lance’s throat felt tight. He sent more reassurance to the tiny dragon—and then felt something else in the scared, confused storm of her emotions. A strange shimmer of movement in the fabric of the air.

Suddenly, he knew how he was going to get Keeley safely away from her asshole of an uncle.

*She does love you,* he said to Maggie, and he filled the message with everything he had thought he knew about Keeley. No. Everything he did know.

How brave she was, and kind, even in the face of all the terrifying things that had happened. How quickly she’d fallen for Maggie, and learned how to keep the baby dragon safe and happy.

He sent that memory of Keeley to Maggie, and with it, all his longing to be with her.

Home. That’s what he’d been thinking of the moment before he lost consciousness in that alleyway, when Maggie teleported them. He’d thought of home with all his heart, and Maggie had taken them there.

It wasn’t his apartment he thought of now. Now, home was warm skin, shining storm-bright eyes, and the soft tickle of dirty blonde hair on his face as Keeley turned her face towards his—

Take me home. Longing was an ache in his heart, sharp and brittle as ice.

Air moved against Lance’s skin, fluttering like a mountaintop breeze. The room shimmered around him as Maggie began to trill, her voice like tiny bells.

His snow leopard surged forward, lending him its enhanced senses. Lance tensed. Every second was vital. If he was off by even a fraction of a second—

His eyes were useless. The shimmer around him was so strong he couldn’t see a thing. He closed his eyes, concentrating.

Take me home.

Home.

There—

Keeley’s scent filled his senses, sweet and salt and sunlight. And beside her, the rank, fear-sweat smell of Sean Bailey.

Maggie’s trilling song faded, and the world around Lance began to solidify. He turned, pushing between Keeley and the thick fog of fear-sweat.

Eyes still closed, he lifted his arm. Cold metal whispered against his palm, and then the world snapped back into focus, and he grabbed the gun and wrenched it away.

The sharp retort of the gun going off bit at Lance’s ears, but the shot went into the floor. Lance wrapped his free arm around Keeley, putting his body between her and the man who’d threatened her life.

Sean’s face twisted as he turned on his heel and ran for the door. Lance sent out a quick psychic order to Parker and Yelich outside. Sean wouldn’t make it another ten feet.

She’s safe. All the tension drained out of him, and he let his head drop down onto Keeley’s. Maggie wriggled up onto his shoulder and draped her tail around Keeley’s neck, tying them all together.

Keeley was shaking. Lance held her closer, and then realized he was shaking, too.

That had been close. Too close.

“It’s okay,” he whispered into Keeley’s hair. “You’re safe now. I won’t let them hurt you.”

Something that was half-laughter, half-sob burst out of Keeley. “Briers said—” She drew a ragged breath and shivered in his arms. “He said you were dead, he said…”

“Briers has said a lot of things. It’s taken me too long to figure out that most of it was lies.”

Lance tipped Keeley’s head back so he could press his forehead against hers. He wished he could send her emotions like he did to Maggie—all his regret, his guilt, and his love, in one tidy package.

“Not all of it. What he said about me—” Keeley’s shoulders went up. “I was involved. Sean grabbed me when I was coming off work and gave me the bag w-with Maggie’s egg in it. I was just too afraid to tell you—but that’s no excuse, is it? I should have been braver, I should have—”

“I should have trusted you,” Lance said simply. He nuzzled her cheek, still feeling slightly off-balance, like something was still wrong.

Guilt stung like a knife in his gut. Of course something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

“Regardless of what Briers said. I already knew your heart, and I’d seen how you were with Maggie. You’re kind and loving. There’s nothing evil about you. I should have known you’d never be willingly involved in anything that would hurt Maggie.”

He cupped her cheek in one hand. “I should have trusted you. Instead, I almost lost you. I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for that.”

“I though I’d lost you,” Keeley said quietly. “After you left, I felt…”

Her eyelashes fluttered against Lance’s face. He lifted his head, gazing down at her.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust. His snow leopard was still near the surface, searching for—something—and he had to push it back and focus his human eyes.

Keeley was staring up at him, her stormy eyes troubled. A heavy line formed between her eyebrows, and her hand flew to her chest. “I felt—”

Her voice cracked, and she swayed on her feet. Lance steadied her.

“I thought I felt you dying,” she whispered. “But it wasn’t that, was it? It was—whatever was between us—it’s gone.”

Lance and his snow leopard watched the blood drain from her face. Just when he thought his heart couldn’t break any more, she smiled brokenly.

“It’s gone. That means you’re free.”