“Lily, no.” Aveline cowered against the door, her face tear-streaked. “I’m not worth it. Don’t let—” Seth’s raised arm silenced her without even striking.

Trembling, Lily met Aveline’s red-rimmed eyes. And saw something she hadn’t noticed before. There was steel in that emerald green, a courage Lily hadn’t reckoned with—no one had reckoned with, judging by how carelessly Seth turned his back on Aveline, his focus on Lily.

Away from a threat he’d clearly underestimated.

It showed in the surprise in his icy eyes when Aveline wrenched the dagger from his hand. In the moment of shock when his features slackened after the young witch-turned-demon slit her own throat. In his gasp when she managed to slice through both femoral arteries on her thighs as well before she collapsed. Her blood gushed onto the floor, ruby red on the white carpet.

Seth blanched, his aura wavering. He sputtered something incoherent and fell to his knees. Groping toward Aveline, he fumbled to put pressure on her wounds, red seeping over his shaking hands. His efforts were in vain. She made sure she’d bleed out in seconds by cutting so many vital arteries. With a gurgle, he crashed face-first onto the ground, his life force snuffed out like a candle.

It had all happened within a few heartbeats, too fast for Lily to stop her, or for Jaxton to jump forward. His energy pattern shocked still as his body, he loomed next to Lily, as dumbfounded into silent paralysis as she was.

She found her senses with a gasp. Aveline had died for her. Lily couldn’t stop to mourn her, linger in her shocked sorrow, or Aveline’s death would have been in vain.

Wrestling her mind into lethal focus before Jaxton regained his composure, she dropped to her knees, twisted her bound arms and slashed across the back of his calf with her claws. Falling back, she immediately kicked into the knee of his other leg. Vital muscles cut and one knee smashed, he went down with a scream.

She scrambled to her feet and ran over to Aveline’s body. The wet carpet squished underneath her bare soles, making her wince. Warm. The blood was still warm. Gritting her teeth against the nausea bubbling up her throat, she crouched down, twisted and grabbed the dagger. Her heart pounded against her ribs while she used the blade to saw the rope around her wrists. Thank the gods Seth-rotting-in-hell had tied her hands with enough give for her to reach the rope with the blade. She couldn’t have done it with her claws alone.

“You bitch,” Jaxton bellowed, creeping toward her. His legs were useless, so he had to do it in Army-crawl style, which slowed him down a little. Enough for her to cut the ties?

Sweat beaded on her temples, rolled down her neck. One part of the rope severed, but the tie still held. Dammit. The coarse material chafed the skin on her wrists as she furiously sawed with the dagger.

Jaxton kept shouting for the other pranagrahas to come. Commotion erupted in the hallway, more yells, and the sound of people running. Shit, shit, shit.

“I’ll whip the skin off you,” Jaxton growled.

He was three feet away.

More rope gave way. The tie held.

Two feet.

She doubled her speed.

One foot. He reached for her.

The blade cut through the last bit of rope, slicing her lower back with the force she put on it. Not that she cared. With a roar of bloodied rage, she struck out. The dagger embedded in Jaxton’s right eye. He twitched once, then flopped down lifeless. His aura flickered out.

Breathing heavily, she rose from her crouch, her knees, shins and feet coated in Aveline’s cooling blood. She spit on Seth-in-death’s prone body and turned to the door just as it flew open, and a male pranagraha barreled in.

She had her dagger at his throat before he even spotted her. About to slash across his carotid artery, she paused—the scent of autumn nights and wood fires wrapped around her, his energy a welcome, familiar caress.

“Lilichka.”

Gasping, she dropped the blade, threw herself against him. “Alek.”

Her heart cracked wide open at the sight of him, the feel of his arms wrapping around her, his scent sinking into her every pore.

“You came for me,” she whispered against his chest, breathing him in as if this was the last time she’d ever be able to soak up his essence.

He kissed her hair. “Always, tsvetochek.” He surveyed the carnage in the room, one eyebrow rising. “Although I can see you’ve done a great job on your own.”

Darkness settled on her soul. “I couldn’t have done it without Aveline. She—killed herself. To take away their leverage over me. To kill the leader.” She nodded toward Seth’s body. “Fucker was her mate.”

Face a mask of unforgiving hardness, Alek brushed a lock of hair from her face. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Throat tight, she nodded. “We need to find Sarai—the other one.”

* * *

The sounds of fighting in the house grew louder as Alek and Lily filed into the hall, keeping to the walls, peeking around corners. Adrenaline thundering in his blood, Alek tightened his grip on the short sword he’d drawn.

There was so much he had to say to Lily, not the least of which was explaining the nymphenstern. But it would have to wait.

Up ahead, Hazel was in pursuit of a fleeing pranagraha, magic crackling around her. She’d run out of sight before he could tell her he’d found Lily.

“Let’s keep going,” Lily said, when he turned to run after Hazel. “We have to get Sarai out first.”

Having checked the downstairs, they crossed the ruined living room, overturned furniture and drapes smoking from whatever spell had singed them, and ran up the stairs. More signs of fighting greeted them here in the hall, daggers impaled in the wall, shattered picture frames, stains of still-sizzling power on the carpet. They both made sure to give those marks a wide berth as they stalked forward.

In one of the bedrooms they encountered a closed door, probably to an adjoining bathroom. Alek silently gestured for Lily to stand to the side before he took a step back and kicked the door in. A metal rod swung toward him, and he ducked barely in time to avoid getting his skull smashed by the irate female pranagraha hiding in the bathroom.

“Sarai,” Lily shouted as she skidded into the door. “He’s okay! He’s with me!”

The witch-turned-demon didn’t relax from her fighting stance, the shower curtain rod she’d apparently broken off the wall still raised above her head while her eyes darted between Alek and Lily.

“Long story, hard to explain,” Lily panted, “but trust me, he’s on our side. Merle and my mom are here, let’s go.”

Sarai lowered her makeshift weapon, her throat working on a hard swallow. “My mate,” she bit out. “If they kill him…”

“Can you find him? Through the bond?

Sarai nodded, her aura tinged with grim bitterness.

“Then we’ll capture him and take him with us. We’ll figure something out, Sarai.”

Alek took the front, following Sarai’s directions from behind him, while Lily brought up the rear. When agitated male voices and shuffles sounded from a room they were approaching, Sarai shook her head.

“Not in there,” she whispered.

“Let’s leave them to my mom and the others,” Lily said in an equally quiet voice, gesturing for them to move on.

Back on the ground floor, Alek was almost past a closed door when Sarai tapped him on the shoulder, signaling him to stop. She glanced at the door and nodded.

Basement, she mouthed.

Handing two of his knives to Sarai, he indicated Lily should cover his back. His heart pounded a feral rhythm when he tried the door. It opened toward him without resistance. The light from the hall fell on a set of narrow stairs leading down into darkness. Staying close to the wall, muscles primed to evade any attack, he descended.

The tang of blood and sweat and tears slammed into him, and he tensed. His eyes—adjusting to the gloom within seconds—scanned the room for Sarai’s mate. He could make out the rough details of a table with shackles—empty—cabinets and counters, and what looked like lab equipment, before something snatched at his legs.

Losing his balance, he tumbled down the rest of the stairs, caught a glimpse of the tripwire that had waylaid him. Sneaky little fucker. He crashed down hard on his shoulder at the bottom, while Lily yelled for him from the hall. Footsteps pounded on the stairs as she and Sarai ran down.

He barely had time to register that. A soft, whirring sound ignited all his primal warning instincts, and he rolled to the side just as a long blade came down on him. The sword still sliced open his lower back, and he bit back a scream at the blinding pain. He gritted his teeth, ducked and blocked another strike with his own short sword, then whirled and lunged at the fucker’s midsection while he was in upswing.

* * *

Heart in her throat, dagger clutched tight in her hand, Lily rushed down the stairs. Even after the second it took her eyes to adjust to the darkness, all she could see was a blur of shapes and shadows as Alek fought the other pranagraha.

Grunts and growls, the metallic scent of fresh blood, the clang of blade on blade. She tried so hard to track their movements, to discern an individual form, until her eyes actually hurt. If she jumped in now, she might end up causing more damage to Alek than to the other guy. Her muscles vibrated, her skin abuzz from forcing herself to stand still.

The muffled sound of a blow, followed by a thump.

Then Alek’s voice— “I’ve got him.”

Oh, thank fuck. She sprinted to where he stood over the collapsed body of the pranagraha.

“Is he—”

“Alive,” Alek croaked, his breathing labored. “Just knocked out.”

Sarai knelt at the male’s side, yanking his arms back to tie them with a piece of rope she’d acquired the gods knew where.

Lily stroked Alek’s face, the stubble on his jaw and cheek a welcome abrasion against her skin. “I was scared for you for a minute.”

His eyes glittered, his aura tightly controlled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She stepped closer, his heat burning her through their clothes.

There was so much she wanted to say to him about those nascent feelings she’d denied until now, those tender affections she’d thought she could keep small, but which had grown into something with a potential that still scared the shit out of her. She stood on a precipice, an abyss gaping between her and what beckoned her, tugged at her so hard it hurt. All she had to do was jump.

If only the abyss didn’t loom quite so large, so dark, making her heart stutter, her courage falter. If only she could be sure she wouldn’t fall…

Later. She could figure all this out later, once they’d made it out of this hell house after crushing the bastards, their operation ground into dust. When she had a minute away from fearing for her life and snarling at kidnapping assholes, then she could face this darker, more consuming fear.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said to the demon who held more of her heart than he knew, because she couldn’t yet tell him, not with the abyss still looming.

Alek exhaled on a shuddering breath, the tight leash of control he had on his aura slipping, and that was when she felt the sticky warmth of blood where her other hand rested on his side.

“Alek…you’re injured.” A hoarse whisper, some base part of her already understanding with predatory instincts what her mind rejected.

More cracks in the facade of his energy pattern, betraying the ravaging agony beneath, the ebbing flow of life. “Just a scratch,” he rasped.

And fell to his knees.

The world spun out of focus. Thoughts derailing, she sank down next to him, her shaking hands pulling up the soaked black shirt—to reveal a gash in his side that went so deep she could see his internal organs. An injury that would have already killed a human.

“You—you can heal this, can’t you? Alek? You can heal this. Tell me you can.”

A strangled breath that sounded too much like a gurgle. He slumped forward. There was another wound she hadn’t noticed at first under the angry red coating his torso, another slash, this one curving from his other side to his back, deep, so terrifyingly deep.

“No,” she whispered, and turned him as gently as she could.

Bending forward, she grabbed his face with both hands and covered his mouth with hers. Tasting blood on her tongue—his blood—she gathered up her prana, pushed it into him. Feebly, he drew it in, his pull little more than a tug. Not enough. He wasn’t taking enough.

“Sarai!” She straightened, twisted around to the witch-turned-demon, who stood staring at the scene, her face ashen, eyes stricken with shock. “Run and find my mom or Merle, and get them here fast.”

Sarai nodded and sprinted off.

His wounds were so fucking deep and gaping, she didn’t even know where to begin to stanch the bleeding. She tried anyway, slicing up his shirt with her claws to produce a makeshift compress. Bunching up one under his back, she applied the other to the slash in his side.

“Alek.” She turned back to his too-pale face while keeping pressure on the compress with her knee. The smears of red her hands left on his jaw and cheeks were stark against the white skin. He felt cold to the touch, absent the heat that used to brush her like the most decadent sensual caress. “You can’t leave me. You hear? Don’t leave me. Stay. Hold on.”

His breathing was too shallow.

“Help’s on the way.” She stroked his hair, tainting it with blood as well. Her hands shook so hard she wobbled his head where she touched him, so she made fists, forced her muscles to lock. “You just need to hold on until someone gets here.”

Her voice was paper-thin. One more word and it would tear, she was sure. But she needed to talk to him, to keep him awake and holding on. Any Elder witch could heal wounds this vicious, this fatal, at least to the point where they would mend on their own. But none could rekindle the spark of life once snuffed out.

“Alek,” she said on a sob, her voice breaking.

Those eyes of gold-rimmed silver fluttered shut. The glow of life around him dimmed.

“No.” She grabbed his face again, not caring anymore that her trembling hands shook him.

All those things she’d wanted to say, everything that was in her heart—he’d never know. He’d die without knowing her love, because she’d been afraid to fall.