Males approached, saw that expression, and didn’t venture closer.

“Well, if she’s pissed at you, it’ll make me look better,” drawled a male voice beside him.

Hunt didn’t bother to look pleasant. “Tell me you’ve found something.”

The Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae leaned against the edge of the booth, his strikingly blue eyes lingering on his cousin. He’d no doubt used those shadows of his to creep up without Hunt’s notice. “Negative. I got a call from the Raven’s owner that she was here. She was in bad enough shape when she left the crime scene that I wanted to make sure she was all right.”

Hunt couldn’t argue with that. So he said nothing.

Ruhn nodded toward where the females stood motionless in the middle of a sea of dancers. “She used to dance, you know. If she’d been able, she would have gone into the ballet like Juniper.”

He hadn’t known—not really. Those facts had been blips on her file. “Why’d she drop it?”

“You’ll have to ask her. But she stopped dancing completely after Danika died.”

“And drinking, it seems.” Hunt glanced toward her discarded glass of water.

Ruhn followed his line of sight. If he was surprised, the prince didn’t let on.

Hunt took a sip of Bryce’s water and shook his head. Not a party girl at all—just content to let the world believe the worst of her.

Including him. Hunt rolled his shoulders, wings moving with him, as he watched her on the dance floor. Yeah, he’d fucked up. Royally.

Bryce looked toward the booth and when she saw her cousin there … There were trenches of Hel warmer than the look she gave Ruhn.

Juniper tracked her gaze.

Bryce took all of one step toward the booth before the club exploded.

26

One minute, Athalar and Ruhn were talking. One minute, Bryce was about to go rip into both of them for their alphahole protectiveness, smothering her even from afar. One minute, she was just trying not to drown in the weight that had yanked her under that too-familiar black surface. No amount of running could free her from it, buy her a sip of air.

The next, her ears hollowed out, the ground ripped from beneath her, the ceiling rained down, people screamed, blood sprayed, fear scented the air, and she was twisting, lunging for Juniper—

Shrill, incessant ringing filled her head.

The world had been tipped on its side.

Or maybe that was because she lay sprawled on the wrecked floor, debris and shrapnel and body parts around her.

But Bryce kept down, stayed arched over Juniper, who might have been screaming—

That shrill ringing wouldn’t stop. It drowned out every other sound. Coppery slickness in her mouth—blood. Plaster coated her skin.

“Get up.” Hunt’s voice cut through the ringing, the screaming, the shrieking, and his strong hands wrapped around her shoulders. She thrashed against him, reaching for Juniper—

But Ruhn was already there, blood running from his temple as he helped her friend stand—

Bryce looked over every inch of Juniper: plaster and dust and someone else’s green blood, but not a scratch, not a scratch, not a scratch—

Bryce swayed back into Hunt, who gripped her shoulders. “We need to get out—now,” the angel was saying to Ruhn, ordering her brother like a foot soldier. “There could be more.”

Juniper pushed out of Ruhn’s grip and screamed at Bryce, “Are you out of your mind?”

Her ears—her ears wouldn’t stop ringing, and maybe her brain was leaking because she couldn’t talk, couldn’t seem to remember how to use her limbs—

Juniper swung. Bryce didn’t feel the impact on her cheek. Juniper sobbed as if her body would break apart. “I made the Drop, Bryce! Two years ago! You haven’t! Have you completely lost it?”

A warm, strong arm slid across her abdomen, holding her upright. Hunt said, his mouth near her ear, “Juniper, she’s shell-shocked. Give it a rest.”

Juniper snapped at him, “Stay out of this!” But people were wailing, screaming, and debris was still raining down. Pillars lay like fallen trees around them. June seemed to notice, to realize—

Her body, gods, her body wouldn’t work—

Hunt didn’t object when Ruhn gave them an address nearby and told them to go wait for him there. It was closer than her apartment, but frankly, Hunt wasn’t entirely sure Bryce would let him in—and if she went into shock and he couldn’t get past those enchantments … Well, Micah would spike his head to the front gates of the Comitium if she died on his watch.

He might very well do that just for not sensing that the attack was about to happen.

Quinlan didn’t seem to notice he was carrying her. She was heavier than she looked—her tan skin covered more muscle than he’d thought.

Hunt found the familiar white-columned house a few blocks away; the key Ruhn had given him opened a green-painted door. The cavernous foyer was laced with two male scents other than the prince’s. A flick of the light switch revealed a grand staircase that looked like it’d been through a war zone, scuffed oak floors, and a crystal chandelier hanging precariously.

Beneath it: a beer pong table painted with remarkable skill—portraying a gigantic Fae male swallowing an angel whole.

Ignoring that particular fuck you to his kind, Hunt aimed for the living room to the left of the entry. A stained sectional lay against the far wall of the long room, and Hunt set Bryce down there as he hurried for the equally worn wet bar midway down the far wall. Water—she needed some water.

There hadn’t been an attack in the city for years now—since Briggs. He’d felt the bomb’s power as it rippled through the club, shredding the former temple and its inhabitants apart. He’d leave it to the investigators to see what exactly it was, but—

Even his lightning hadn’t been fast enough to stop it, not that it would have been any protection against a bomb, not in an ambush like that. He’d destroyed enough on battlefields to know how to intercept them with his power, how to match death with death, but this hadn’t been some long-range missile fired from a tank.

It had been planted somewhere in the club, and detonated at a predetermined moment. There were a handful of people who might be capable of such a thing, and at the top of Hunt’s list … there was Philip Briggs again. Or his followers, at least—Briggs himself was still imprisoned at the Adrestia Prison. He’d think on it later, when his head wasn’t still spinning, and his lightning wasn’t still a crackle in his blood, hungry for an enemy to obliterate.

Hunt turned his attention to the woman who sat on the couch, staring at nothing.

Bryce’s green dress was wrecked, her skin was covered in plaster and someone else’s blood, her face pale—save for the red mark on her cheek.

Hunt grabbed an ice pack from the freezer under the bar counter and a dish towel to wrap it in. He set the glass of water on the stained wood coffee table, then handed her the ice. “She slugged you pretty damn good.”

Those amber eyes lifted slowly to him. Dried blood crusted inside her ears.

A moment’s searching in the sorry-looking kitchen and bathroom cabinet revealed more towels and a first aid kit.

He knelt on the worn gray carpet before her, tucking his wings in tight to keep them from tangling with the beer cans that littered the coffee table.