It wasn’t a question.

Damien and Ava drove to Nevşehir the next day, leaving the last pieces of the familiar back in Göreme with Evren and the remnants of the Istanbul scribes. She stared at the twisting rock formations as they drove, then closed her eyes as the plane took off, trying to imagine Malachi’s arms wrapped around her as she slept.

That night, Ava stared out the window of her hotel room near Atatürk Airport, watching the moon shine over the city. She draped herself in the blanket that barely held his scent and remembered the night they’d watched the moon rise behind the Galata Tower, huddled under the blanket on the roof of the old wooden house.

“There’s no going back. I know that. I…I don’t even want to. You were right about what you said before, even if the truth hurt. I was alone.”

She wasn’t alone anymore. No matter what. She knew that.

“Plus, I’m stupidly in love with you… so I guess we’ll have to figure this out together.”

“I love you, Ava.”

Then the whisper from his mind. From his heart.

Reshon.

Ava buckled over, and sobs wrenched from her gut as the pain hit her again. She was walking through darkness, having lost the one love she’d ever dared to trust. Rage battled with grief as she knelt on the floor of the sterile hotel room, clutching the last piece of him she had.

“I hate you tonight, reshon!” She sobbed and curled against the bed. “How could you leave me like this? How?”

Ava beat her fists against the floor, pressing her tears into the rough blanket that had wrapped around them in the garden that night. The scent of her mate filled her nose, but he wasn’t there. No arms held her. No touch soothed her. No familiar voice filled her mind.

“I love you,” she choked. “I hate you. I love you. Come back to me, Malachi. What’s the use of all this if you’re not with me?”

His spells glowed in the darkness, and Ava stared at them, the old words whispering in her heart. Her soul wept, reaching for its other half.

In the darkness, Ava cried out. The words slipped from her lips, reaching up to the heavens.

“Vashama canem, reshon. Vashama canem.”

Come back to me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hundreds of miles away, he woke with a gasp, his lungs filling with the night air as he lay cold and naked on the Phrygian plain. Grey eyes gazed into the heavens, staring at the full moon, and grass pressed to his back on the deserted riverbank. Night cloaked him, bare and unmarked as the first night he’d been born into the world.

He knew nothing and no one.

But a million stars danced over him, and a familiar voice whispered in his mind.

“Come back to me.”

End of Book One.