THE LYCAN KINGS SILENT MATE

Chapter 4

They fell into darkness for what felt like far too long to survive, and then Alistair's arm was a steel band around her waist, twisting them mid-air so his back took the impact instead of hers. They hit stone hard enough that Eva heard the breath punch out of him, felt it in her own chest like an echo.

Silence, after. Real silence this time not the bond, just the absence of the street above, the absence of Julian's voice, the absence of anything except dripping water somewhere far off and her own too-fast heartbeat.

"Are you hurt?" Alistair's voice was rough, close to her ear, and his hands were already moving over her again, checking, the way they had on the street.

"I'm fine. You just fell twenty feet onto your spine for me, so maybe worry about"

"I've had worse." He sat up, shifting her gently off him like she was something precious he was setting down carefully rather than a burden he was glad to be rid of, and looked around them with narrowed eyes that seemed to see perfectly well in the near-total dark. "This wasn't an accident. The street didn't just collapse."

"Trapdoor?"

"Old tunnel network. Predates the city." He got to his feet in one fluid motion and pulled her up after him, and even now, even soaked in someone else's blood and standing in what was apparently a two-hundred-year-old sinkhole, he moved like a man who owned whatever ground he stood on. "Someone knew exactly where to stand to drop us both. Which means someone's been planning this a great deal longer than tonight."

"Great. Wonderful. Very reassuring." Eva wrapped her arms around herself, adrenaline finally starting to ebb into something closer to shaking. "So recap, because I want to make sure I'm keeping up. Six hours ago I was alphabetizing a poetry section. Now I've been grabbed twice, watched you nearly burn down my store, met a vampire prince's very polite murder-second who wants to turn me into some kind of assassin, and fallen into a hole that may or may not have been dug specifically to kill us both. Did I miss anything?"

"You forgot the part where you're my fated mate," Alistair said, and there was something almost wry in it, the first thing that had sounded remotely human since he'd walked into her shop.

"Right. That." Eva laughed, short and a little unhinged, because it was either that or start screaming and never stop. "You know, most people just buy a girl dinner first."

Something shifted in his face not quite a smile, but adjacent to one, there and gone so fast she almost missed it in the dark. Then it was gone, replaced by the same cold calculation she'd first seen through the bookstore window.

"I need to know exactly what Julian told you." He said it carefully, like he already suspected the answer and didn't want to hear it confirmed. "Before I got there. Everything."

Eva hesitated, and that hesitation told him more than she meant it to.

"Eva."

"He said your bond doesn't care what I want." She made herself hold his gaze even though every instinct told her to look away. "He said Damon doesn't want to kill you outright. He wants to use me to do it. Get close enough that I stop registering as a threat because apparently I go silent around anyone strong enough, not just you and then" Her voice caught. "And then use whatever I am to get past everyone protecting you."

The silence that followed was worse than anything Julian had said.

"That's not going to happen," Alistair said finally, low and absolute.

"You don't get to decide that. It's my hands they're talking about using."

"No." He crossed the small distance between them in the dark, and this time when his hand found her jaw it wasn't a search for injuries it was deliberate, steady, his thumb resting just beneath her chin like he needed the contact as much as he needed her to listen. "I don't get to decide what Damon wants. I do get to decide what happens to you while I'm still breathing, and I am telling you, plainly, that no one is turning you into anything. Not him. Not the bond. Not me."

"You kidnapped me two hours ago."

"I removed you from immediate danger," he said, and had the audacity to sound almost offended. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"There will be," he said, quieter now, "once you understand I'm not going to let anyone use you. Including myself."

Eva became abruptly, uncomfortably aware of how close they were standing, of his hand still at her jaw, of the fact that some traitorous part of her chest had gone warm and unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with fear. The bond, she thought distantly. Or maybe just him. She wasn't sure anymore there was a difference, and she hated how much that terrified her.

"The silence," she said, mostly to fill the space before she did something reckless like lean into his hand. "Does it is it just me? Or do you feel it too?"

Something flickered behind his winter-lake eyes, guarded and old.

"I haven't felt anything in a very long time," he said. "Not until an hour ago, in a bookshop, when a woman in gloves tried to stab me with a letter opener."

"I was going to hit you with a copy of Wuthering Heights next. Really commit to the theme."

That almost-smile came back, and this time it stayed a full second longer before he caught himself.

A low grinding sound rolled through the tunnel behind them stone against stone, deliberate, close.

Alistair's head snapped toward it, every trace of softness gone in an instant, replaced by the same lethal stillness she'd seen right before he tore through three scouts without breaking a sweat.

"That," he said quietly, pulling her behind him in one smooth motion, "is not the street settling."

Torchlight bloomed at the far end of the tunnel, and a dozen shapes stepped out of the dark to block the only way out.