What about his life?

It seemed so empty and bleak without her in it. She’d brought music to his world, and now that she was gone, everything was gray silence.

John wasn’t about to let it end like this. John had met countless women, but Meghan was the first one who made him consider what his future could be like if he shared it with someone else. For the first time, the idea of forever with the same person was not an alien concept he couldn’t wrap his head around.

The only problem was, John had to find her.

She hadn’t left her phone number, and a quick search online for her name turned up no listed number. He did, however, remember her mentioning the name of the place where she worked.

Phoenix was a hell of a long way away, but not nearly as far as he was willing to go for a woman like Meghan. Besides, it was too damn cold here, anyway.

John showered, packed a bag, and was on his way to the airport less than fifteen minutes later.

Madoc struggled with the images Tori had put in his head while Helen drove the four of them back to Dabyr. Drake was on the phone, speaking to Nicholas about rallying the Theronai. Apparently, Joseph was gone and unable to issue the order to have those who were out return.

It also meant that he couldn’t sentence Madoc yet.

Whatever. Madoc couldn’t do anything about that, and if he didn’t unscramble the thoughts Tori had put in his brain, it wouldn’t matter whether the men were ready to go into battle. They wouldn’t know where to go.

Nika sat in silence beside him in the back of the car, staring out the window at the sun as it rose overhead.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to live without the sun, can you?” she asked him.

“The Sanguinar seem to be okay with it,” said Madoc, hoping to distract Nika from worrying about her sister. Seeing the pain on her face broke his heart, and he wanted to do whatever it took to wipe it away.

Nika shifted in her seat, turning toward him. Her eyes matched the color of the sky behind her, and for a moment, Madoc forgot all about their job.

She was so pretty. So delicate. He had no idea how he’d gotten lucky enough to have her for his own, but he knew for certain that he would do whatever it took to keep her safe and make her happy for as long as she was his.

Once they found Tori, he’d convince Nika to stay at Dabyr with him. They’d keep each other company, make up for lost time, and find comfort in each other.

He only wished that he’d be free to go out and hunt down the creature who’d raped Tori and who knew how many other girls, and choke him to death on his own dick.

As he allowed the notion of what she must have endured to enter his thoughts, rage pounded through him, making the confines of the car seem too small.

Nika’s hand fluttered to her throat, trembling as she touched the luceria. “I don’t know what you’re thinking over there,” she said, “but I don’t like it.”

Immediately Madoc squelched the thought and focused instead on the scenery passing by them. “Sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

He was going to have to learn to control himself better. He couldn’t allow the link he now had with Nika to upset her.

Madoc pulled in a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. One thing at a time. First, he had to untangle the mess Tori had given him and make sense of it. That was step number one. After that would come finding Tori and facing his sentence.

Nika touched his hand. “You’re frustrated. Angry. Afraid. I’ve never seen you afraid before.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Have you figured out where we’re going yet?” asked Drake from the front seat.

“I’m working on it.”

“Work faster. Nicholas is calling everyone in, but they won’t stay long. You know how it is.”

Madoc did. In addition to hunting and killing every Synestryn they could get their hands on, the men were also all searching for the women they knew were out there. Besides Tori—who was thought to be dead—there was at least one more female Theronai roaming the world. Jackie, daughter of Lucien, who’d fathered both Helen and Lexi.

It was a race to see who could find her first, and the only thing giving hope to his fellow Theronai.

“I know,” said Madoc. “I’m doing what I can.”

“Let me help,” offered Nika.

“I don’t know how you could. Tori didn’t put these images in your head. She put them in mine, and they’re so scrambled together I can’t make sense of them.”

“Maybe I can. I know the way Tori thinks. I’ve been in her mind for years.”

Madoc shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

Nika unfastened her seat belt and crawled into his lap, straddling him. The heat between her thighs burned through his jeans, and he set the land speed record for fastest erection ever.

Madoc shifted, trying to unpinch his manhood. The motion made Nika bounce on top of him, which of course, made her breasts jiggle beneath her cotton shirt.

He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t stop himself. All he could think about was how good her hard little nipples had tasted against his tongue, how they’d tightened even more when he’d sucked them.

As if she were reading his thoughts, her nipples puckered, pressing against her shirt.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. As small as she was, she didn’t really need one, but that meant all he had to do was lift up her shirt and he could kiss and lick and suck her nipples until she begged for more.

That thought stopped him cold. Nika wasn’t likely to beg for more of what he’d given her last night. He’d hurt her. Made her bleed.

“None of that,” she chided. “It was perfectly normal and I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about it.”

“You’re reading my thoughts?” he asked, ripping his eyes away from her tits, just in case.

“You asked for my help. Besides, I think I like some of those thoughts you’re having. We’ll try that whole sex thing again later.”

When they weren’t in a moving car. With an audience.

Helen was driving. She glanced in the rearview mirror and met Madoc’s gaze. “I think a bit of privacy might be in order here,” she said; then his ears popped as she put up a soundproof barrier of air around him and Nika.

“They can’t hear us now, can they?”

“Nope.”

A slow, languid smile lifted Nika’s mouth and Madoc could do nothing but stare. He still hadn’t forgotten a single one of his fantasies involving her mouth. Only now that it was the worst possible time for him to be thinking about them, each one of them came back in rapid succession.

“We’ll try all that, too. Soon,” she promised. “But you’ve got to stop thinking those naughty things and focus on what Tori gave you.”

Right. Tori. They had a very young, very scared, very pregnant girl to save. The fact that she also happened to be Nika’s sister was just added motivation.

Madoc valiantly ignored his boner and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t be distracted by Nika’s mouth again. He focused on the tangled snarl of images Tori had forced into him and let them all flicker through his mind. They went by so fast, he couldn’t make sense of them. They were just a blur of light and color, too insubstantial to actually understand.

“We need to slow them down,” whispered Nika.

Madoc heard her with his ears, but he also felt her voice inside his head, too. It was odd having her this close, but not uncomfortable. She seemed to be able to invade his thoughts without taking up any space, without crowding him.

He felt a stream of power flowing out of his body, heating the luceria around his finger as it passed into Nika. He had no idea what she was doing with the energy, but whatever it was, it felt nice. Pressure inside him eased. He pulled in a deep breath, feeling her breasts press against his chest.

It was going be so nice to get her naked again, just once more. This time, he’d be gentle. Careful. He’d take her slow and easy. There’d be no more blood. No pain. Only pleasure—so much of it he’d be able to wash away all memories of how he’d ripped her virginity from her and left her bleeding.

“Stop it. I’m tired of you beating yourself up over that. I enjoyed myself quite a bit.”

“Not nearly as much as you should have.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. Next time, so will you.”

“We’ll see about that.”

There was a buzzing feeling in his skull; then suddenly, something about the images zooming through his head changed. They slowed down until they were flipping through his mind at a rate he could actually see.

Like a bizarre slide show, each flash of events passed through him. Most were of dark cave walls. In some, he could see the chubby arms and legs of the girl Tori had once been as she looked down at herself. In others, her limbs were longer and thinner. In the next moment, she was chubby again.

“The order is jumbled,” said Nika. “We need to sort it out and get back to the night she was taken.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

“I think so. Hold on.”

Again, Madoc felt a flow of power falling out of him. The tiny connection between them flared, allowing her to take on more of the energy stretching his insides.

As she did whatever it was she was doing, the strain he’d been carrying around for years began to ease. For the first time in decades, he felt like he could pull in a full breath.

He was so thrilled by this victory that he hadn’t been paying attention to the images.

They stopped, and he felt Nika’s body tighten even as he sensed her fear invading his thoughts, like a dank little tendril of smoke.

Madoc put his attention back where it belonged and saw what had scared Nika so much.

It was the face of a man who wasn’t quite a man at all. The top of his skull was a bit too wide, his black eyes too deeply set. His bloodred lips were peeled back in a hideous smile, displaying two rows of pointed teeth.

Zillah.

The name echoed in his mind like a shotgun blast. This was the thing that had stolen Tori. The creature who had hurt her. Raped her.

“Don’t look at him,” he told Nika. “Change the image to something else.”

Her voice shook with fury. “I want to watch him die.”

“So do I, but that will have to wait until we can find him. Show me something I can use.”

Nika was trembling, though whether with fear or rage, he couldn’t tell. He swept his hands up and down her back, hoping to calm her. The feel of her slender back under his palms managed to soothe something inside him, too. She was here, in his arms, safe and sound, and nothing and no one was going to change that.

The image shifted; this time, it was a close-up of the open, salivating jaws of a sgath. Nika swiftly went through several blurry images as if wanting to get away from that one. The next one she stopped on was of their childhood bedroom.

“That’s before the attack,” she said. “The window isn’t broken yet. I’ll move forward a bit.”

The next time she stopped, he saw what it had looked like for Tori the night she’d been taken. As a sgath pulled her out of her window, she stared back at a much younger Nika.