“Rachel mentioned something to Gavril when he was here earlier.”

Peri frowned. “They never spoke.”

Alina tapped her forehead.

The high fae rolled her eyes. “Sorry, dumb blonde moment. Don’t tell Jen.”

“Rachel mentioned to Gavril a feeling she had when she was in their minds. She said that their spirits seemed to be lost, trapped in limbo somehow, unable to find their way back to this world, no matter how hard their owners might be fighting to bring them back. Gavril told Wadim to check our records and see if he could find a record of any other healers ever encountering this.”

Peri’s head tilted slightly. “Lost,” she said, almost to herself. “Neither of them is willing to leave this life. That’s why they’re lost.” She let out a laugh that was filled with so much relief Alina wanted to grab onto it and feel it too. “Jacque was fighting to bring her son into this life while her own slipped away. Fane was fighting for Jacque and his son. He pulled on the pack bond for strength. He used his connection to Vasile, his connection as an Alpha. Though I don’t know if he was even conscious that he was doing it, he was just so desperate to keep them alive. With all of the power coursing through them from me, Sally, then Rachel, the pack bond, and their own wills…it’s like they forced their souls not to leave this realm, pinned them here, even though they should have long since departed.”

“But they aren’t really in this realm,” Alina pointed out.

“No…but they are where we can get to them. Had their souls already gone on, they would have been beyond our reach and my magic would not be working. I can’t believe Rachel figured that out before me.”

“It’s not like you’re a little stressed or tired or anything,” Alina said dryly. She looked back at her son and felt the little hope Peri had just given diminish. He looked so lifeless. “So you think they can be saved?” Her eyes met the high fae’s once again.

Peri’s eyes narrowed and latched onto her like a hawk after its prey. “I will die before I let them escape this realm. They may not be my children, or even my species, but they are a part of who I am, of who I’ve become. I will hold on until we figure out how to bring them back. You have my word, Alpha.” Peri bowed her head to Alina, a rare form of respect given by a more powerful being to one not her equal.

Nissa was pretty sure that being a high fae had, up until this point, never been so messy. She stood next to Jeff Stone, the Alpha of the Coldspring pack, staring at the four people they’d rescued from the most recent raid against the vampires. Two were under the age of ten, and the other two were either teenagers or in their early twenties. All of them looked as though they’d been dragged through the mud then dipped in sewage and then trampled by the manure covered feet of a thousand pissed off pixies. In other words, they looked really, really, bad. Their eyes were sunk in from weight loss and their cheeks protruded sharply from their faces. Nissa wasn’t exactly the nurturing type, but it ticked her off to see children abused. She was glad they’d thoroughly decimated the coven that had held the children captive.

“So what now?” Jeff asked her.

“Now I see if they have family that they can return to. I’ll have to alter their memories. The things that have happened to them shouldn’t have happened and I don’t want it to haunt them for the rest of their lives. And they don’t need to know about the supernatural world, at least not right now anyway.

“Two of them are dormants,” he pointed out.

She looked at him with a raised brow.

“They are true mates to someone. They belong with us.”

Nissa understood how desperate the males were to find their mates. There had been a shortage of females for such a very long time. “Do they look like they’re ready to know something like that?” She motioned to them.

Jeff looked at them again and after several minutes let out an exhausted sigh. “Fine. Do what you have to, but we will be keeping tabs on them. When the time is right, we will come for them— we have to.”

The high fae walked over to the children slowly, not wanting to spook them. She smiled warmly at them and explained that she would be taking them home. She stepped up to the first child and knelt down. “Can I touch your head?” she asked him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He nodded.

Nissa placed her hands on his head and closed her eyes. She sifted through his memories until she found the information she needed. Then, without a word, she flashed with the boy. Peri had explained how best to return the children to their homes, so now Nissa did the same thing. After a few minutes, she returned, repeating the process two more times. Finally, she faced the last one, an older girl. When Nissa looked into her memories, she saw what had happened to the girl when she was taken. Her family had been slaughtered right in front of her.

“How old are you?” she asked the girl.

“Nineteen. I was taken when I was twelve,” she answered in monotone. There was no emotion in her voice or in her haunted eyes.

“Do you have any family, other than your parents, that you would like to return to?”

The girl laughed darkly. “Like I could return to that life after the past seven years? I wouldn’t even know how to live, not in that world, not anymore.”

“I can take the memories. I can give you new memories. You don’t have to remember what you’ve suffered.” Nissa knew that taking that many memories from someone her age could be dangerous to the human, but this girl was not just human.

The girl took a step back from the high fae. Her eyes widened slightly as she shook her head. “I don’t want my head messed with. And I want to know about those monsters. I can’t go back to not knowing now. How can I protect myself if I’m ignorant?”

Nissa considered this. She had to admit that she understood where the girl was coming from. She was making a wise decision, though not an unpainful one. “I can’t let you go back into the human world with your memories intact. The world isn’t ready to know about us, or them,” she said indicating a dead vampire lying in the corner of the room. “If you keep the memories, you’ll have to stay with your own kind.”

“What own kind?” The girl narrowed her eyes, a look of incredulity crossing her face.