Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) by Stephanie Rowe Page B

without a doubt. The question was: what was she trying to hide and why? “What exactly is she?”
    Grace shrugged. “Does it matter? Doesn’t it make sense to just find her?”
    “I haven’t decided what makes sense.” Quinn reread the article while he thought, but the more he considered Grace’s story, the more it seemed to fit. Just as Grace believed her sister wouldn’t kill anyone on her own, he was damned sure Elijah would never go rogue, and he’d never turn traitor. But the disturbance he’d felt in his woods hadn’t been happy angel dust, so it hadn’t been Ana’s sister he’d been sensing. Having a third party involved made sense. Big sense. It was exactly what he’d wanted—an indication that he was right to give Elijah a chance.
    He tapped his finger on the paper. “So, we’ve got a missing angel—” He didn’t miss Grace’s telling flinch at his word choice, telling him that her sister was no damn angel. “And we’ve got a bunch of dead Calydons who couldn’t have been killed by her.” And he had Elijah going on a murderous rampage after all the other deaths had already occurred.
    He smacked the paper with his palm. “Hot damn, sweetheart. We’ve got a third party involved. I can feel it—” He grinned and looked up at Grace, then tensed when he realized she’d worked her way closer to him.
    She was, in fact, standing directly in front of him, leaning into his space. Her hands were still in her pockets, but her gaze was fastened on his face, and he caught a whiff of her scent, calling for him, and damned if every part of his body didn’t respond faster than a dog after a bone.
    Sheva. The thought whispered through his mind again, and he shot to his feet. He set his hands on her shoulders and made her step back, but damn, she felt so good under his palms. She stared at him, desire flaring in those silver eyes of hers, and he couldn’t stop from letting his thumbs drift over her shoulders.
    “Stop,” she whispered.
    “Shit, yeah.” He forced himself to release her and walked across the room, needing space from her, from her temptation. “I don’t believe Elijah is dead. I would know.”
    “Quinn—”
    “No.” He glared at her. “I would know,” he repeated. “I’m going to find him, and if your sister is with him, I’ll get her, too. And I’ll get answers from them both.” As an Order member with obligations, as a blood brother on a mission, agreeing to get her sister was more than he should offer, but he could do no less. Not for this woman who had descended into his life and rattled him so inexplicably.
    Or not so inexplicably, if she was the woman he’d been avoiding his whole life.
    Gratitude flashed on her face and her eyes lit up with such appreciation he knew she was going to hug him. Having her arms wrapped around him and her body pressed up against his…hell. They’d both be damned if that got started.
    He spun away from her and stalked across the room.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly.
    “You’re welcome.” Thank you? No one had thanked him for a damn thing in five hundred years. Who the hell thanked an Order of the Blade member? Crumbled in fear, yeah. Despised, certainly. Lusted after, yeah, that too. But thanked?
    He didn’t know what to make of her. He really didn’t. A part of him, a dangerous, foolhardy part of him, wanted to slide that deadbolt on his door and spend the next forty-eight hours locked down with her, finding out every damn secret she had in her mind, her soul and her body.
    Yeah, because that wouldn’t be a risky thing to do, given the level of sensuality and desire between them, and that little incident of the mind-reading. She was setting off every one of his alarms, and he had a bad, bad feeling about exactly what she might be. His mate. His destiny. His doom.
    Screw that shit. He was cutting her loose, before the risk became a grim reality that would destroy them both forever. But the mere thought of ditching her made him