Evans, Gabrielle - Hell's Tempest [Fatefully Yours 4] (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever ManLove) by Gabrielle Evans Page B

of days when he’d insisted on calling his mates nearly every hour. Still, he didn’t like the sound of them being apart. “Why would we be separated?” he asked cautiously, not daring to look at any of the men in the vehicle.
    “We won’t,” Hex said firmly. “But it never hurts to be prepared.”
    This all sounded a little foreboding to Echo, but it also brought up other questions that had been nagging at him. “Why did it take you so long to get back?”
    No one answered him, and Echo finally turned away from the window to glare at the back of Hex’s head. His eyes shifted to Syx, then finally over to Vapre. “You know something,” he accused. “If Hex isn’t going to tell me anything, then I suggest you start talking.”
    “There was…trouble,” Hex said guardedly.
    “Believe it or not, I figured that much out on my own.” Echo growled and grumbled under his breath for a minute until he felt calm enough to speak without starting a fight. “Please, tell me.” There, that was perfectly polite and not at all argumentative.
    “We lost Mac.”
    Echo’s mouth dropped open before he could stop it. “What the fuck do you mean you lost him? Didn’t he come home with you?” He’d seen his friend when everyone had returned. Right? Damn it! He’d been so happy, so relieved, that his men were home, he hadn’t paid much attention to anything else around him. “Where is he?” Echo hated the quavering in his voice, the trembling of his lip, and the uncertainty that ate away at his calm façade.
    “Relax,” Syx said soothingly, turning in his seat to face Echo. “Mac is at home and perfectly safe.”
    “Then what happened? How the hell do you lose a full-grown man? And Gage! He just let Mac wonder off by himself?” Echo was working himself into a good yelling fit, but he couldn’t squelch his panic. His lovers were keeping things from him. Again.
    “I don’t mean that we lost him physically,” Hex hedged. “I mean…well, I don’t know what the hell happened. He was catatonic for a good two days after we found the shifters. He never closed his eyes, didn’t speak, was stiff as a corpse all the time. I thought Gage and Sony were going to lose their damn minds. I’ve never seen anyone so scared.”
    “So, what happened?”
    “He just woke up. I don’t think he’s said a word since.”
    “But why didn’t you just bring him home like that?” Echo’s brows drew together in confusion.
    “Well, he didn’t talk, but he screamed bloody murder every time someone touched him. If he hadn’t woken up when he did, we were going to try it anyway. Can you imagine listening to that, cramped up in a car for three hours, though? I tried to heal him, but nothing worked.”
    “So, when you said that Gage and Sony and Mac were in their room last night…”
    “I might have smudged the truth a little.” Hex shrugged his massive shoulders. “I didn’t want to drag their business out into the open.”
    Echo could respect that, but he still didn’t appreciated being lied to about something so important. “Have you talked to Gage this morning?”
    “No,” his mates chorused. “He hasn’t left his room since we got back. Sony came down and got him some breakfast, and the guy looked bad, like he hadn’t slept in days.”
    “Can we help him?” Echo spoke quietly, his chest aching at the thought of his friends suffering. If there was something he could do to erase their pain, then he wanted to help.
    “I think we just need to give Mac some time,” Vapre answered just as quietly. “He’ll talk to his mates when he’s ready.”
    Nodding slowly, Echo trained his eyes on Syx and opened his mouth to ask his next question. He saw the demon flinch before he’d even spoken the words and suddenly thought better of it. Not that he was going to let Syx off the hook that easily, but he’d wait until they were alone. The man was hiding something from not only Echo but everyone else in the house as well.