Shifter's Lady by Alyssa Day Page B

and—finally—hatred from Fallon. After she’d been murdered, he’d returned to the room in a killing rage and taken it out on the furniture. Every rug, painting, or piece of furniture she’d touched. He’d destroyed it all, clawing it to shreds in a towering fury. No matter what a heartless, cold woman she’d been, she’d been under his protection.
    He’d failed Fallon.
    He wouldn’t fail Marie.
    â€œI got rid of anything she’d touched. Couldn’t stand to see it,” he admitted, walking away from her. Anything so she couldn’t see his face.
    â€œYou loved her that much?” The sympathy in her voice was like salt on the bloody wounds of his conscience.
    â€œNo,” he confessed, the words wrenched from a black and twisted place in his soul. “I didn’t love her at all. That’s why I couldn’t stand it. Maybe if I’d loved her, I’d have found a way to protect her, even from herself.”
    Marie stepped up beside him and placed her hand on his arm. “Bastien told me of Fallon and her plot to work with the vampires against you and Kat. As a leader, you must know that you cannot save everyone. Some are destined to walk a dark path.”
    Ethan stared down at her hand on his arm where it burned through his sleeve to his skin. To his nerve endings. “I don’t need your sympathy, Marie. I made my choices, and I have to live with them. But you don’t. Call Alaric, and let’s get you out of here.”
    She jerked her hand away from him as if stung. “I did not offer my sympathy but my understanding. I see, though, that you require neither.”
    Whirling around, Marie walked to the center of the room, graceful even in her anger. He wanted to race after her and yank her into his arms and never let go. Inside him, his panther purred its agreement with that plan.
    Instead, he stood his ground and watched her retreat. She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the ceiling, raising both hands, palms up, at her sides. A faint silvery blue glow whispered around her still form until she was bathed in light. A nymph rising from the sea in starlight.
    He suddenly wanted her with a painful urgency. His body hardened to the point of pain. He scrubbed his face with his hand, disgusted with himself.
    I’m nothing if not the king of bad timing.
    After nearly three full minutes, Marie opened her eyes. She bit her lip and shook her head, then stood there heaving in deep breath after deep breath.
    â€œWhat? What’s wrong?”
    â€œThis has never happened to me in three centuries,” she said, visibly trembling. “Alaric’s mental pathway is shut down. I cannot reach him. For good or ill, I cannot return to Atlantis.”
    Marie sat alone in the vast, gleaming steel and stone kitchen, toying with the remains of a sandwich. She’d eaten nothing all day, but worry and concern had robbed her of what little appetite she’d been able to muster. The mug of hot tea failed tosoothe her, as well. The abyss gnawing at her insides had nothing to do with food or drink but everything to do with her inability to contact Alaric or Bastien. Granted, her mental reach did not extend far enough to contact Bastien if they were more than a few hundred landwalker miles apart. But Alaric was so powerful that even the suggestion of contact from a fellow Atlantean was sufficient for him to receive the message.
    Always in the past the high priest had immediately opened the pathway between them at her call. Now there was nothing. No sense of being blocked, simply nothing at all. As if…
    As if Alaric no longer existed.
    But she refused to even countenance that thought.
    Ethan’s voice came from the doorway in that lazy drawl that he turned on and off seemingly at will. The mere sound of it shot liquid lightning through her.
    â€œYou hold that mug any tighter, and you’re going to break it.”
    She refused to