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I shifted to my side and brushed a hand across his stomach before laying my palm over his heart. “I don’t know,” I said. “Magnus will want to leave in a few days, after his meeting with Jorgen and Lord Vikhrov is finished.”
“You still haven’t told him about that General Rufus person and his plan to destroy the mountain pass,” Hayk said.
I sucked in a breath. I couldn’t believe I’d entirely forgotten about something that had seemed so important just hours before. The trouble was, so many things that had happened that day were staggeringly important, and I just didn’t have space in my brain to prioritize them.
Except that nothing, not even the fate of the frontier, seemed as important to me as Hayk.
“We have to find Dmitri,” I said at last. That seemed like the second most important thing to do, after the man I had to admit I was falling in love with. “First and foremost, before the sun rises, we have to find Dmitri and get him out of the estate. Then I have to tell Magnus about General Rufus. Before Jorgen and Hati get here.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Hayk asked, sitting abruptly and pulling me to sit too. “We have to find that bastard who thinks he’s your master and smuggle him down to the docks so we can throw him on a ship due to set sail for the other side of the world.”
I smiled at Hayk’s sudden enthusiasm. “Can’t we sleep for a while first?” I asked with a weary sigh. It was a joke. I knew there was no time for a rest. But I really was so tired after the events of the day that my mind was beginning to crack.
Hayk crawled toward the edge of the bed and jumped off, bending to gather his clothes, and giving me a spectacular view of his damp ass as he did. My body started to heat all over again, in spite of exhaustion, but Hayk twisted to me and said, “Hurry up, Anton Fuck Me. The sooner we find Dmitri and get him out of here, the sooner we can work on the much more important problem of how the two of us can stay together.”
That was enough to motivate me. The only thing that mattered was finding a way to stay with Hayk, and that wasn’t going to happen if Dmitri was still in the picture.
I climbed out of bed and scrambled back into my clothes, though really, I needed to bathe. There wasn’t time for silly things like bathing. There was barely time for Hayk and I to use the toilet and to make certain we didn’t look obscene before leaving the suite to begin our search for Dmitri.
The problem of the mission we’d set for ourselves was apparent as soon as we rushed downstairs and stepped out onto the patio around Olympus’s house. Neither of us were familiar with the Hakobyan estate, and everything was dark and shadowy. More than that, I could see guards carrying torches walking the perimeter of the estate’s wall. I didn’t think they would harass us or cause us any harm, since we were allowed to be where we were, but once we found Dmitri, they would stand in the way of us getting him out.
“Where do we even start?” I sighed, shoving a hand through my already disheveled hair.
Instead of answering, Hayk glanced around. There was enough light from lanterns hanging around the patios of the various houses in the compound to let us see a little bit, and a few servants were moving between the buildings on whatever nighttime errands they had, but I didn’t see how that would help us.
Hayk saw more to it than me. “Come on,” he said, gesturing for me to follow as he headed more toward the center of the compound, following one of the servants who looked to be carrying dishes from Lord Vikhrov’s house to the kitchen house. “Hey!” Hayk called after the servant.
I went hot with awkwardness over stopping one of the servants in the middle of her work, particularly because of the way Hayk called to her.
But the servant turned as though nothing were out of the ordinary and waited for Hayk and I to catch up to her. She sent Hayk a disapproving look, then glanced to me with less certainty.
“Can I help you?” she asked me, ignoring Hayk.
I wasn’t thrilled about the way she dismissed Hayk, but I did understand it. Everyone in the estate seemed to know who Hayk was. And who I was, fortunately. They saw me as attached to a visiting king, which had canceled out Hayk’s status as a whore.
But it was still Hayk who answered her with, “Have you seen the wolf Dmitri hiding somewhere in the estate?”
I sent Hayk a dubious look. There was no possible way the servants would know where—
“He has been pacing around the storage rooms all day and asking if any of us know secret ways out of the estate,” the servant said, cutting off my thoughts.
I was stunned. There was no possible way things could be that easy. Hayk had just asked…and the servant knew the answer?
“Is he still there?” Hayk asked on. “In the storage room?”
The servant looked annoyed that Hayk was the one asking the questions, and she directed her answer to me. “He was about an hour ago. I can’t imagine where else he would go. Lord Vikhrov’s guards have the estate thoroughly sealed. We weren’t even able to accept a shipment of foodstuffs this afternoon.”
“Sorry about that,” I apologized, not knowing what else to say.
The servant smiled at me.
Hayk grinned and shook his head, then grabbed my arm and tugged me away. “Only you would apologize for something that wasn’t even remotely your fault,” he laughed as we continued down the hall toward the kitchens.
Knowing where Dmitri might possibly be gave me a strange feeling. I wanted to find him and get him out of the estate, but I dreaded coming face to face with the man who thought I was his pup again. I had the itching feeling that Dmitri and I hadn’t finished our business. But as much as I didn’t want to find him, that didn’t stop me from searching intently.
“If I had known the Hakobyan estate had so many storerooms, I would have asked that maid for more specifics,” Hayk said about fifteen minutes later, as we poked around a room that was built into the ground and held every sort of meat and seafood I could have imagined.
Some of the headless carcasses looked like they’d just been slaughtered, which turned my stomach. I mean, I knew where meat came from and how it got from the field to my plate, but I didn’t need the reminder. Not when I was searching for someone like Dmitri.
