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“Of course it does.” He curled his fingers into fists at his side, and she wondered if he would take his impatience with her out on his driver. She shouldn’t have pushed him.
Moving to go around him, she stopped when he put a hand out, and she didn’t pull away when he took her arm in a gentle hold.
“Youmatter.” He spoke the words with such rough honesty.
Searching his gaze for a clue of what his cryptic truth might really mean, she found nothing. Heartache eclipsed any fight she had left. “But not enough,” she whispered as she walked away.
ChapterNine
The sadness in Joelle’s eyes and then her whispered words as she walked away hit Alexei like a punch to the chest. He’d hurt his mate. Had he been wrong about her? Could she sense the bond between them as his demon side had?
Impossible.
Only those with demon blood felt the call. For centuries, that had served as both blessing and curse for those destined to be matched with a race deemed “inferior” by other supernaturals. As if those bigots knew the power and loyalty his kind possessed.
His phone blasted a hard rock ballad called “Sister Knows Best.” He would ignore it and go after Joelle to try and make things right, except only Alys would be daring enough to program that ringtone. Answering, he told himself that the call had been fate intervening to remind him of how the women in his family had suffered, that he should let his angel go.
“Tell me you’re behind protection wards,” Alys blurted. “Reliableones.”
His blood pressure rocketed, mental alarms ringing in his head. “Why?”
“Yes or no?”
“Yeah, I’m at the warehouse. Where are you?”
“On my way. If you have anything from tonight’s party, ditch it. The Order hid tech in everything including the invitations.”
He’d run a check on the party’s invitation and found nothing more than basic cardstock. “How’d you find it?”
“I didn’t, but my mate’s the world’s best cybersecurity specialist.”
“That’s what we’re calling hackers now?” Not that he didn’t admire the hell out of Nita’s talents.
“You’re the one always preaching that we need to present a legit front to keep us respectable.”
An engine roared in the background. Alys must be driving her Porsche. “How soon can you be here?”
“I miss you too, big bro. Don’t worry about me. Everything in the car has been triple scanned and came back clean.”
“Any news on the witch they burned?”
“Don’t you keep up withThe Hex Report?”
“I’ve been busy.” Not that he would admit he subscribed to the gossip site that served as the supernatural version of celebrity tabloids. The anonymous owner of the site had an uncanny ability to scoop the latest rumors, especially in the witch world.
“The dead witch would’ve been the heir to the New York Senator, if the witches still had a functioning Senate. She was friends with the Bane family.”
As in Witch’s Bane the band, which meant the Order had taken out someone with powerful connections in the midst of the formidable witches who should’ve been able to protect her. “She should’ve been untouchable.”
“No one’s outside the Order’s reach.”
“The widow who recently moved here? They took her hostage, and they’re using her to force her son into turning over information about us.”
“Kyle?”
Of course his sister knew the guy’s name. She did a better job of keeping up with everyone than he did, with or without her hacker’s help. “Yeah.”
“Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”
