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“Good?” he asked.
“Mmm.” She didn’t protest, scooting closer and taking another bite. “So what’s the matter?”
Her quiet question caught him off guard. Perhaps she had empath abilities. Some of the witch-blooded did. Hell, some demon hybrids inherited the power. “Nothing.”
She stared at him as if she could see through him, that intense knowing too old for a girl with pie filling smeared on her chin and his hat sliding over her ears. “You liked being mean to those boys because you’re angry.”
“I enjoy being mean because it’s who I am.” Telling her the lie tasted sour on his tongue, especially when she kept watching him like a puzzle she could solve if she could find the missing piece. “I’m marrying someone because it’s good for my family. I guess it made me a little mad.” Pissed off enough to want to burn the world to the ground, but telling anyone would do absolutely no good.
“Why’d you say yes?” she asked. “Is she pretty?”
“Very.” And Yulia did nothing for him.
“Do you love her?”
“No.” He couldn’t stand the princess.
“Oh.” She ate a dessert pastry, orange jam smearing across her mouth as she seemed to consider his answer. Cradling the book, she protected it from getting dirty. “I would want to marry someone I love.” She did thatstare through himthing again. It would’ve been creepy from anyone else, but those big eyes held no meanness. She took his hand in her much smaller one, and where her skin touched his, the magic that he’d fought for so long calmed.
His mother’s talk about fated mates came to mind again. He didn’t even know the girl’s name. What if she had magic that worked like a mate’s connection without being one? If he had more information, he could track down her family, learn everything about her, and find a rational explanation for this reaction without jeopardizing his political marriage.
If he couldn’t explain it away with logic?What if the gods had sent him the mate he’d believed he would never deserve? What ifshewas who he was meant to wait for?
“Joelle!” A woman’s harsh shout cut through his thoughts.
The girl jumped up from the bench, shoving the book at him. “Take this,” she said. “She can’t see it.” Fear sharpened her words to tiny daggers.
“Wait—” He moved to catch her wrist, to ask her what scared her so he could confront whatever or whoever had caused it, but she tossed his hat his direction and sprinted toward the woman standing outside a grey sedan before he could stop her without using supernatural speed.
“Follow her,” he told his bodyguards. They did alongside him yet the woman tossed the girl in the car like a sack of rotten potatoes and sped away. He didn’t catch anything except part of an American diplomatic license plate.
For weeks, Alexei worked every contact he had in the supernatural and human worlds to track information from the numbers off the car’s plates and a first name—Joelle. Nothing led him to the girl. It was as though she had vanished from Moscow, from this dimension that day. Weeks turned to months and then years, and he battled his obsession with locating her. Remembering her fear fueled his magic, and he couldn’t risk a slip.
So he pretended to forget Joelle. After all, what good was a fated mate if he couldn’t find her again?
ChapterOne
The demon prince wasn’t supposed to be a locked-in-her-tower pretty princess’s choice for a rescue. Especially not in a situation born from an unholy alliance with a witch.
Alexei Maronov could scarcely believe it himself, yet here he crouched in snow when he could’ve been snoozing in his king-sized bed at home in Los Angeles. Freezing despite his thermals, he wished the moonlight wouldn’t reflect in such blinding whiteness that it might give away their hiding spot. While he’d love this view of a clear, starry night at home, he’d rather be anywhere than here with Diego, the witch he owed a favor. The sooner they finished the rescue mission, the faster he could be done with the witches.
“This the place?” he asked. “A backwoods nowhere ruin in Lithuania?”
“Yep.” Diego, a former military sniper, looked through binoculars toward the rambling building anchored by a tower on each corner. “The human organization I’ve been tracking uses this as a holding warehouse. They call themselves the Order, but terrorists would be more like it. The woman we’re rescuing? They’re keeping her locked in there.”
“I don’t need to know the name of the organization or the woman.” Alexei didn’t want more info than absolutely necessary to get through this job. Witches meant trouble for demon hybrids, always had. “Do these humans enlist anyone with actual powers?”
“No. They want to eradicate all magic-born. They don’t employ us; they kidnap and kill us.”
“What’s so personal about this assignment that you came to me for help?”
“My nephew thinks of our target as a sister. Adopted, you could say.”
As thoughadoptedmeant less than blood. Both Alexei’s sister and his cousin had been adopted, yet that didn’t make them any less family. He would kill for them. Hehadkilled for them several times over and didn’t regret whatever cruelty he’d had to dole out to keep them safe. Family meant everything.
“How much witch blood does our target have?” Alexei hoped that she had enough magic to help them in her escape.
“We have no idea. The Order stole her from her family when she was an infant.”
