Noah. Jacquelyn Frank
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Noah stopped her with a firm hand on her wrist. It hadn’t seemed dangerous when he’d straddled both sides of this strange connection from that world to this, but what if the other room suddenly disappeared, and Corrine’s curious hand along with it?
Noah didn’t have time to worry about that. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Kestra swing out with her purse, clocking her companion hard in the head with it. Corrine gasped as she saw it, too, and together they watched as the blonde made an inexplicable dash across the room and flew over a counter and into the kitchen. A short while later, an all-too-distinct series of bangs went off. Noah didn’t even have time to react. A second man had appeared from the hallway a short turn away, just in time to meet up with Kestra as she lurched back out of the kitchen on her hands and knees.
He grabbed Noah’s mate by her braid and promptly shot her in the head.
“No!” the Demon King bellowed in shock and the sudden collision of despair as the next few seconds played out in a horrific display of blood and undeniable loss of life.
He lurched forward, unthinking of those he guarded.
But it was too late.
That strange distortion of sight suddenly overwhelmed the Demon King once more. Everything faded and twisted, and that rending sensation of being picked apart one cell at a time bolted through him. In all the times he’d adjusted his form on a molecular level, he had never experienced such agony and such a lack of control. He tried to breathe, but had no lungs with which to do so. Not in that moment.
The next instant he could, and the deep reflexive breath that followed carried the overwhelming scent of burning herbs and candles. He lost track of those he held for a moment, but soon was aware of all three of them crashing down hard onto the velvety pillows that covered the floor of Corrine’s sanctum.
Corrine was coughing harshly, and then he felt her grasping at the sleeve of his shirt, clearly just as blind as he was once more.
“What the hell just happened?” she managed to say hoarsely.
That told Noah that this was far from the response Corrine had been expecting, though he’d already assumed as much. He finally found Leah, cradling her close to his chest again as her little body was racked with coughing. He rubbed violently at his eyes, trying to force himself to see. It did little good, so he was compelled to take a seat, with Leah on his lap and Corrine leaning heavily against him, and wait his eyesight out.
Just then a sharp distortion of air blew into them, followed by the unmistakable odor of sulfur and smoke that cut through the aroma of burning herbs.
“Kane!” Corrine cried out her husband’s name, recognizing his arrival even though she couldn’t see him.
“Corr! Noah! What the hell happened?”
Noah felt Corrine’s presence and warmth being drawn away from him. He blinked in the direction of her energy signature and the copper red of her hair suddenly came into blurry focus. He immediately turned his attention to Leah, continuing to blink away the weakness of his eyes as he tried to examine the child for injury.
“Kane, are they injured?” he demanded of the younger Demon.
“No,” Kane assured him as he kneeled to inspect Leah. “Covered in soot, but otherwise no worse for the wear. Are you okay?”
Noah had no idea how he could possibly answer that question. Relieved of his urgent worry over Leah and Corrine, the full implication of what had happened, of what he had just witnessed, weighed on him with a sudden and bright devastation he could remember feeling only at the worst moments in his long life. And yet this was somehow much keener. It sliced through flesh and bone and straight into the depths of his soul.
He let Kane draw Leah from his hold, and then stumbled through the blur of pillows and candlelight until he could touch a wall. He pressed his fingers into the lush velvet covering the wood paneling. The thick pile crushed beneath the onslaught of his clenching fist.
“Noah.”
He felt Corrine’s hands on his back, her empathy all too apparent in the tenderness of her touch. Noah couldn’t bear the comfort. He didn’t want to be comforted. He shrugged her off hard enough to make her stumble backward away from him.
“She is dead,” he said, his voice far rougher with emotion than he would have liked. He ran cold fingers down his soiled face, focusing straight ahead until the detail of the fabric before him came into clarity. The truth of his words was devastating to him, and on so many levels. He laughed mirthlessly at the capricious nature of fate. “Now I know why I have not dreamed of her in a week. Those dreams are…” He swallowed hard, trying to tamp down emotion far too violent to express in front of gentle friends. “They were a connection that needed both sides to be completed. And now I just stood here and let it happen again!” He turned sharply to look down at the redheaded Druid. “You were right. I was so stupid. I wasted six months. If I had come to you when this started, she would have been safe under my protection when she needed me most!”
Corrine closed her eyes, fighting back her sympathetic tears.
“I don’t understand any of this myself, Noah. You can’t be sure—”
“I am damn sure, Corr. Did you look out the windows? The sky went from noon to dawn, moving time backward to the moment this thing occurred. Backward to what I am guessing was a week ago, to the day I ceased to dream of her. And do not tell me there was nothing I could do to change it. I felt that carpet beneath my foot! I could have—I should have done something! I could smell the difference between this room and that one. I felt the energy of an entire city beyond it. For that moment, that place in time was as real as this place is right now.”
The monarch finally took a good look at the tall redhead who, in spite of a layer of grime, seemed to emanate power. She had done a potent and amazing thing, a feat beyond all expectations of her abilities, and the aftermath showed in overbright green eyes and an aura that glowed like a Christmas tree.
“Consider,” he said, this time more gently. “How would Kane suffer if Isabella had found you too late, Corrine? I have a right to grieve this loss!” The declaration promptly ended any discussion. The room vibrated with pain and tension, the silent noise punctuated with the occasional cough of Corrine’s niece.
“Yuck,” the child declared. She licked her hand and rubbed it on her clothes in an attempt to clean the soiled palm. Leah was fastidious about cleanliness, though clearly not as much so about germs.
Wordlessly, Noah crossed to Kane and plucked his charge out of her blood uncle’s hands, carrying her across the room. He held the child to his chest with one massive hand, and she instantly hooked her small, skinny legs around his waist, her head dropping onto his shoulder with contentment and the security that her uncle Noah would help her. The way he held her, however, grabbed at Corrine’s heart. Leah was hooked around him as if she were some sort of bulletproof vest, protecting his all-too-vulnerable heart.
Kane moved to hold his distraught wife when her thoughts and emotions impacted against him like a train wreck. He followed her gaze, which was affixed on the door to the room as if Noah were standing on its threshold instead of having already passed through it.
“Shh, sweetness,” he soothed softly, leaning to kiss a dirt-streaked cheek sympathetically. “You’ll see. He’ll be fine in time. Like any death, this will be grieved and then it will be put aside.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Corrine whispered to him on a fast, nervous breath. “The last time someone learned of the death of her potential Druid mate, she went mad.”
“Mary? Ruth drove Mary mad, Corrine. From the minute that child was born she was spoiled, sheltered, and held much further above her station by Ruth than was warranted. The mother was to blame for her daughter’s actions because of her carelessness in Mary’s upbringing. That can never happen to Noah. Noah comes from an upbringing that defies explanation and a place I couldn’t even begin to put in plain words for you.” Kane shook his head when he felt her puzzled expression. “Not a physical