Jealousy ripped through Fane. The younger Sentinel had been panting after Serra for years. He’d even managed to lure her into a brief affair that had tormented Fane. It was one thing to tell Serra he wanted her to find a man to love, and another to watch her being seduced by a male half his age.
He wasn’t a damned saint.
“Maybe she changed her mind,” he said, taking pleasure in the thought of the arrogant cub being stood up.
“She would have let him know,” Callie insisted. Although cell phones didn’t work, there were landlines placed throughout Valhalla that made communication easy. “Arel came to me when he searched Valhalla and couldn’t find her.”
Abruptly Fane remembered Serra’s strange behavior when he’d last seen her.
At the time he’d put it down to anger and wounded pride. Now he had to wonder if there hadn’t been something else wrong.
“You said that you tried her apartment?”
Callie nodded. “She didn’t answer the door.”
“She could be asleep.”
“No, I have a key.” Callie bit her bottom lip. “I went to check on her but she wasn’t there. And—”
Fane ruthlessly crushed the fear that threatened to cloud his years of training.
If something had happened to Serra she needed a warrior, not the man who’d wanted her for longer than she would ever know.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
“There was a mess in her bedroom.”
Shit. He gripped the edge of the door, the wood cracking beneath the pressure.
“A mess?” he barked. “Like she’d been attacked?”
“No, her clothes were thrown around like she’d been packing in a hurry.”
Oh. A portion of Fane’s fear eased.
If she’d packed a bag then there was a chance this was nothing more than a misunderstanding.
“She has a home south of here,” he pointed out. Most psychics had private homes in isolated areas where they could get away from the “psychic noise” caused by living in a crowded community. “Maybe she was going there.”
“Without a word to anyone? I even called Inhera to see if Serra had been called away on an assignment.”
Inhera was the leader of the psychics and was responsible for scheduling their duties.
Fane grimaced. “She might have felt a need to leave Valhalla that had nothing to do with her job.”
Callie stabbed him with an accusing glare. “I know that she was upset, and why. But Serra has never just disappeared. She knows how worried I would be.”
Fane gave a slow nod.
Callie was right.
Even if she was pissed as hell with him, Serra wouldn’t leave without gaining approval from Inhera.
And more importantly, without saying something to Callie and her foster parents.
“Damn.”
He spun on his heel to cross to the far side of his living room where he laid his hand on a scanner. It took only a second for his fingerprints to be accepted and for a panel in the wall to slide open to reveal a hidden room that was built into all the Sentinels’ apartments.