in the wrongdoing.”
Daphne grips Beth's hands so tightly, the blood retreats from her fingers, leaving them ghostly pale.
Daphne blinks back her tears and gives a small nod.
The Cause was an absolute.
Now it's a broken ideal.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Slade
Jeb Merrick is a problem.
He's remained a burr in Slade's side since he was able to heal himself after his fight with Reflective Ryan.
Merrick will not go quietly. He's staked a claim on Beth, and though Bloodlings do have kindred bloods in the rare female from time to time, there is no such thing as a soul mate. It is a folktale among his ancestral Blood Singers on sector Seven and unheard of on One. Males and females form alliances merely to propagate the species. That is what is of critical importance to Bloodlings.
Romantic-soul-mate searching is for fools, and Slade is no fool. He will ignore the tenderness he feels for this tiny frog. He will conquer the weakness inside himself until it is soot in the bottom of a burning heart of hate.
He loathes Dimitri. The advantage he enjoyed during Gunnar’s captivity has endangered all Bloodlings with the taking of their females.
“What troubles you?” Gunnar asks quietly as the group makes their way to the forests of the Bloodlings.
So much is deeply troubling, but he can convey none of it to Gunnar. Slade can just imagine the consequences of telling Gunnar the unvarnished truth.
Yes, Gunnar, your newly discovered warrior Reflective daughter of Lucinda, the love of your life? She is the price for the return of the remaining Bloodling females.
Slade would last a solid three minutes, at most.
Beth would be endangered.
Instead, Slade says, “Nothing, just that we be light on our feet and that we reach the tops of the great forest to secure the females.”
Gunnar frowns, keeping his stride.
Slade can almost feel the older Bloodling weigh each one of his words—and he finds the comment wanting.
“What of my daughter?” he asks slowly.
Slade gives a minimal shrug, then ticks off the facts. “We assisted her escape. Their world is in turmoil. It was a mercy to help.”
Gunnar grabs his arm, and Slade steels himself.
The mirrored black of Gunnar’s irises flashes in the growing gloom. “I know there is something more. I understand our little hopper was here. She was nearly under the thumb of that derelict Reflective…”
“Ryan,” Slade volunteers.
Gunnar nods, his eyes shifting toward the tight-knit group of Reflectives and threes not twenty paces behind him.
“This is not the safest sector for her.”
It is not the safest sector for anyone. “She doesn't appear to like you,” Slade states.
Gunnar shrugs. “Her liking me does not change what she means to me.” His eyes glitter as his anger rises to the surface like oil in water. “She is the Bloodling daughter of Lucinda, and I'll not desert her as so many apparently have during her short life. I will defend Beth—as I did today when you gave her the restorative blood share.” Gunnar viciously tightens his hair club, looking back at the group as they draw nearer. “The Reflectives who are pure blood do not understand what it is to be a Bloodling.”
He has no idea. Slade remains in contemplative silence.
“When Dimitri gets his claws into me, he will try and imprison me again. We can't have that.”
If Dimitri doesn't imprison him, Gunnar will kill me for giving up Beth.
“Ah!” Gunnar exclaims softly.
Slade follows Gunnar’s gaze to the glowing lights in the canopy of the trees high above.
Gunnar claps Slade on his shoulder. “It is good to be home and not underneath a partially buried acre of stone.”
Gunnar looks behind him and finds the male Three and Maddie. Slade has a moment of unease. Gunnar had better not start anything with the fragile Reflective. She has no strength of heart. Because she is from the chaotic sector of Three, Maddie is more liability than asset.
And she wishes to return to her home sector, not become a blood slave.
Yet kindred blood is indifferent to intellect and circumstance. It calls, and the ones under its magic answer.
Beth and the other Reflectives come to stand behind him, and Slade tilts his head to study the sky. He and Gunnar part their lips.
The call of the Bloodling, high and sharp, rises to rustle the leaves of their treetop homes.
Ropes unwind to fall head height.
Slade scans the lower trunks, so wide that five linked males would not surround the circumference.
Nothing. The wood is quiet.
Too quiet.
“Do you sense that?” Slade quickly asks Gunnar.
“Yes,” he hisses, turning to the depth of the woods