the shadows.
Rafe touched the latch on the front door and found it unlocked. No signs of forced entry, but there was no mistaking that something bad had occurred inside. He stepped in, nearly overpowered by the olfactory punch that slammed into him as he entered Iona Lynch’s home.
The place was silent. As soundless as a tomb.
“Hello?” he called into the darkness, unsurprised to receive no reply.
He crept through the small foyer and past a neatly furnished little living room. Despite the stench of bloodshed filling his nose and making his irises burn with amber heat, he didn’t see evidence of a struggle until he stepped toward the galley kitchen in the back of the house.
Then, the impact of what had taken place here—very recently, from the look of it—shook him to the bone. He drew up short, his boots halted in a pool of fresh blood.
Aric had just entered the kitchen from the back door now too, and his low curse echoed Rafe’s thoughts. “Holy hell.”
A young blonde woman lay crumpled and deadly still in the center of the blood-soaked kitchen tiles, a lethal gash at her throat. There was no question she was dead. She’d been cut so savagely, the wound had nearly decapitated her.
“Jesus Christ,” Aric murmured woodenly. “Guess we weren’t the only ones looking for Iona Lynch.”
Rafe clamped his teeth and fangs together on a ripe curse as he strode through the slick lake of spilled blood to reach the woman. He was fucking up a crime scene, but if there was any chance he could revive her, he had to try. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but because Iona Lynch was the Order’s best lead on Crowe and his Opus associates. They couldn’t afford to lose her.
Kneeling down in the mess, he gingerly rolled her onto her back and touched the hideous wound at her throat. She had no pulse, no breath. Her skin was cool and waxy beneath his fingertips. There was nothing for him to work with, nothing for his ability to latch on to and draw toward healing.
“Shit.” He glanced up at Aric and grimly shook his head. “I can’t help her. She’s too far gone by several minutes, at least. Goddamn it, we’re too fucking late.”
As he spoke, he heard the faintest shift of movement coming from somewhere nearby. It was muffled, but Rafe and Aric both stilled in recognition that someone else was there in the house with them.
Silently, stealthily, Rafe set Iona Lynch’s lifeless body down on the tiles and rose to his feet.
The soft rustle came again, and he followed it to the closed door of a bathroom just off the kitchen. Then he heard a low, pained moan.
He opened the door and found another woman lying in a fetal position in the corner of the cramped room. Petite as an angel, the strawberry blonde was dressed in black yoga pants and a form-fitting pink tank top rent off her shoulder from an obvious altercation. Only semiconscious now, her body was coming awake slowly from the bloodied contusion on the side of her head.
Blood spatter on the white porcelain sink indicated someone had smashed the woman’s head into the basin with enough brute force to knock her out.
Rafe stepped inside, and the woman’s lids lifted. Hazel eyes widened as soon as she saw him. Then her mouth dropped open in a terrified scream.
“It’s okay,” he assured her, moving carefully as she bolted fully alert now and scrambled as far away from him as she could get.
“Don’t touch me!” Panic and confusion filled her pretty face. “Stay away from us! Iona, run!”
“Shh.” Rafe shook his head, hands out in front of him to show her he meant no harm. “It’s okay now. You’re safe.”
She huddled deeper into the corner of the bathroom, her eyes as wild as a terrified animal’s. As she moved, Rafe spotted a small red birthmark beneath the rip in the side of her tank top.
A Breedmate.
Rafe hunkered down to her level, speaking gently. “We’re not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
She frowned, still wary, her breast still heaving with her labored breaths. She blinked slowly, glancing down at the floor. “Siobhan.” A delicate name, spoken in a broken whisper that almost made it sound as if she’d said the word chiffon. She glanced up at him and tried again. “I’m Siobhan O’Shea.”
He nodded soberly. “My name is Rafe. And this is my friend, Aric,” he said, gesturing to the doorway