on the floor panting. Cramps rolled from her back to her front and zinged down her legs. Then repeated the loop.
Roan slammed the door behind him and Amelie let the sob building in her chest burst free. Tears welled as she tried to crawl toward her communication unit. She had to call Scarlett.
Agony tore at her middle and she fell face forward as she clutched her middle and screamed.
***
Hurt. Can’t breathe. Gonna die.
Sulen woke in a panic. “Nooo!”
The roar startled him and he went from total sleep to total awareness in a blink. His heart pounded in his chest and his hands clenched uselessly on his lap. The sheets tangled about his waist as he lurched from the bed, searching for the threat.
Nothing. His room was as empty as it had been when he’d gone to sleep.
Waves of fear continued to pour through him. He pressed a hand to his chest and struggled to catch his breath. What was this? Had he been attacked while resting? Unknowingly ingested poison with his meal?
No. He was careful with his food and drink at all times. His training at the academy taught him that.
Pain radiated down his torso and across his mid-section, then arrowed toward his back. Sulen dropped to his bed on a muffled groan and continued to pant. Sweat broke out on his brow.
He closed his eyes to figure out what was wrong. Sharp, ripping sensations continued to tear at him but his focus was complete on searching out the source.
Hurt.
There. At the edge of his subconscious was the thin thread of connection that had exploded to life months ago. A thread he’d thrust to the back of his mind when he couldn’t decipher its inexplicable existence or find the one responsible.
Instead of the vibrant strand that had sprung to life back then, it was now a flickering link on the verge of fading. Death loomed like a vicious specter hungry to devour the dwindling cord.
Despair. Pain.
The emotions flooded his senses and threatened to drown him beneath the onslaught.
Die.
“No!” Sulen’s adamant response to the thought was visceral. “You don’t get to die.”
Hurt. Hurt. Hurt.
The agony was incessant. Sulen curled in on himself and pressed his hands to his temples, squeezing. “Stay. Stay with me.”
Resistance flared and the thinning connection between them twisted in a desperate effort to unwind and free him. Sulen didn’t want to be freed. As angry as he’d been over the creation of the bond he hadn’t initiated, he was just as angry at the idea of it dissolving. Maybe more so.
She didn’t get to escape without paying for what she’d done by connecting them. Sulen shoved his energy down the line, every bit of strength he could spare flowing like an unstoppable stream to the person on the other end. He didn’t know how long it lasted or how much of himself he expended trying to bolster his...mate.
The realization had been sitting there all along. This person in the midst of dying, this female through some means not his own, was his mate.
And she was dying.
He choked back a denial and rolled weakly onto his back. She couldn’t die. Not til he found her. Discovered who she was and punished her for putting him through this.
Willing to die for this unknown woman, he sent energy he couldn’t afford, pulsing continuously through the mate bond.
No.
More coherent than the other mental cries that were pure emotion. Sulen shifted at the shocking response. Despite the plea, his eyes slid closed as he increased the output. He’d give everything he had to see his bond mate survive. It was a duty he couldn’t deny even if he tried.
!!!
Safe. Safe. We.
We? Sulen let that detail go to probe the veracity of the emotion based reply, unwilling to believe blindly. The bond was rebounding. Shuddering as relief crashed over him, Sulen sighed out a ragged breath.
She was telling the truth. No longer in danger of dying. He cut the flow of his life source he’d been sending her.
“I’ll find you. Be ready,” he muttered right before weakness sent him spinning into a black void.
Chapter 5
Four years later
“Mommy, mommy look.”
Her tiny daughter balanced one foot on the thin rail laying across the ground from the fencing Amelie planned to use to break her garden into sections. With arms spread wide for balance, Fleur wobbled and Amelie’s nerves took its customary hit.
Keeping her voice calm, she said, “Why don’t you hop down?”
Though her daughter was only a few inches from the ground, Amelie had to