Page 105 of Heir

The door to unit 405 was already open.

Zandren, still in bear form, stood in the living room, his eyes sad as they zeroed in on Omaera.

Her gaze swiveled to Gemma’s bedroom door, which was wide open. She ran into her friend’s room, screaming her name. She flicked on the bedroom light, ruffled up the linens on Gemma’s bed, then went into the bathroom they shared, through it, and into her own room.

We all knew the truth though.

Gemma wasn’t here.

They took her.

With tears streaming down her cheeks, green eyes wide in horror, Omaera returned to us in the living room. “Why?” she asked, shaking her head. “Why’d they take her?”

I shook my head.

“D-Do you think they’re going to k-kill her like they did Delia?”

I had to keep myself from going to her. From comforting her. I’d already messed up once, going against my own moral code and touching her when I swore I wouldn’t. Now, I had penance to deal with, and no matter how much it hurt, I was going to give her the space she needed.

That didn’t stop it from gutting me to the spine when she fell to the ground and wrapped her arms around Zandren’s big fury neck.

He moaned like bears do and nuzzled her.

I’d never been so jealous in all my life. And I’d just had sex with her.

But she hated me.

What we did in that cleaning closet was nothing short of animalistic. Savage. I was in a fugue state of lust and she was under some kind of spell I had inadvertently cast on her. If she was of total sound mind, she never would have agreed.

“We have to find her,” Omaera said, her words muffled as she pressed her face into Zandren’s neck. “What if they hurt her? What if they kill her? She’s human. She won’t be able to withstand half the torture they delivered to Delia.”

“What do you think they want with Gemma?” Maxar asked.

I shook my head and pulled out my phone, dialing the King. “Zandren, you should call your father. Maxar, call Queen Anysa.”

“Yeah, because I have her on speed dial and she picks up,” Maxar said sarcastically. “I’m not like you two aristocrats. I’m just a fire mage. No royal blood line bubbling in these veins.”

I rolled my eyes just as Howar picked up. “New demon advisor should arrive tomorrow. How is our new queen?”

I took the call out on the balcony. “Not good. Her roommate and best friend was just kidnapped. By demons.”

“The same that killed her aunt.”

“We believe so.”

“And this roommate was human?”

“Is human,” I corrected. Why did he already refer to Gemma as deceased? How odd. “She’s Omaera’s best friend. We can’t just let them have her. They’re after Omaera, so they’re either using Gemma as bait or—”

“They took her by mistake.”

“Gemma was in the picture with Omaera. The one the demons took from Delia’s house. So they must have tracked Omaera down here, not realizing that the women are roommates and they just assumed Gemma was Omaera.”

Howar hummed a response.

“We don’t even know where to begin.”

“I’ll let Anysa know. She may know of a hunter mage in the area.”

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