Page 8 of The Bodyguard and the Alpha
“Mr President?” The annoying drone of the human’s voice filtered into my brain. I pulled out my phone, pretending to take a call, before turning to Drone Voice.
“Please excuse me. Something urgent has come up. I’m sure that Sonya will be able to answer your questions.” At my wave, my VP moved through the crowd towards us. She would be no happier than me to answer his questions, but I had to get away. Now.
I turned my back and stalked to my mate. Gripping her elbow, I bent down and whispered in her ear. “With me. Now.”
Chapter 7
Electra
Bastien had been half listening to Norman Williams, a wealthy human with ties to the Moderates for about half an hour but I don’t think he’d heard a word the man had said. He had watched me every moment of the conversation. His eyes narrowed every time I refused food from one of the servers. I should eat. I knew I should eat. And normally I would. All of my favourite finger foods kept appearing in front of me on platters borne by smiling catering staff. Sometimes at these sorts of events, it seemed that the servers were circulating everywhere except for where you stood, but because these were our staff, servers crossed in front of me every few minutes. But the acid churning in my stomach made the thought of eating repugnant.
Stomach roiling, I waved away the tray of mini meat pies, the pastry golden brown and flaky. They looked perfect. But if I ate one it would surely come back up again.
When I turned my attention back to the President, he was on the phone, waving to Sonya. I moved my feet, flexing my toes in my boots. Something was happening. But my pre-cog hadn’t fired. It wasn’t an emergency.
Bastien prowled towards me. There was a frown on his face and his hands were clenched by his sides.
“With me. Now.” His voice in my ear was a deep rumble and one hand grabbed my left wrist. The heat of his skin was like a brand. My core reacted. It felt like he was claiming me and it was stupidly sexy. Now wassonot the time. But I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about this morning. About what it meant, no matter how many times I’d told myself tojust stop.
“What’s wrong?” Even as I hurried to keep up with him, his long legs striding towards the door, my fingers twitched, ready to cast a shield around us. Still nothing from my pre-cog. But his mood was tense and the emotion was contagious.
The rest of the security team moved in close. “No,” Bastien barked. The team halted as if someone had tugged their strings. I opened my mouth to protest. Why didn’t he want the security team? As if he’d heard me, he bent his head down to my ear. “Why didn’t you eat?”
What? This was about me? A wild thought entered my mind. But no, it was ridiculous. He couldn’t be herding me out of a public function because he was worried that I hadn’t eaten. I mean, sure, I’d felt his stare against my back and whenever I’d glanced his way his eyes had met mine. He had seen that I wasn’t eating. I swiped my tongue over my dry lips. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we won’t be interrupted.”
And what the hell did that mean? I wanted to stop. To turn and face him down. To tell him that this was not a joke. This was my job and my life. He’d been the one to call me the Ice Queen after I’d turned him down. We had a professional working relationship and he couldn’t just decide that there was something else between us. I swallowed down the protest. If wewere going someplace private, I could unleash when we didn’t have an audience.
He and I were nearly at the open double doors now. Only a few people were at the periphery of the crowd, one lone server walking towards us from the kitchen, on his way to the guests. Automatically, I assessed him, even though all the staff brought in for the Summit were employed by a trusted event management company and had been triple checked by Luc’s security team. He was fortyish. Human. Sandy hair and a scraggly beard. Unlike the other event staff, he didn’t smile when I looked at him.
My gaze moved on, but then snapped back to him. I looked at him harder. Something else tugged at my mind. Not danger. But an absence of danger. The server was a blank spot in my mind. I could see him but had no sense of him at all. My magic said there was no-one standing in front of me.
An alarm blared in my head. This was wrong. The server was like a hole in my magic sense. It was unnatural. My magic sensed everyone. It hadn’t let me down since the day I’d come into my power.
It was such a shock that I was slow to understand what I was experiencing. A spell. It had to be. A spell to hide him from my magic. A spell based on the stolen journal.
My mind cleared. Fuck. This was it. The terrorist attack.
Danger. Bastien was in danger.
I fell into the space that I always found when I had to fight. Everything seemed sharper. Clearer. The server saw my reaction. His arms straightened. I could see what he would do. He would throw the full platter, straight at me. Food would blind me. Distract me.
Unluckily for him, I was faster than he was.
I whirled free from Bastien’s grasp. Stepping between Bastien and the server I planted my feet, widening my arms, drawing the shape of the shield in front of me. The platter flew across the room, food hurtling towards me, splattering against my shield.
And then everything exploded in fire and noise.
***
I woke up slowly. Painfully. My lids were heavy. My mouth dry. Suppressing a groan, I took stock. A headache pounded in my temples, matching the throb at the back of my head. Was I hungover? I didn’t feel drunk. Instinctively, I reached for my power. I came up empty. My magic was gone. A shiver ran down my back.
The memory came rushing back in. The Summit lunch. Bastien acting weird, marching me out of the antechamber. The waiter.
Then, an explosion. Darkness.
Bastien. Oh fuck. Bastien. He could be hurt. My heart thudded, and my head throbbed with my pulse.
