Page 2 of Before the Bond Breaks
He cupped my cheek, tracing my bottom lip with his thumb. “And what do you need, Maze? Who protects you?”
The words tore through me. My throat ached with the truth I couldn’t give voice to.You. Only you.
I pressed my forehead to his, eyes squeezed shut against the burn of tears I could not allow to fall. “Find me in the end. However long it takes, whatever worlds I cross, find me.”
His breath shuddered against my skin. “Always.”
The air shifted, thickening around us. The invisible tether of our bond flared to life, wrapping tight, searing, undeniable. It wasn’t subtle. Not this time. Every Valkyrie and shifter in that hall feltit. Their breaths stilled, their gazes drawn by the surge of power that arced between us, golden and raw.
Talon kissed me once, fiercely. It was grief and fury, a promise but not a goodbye, and when he let me go, I felt hollowed out.
When I turned to my sisters, Winter created a portal. I looked back one last time. Talon’s gaze held mine; amber fire lit up the depths, anchoring me even as I stepped away.
I walked into the light with my vow burning hotter than the stars.
Balder, I will find you. And when I do, you will beg for mercy you will never receive.
1
MAZE
When the Roanoke County Sheriffcalled me to consult on a murder, I didn’t expect the victim to be one of my top agents.
Jessica Valen had gone radio silent over two weeks ago while working a few leads about a missing witch in upstate New York. She was working with the local coven to find the witch and who had taken her. My sisters and I searched for Jessica when she missed her check-in time, but whoever captured her was powerful enough not only to get the jump on a Valkyrie but to block her connection to me and the rest of our sisters.
A tightness formed in my chest as I stared down at Jessica’s lifeless body. Flashes of the day I found our mother dead in her chambers appeared in my mind. The ache in my chest grew, and tears filled my eyes. I blinked a few times, then wiped the unwanted tears away. Tears didn’t bring her back or find her killer. Neither did emotions. They sure as fuck didn’t stop my mother, the Valkyrie Prime Matron, from losing her life to a man who had supposedly loved her.
Taking a few deep breaths, I pushed the grief aside and slipped into my warrior mask, as my sisters called it.
Jessica wasn’t murdered by a human. I didn’t need the stench of dark, ritual magic still clinging to her body to tell me that. The scent was faint, but my otherworldly senses picked it up. There was also a soft green glow just under her skin. The only clothing she wore was her black boy shorts underwear and a black tank top. There were ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.
The Sheriff hadn’t been here when I arrived. He said on the phone he might be a little behind me since he was dealing with a crash two towns over. I didn’t have to worry about him sending a random officer to the scene. There were only a couple of deputies and one detective who knew about the witches and shifters who lived in their county.
A local witch had called Sheriff Gardner directly because she felt heavy magic around the scene. The Sheriff and I have worked together on cases before. My Valkyrie sisters and I own and run a private security and intelligence company. It helped us fit into this world. The human world. Midgard, as my sisters and I called it.
The scent of shifter magic hovered around the crime scene, which wasn’t unusual for this area. The Steele Clan shifters lived in the town bordering the forest I currently stood in, waiting for the Sheriff and Winter, my sister and the Valen Protection Agency’s tech and logistics lead.
Winter made sure everything on the back end of the agency ran smoothly. She was also an IT genius and hadn’t found a cybersecurity system she couldn’t hack.
I scanned the area, unsure of what to look for. Valkyries were hard to kill. Another reason I was certain Jess hadn’t been killed by a human.
The Briarwood Forest borders several towns in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Glen River ran along the southeast side of those towns. It was a perfect place to settle and stay relatively hidden. Although my sisters and I had been hiding in plain sight for a couple of decades now. We learned how to blend in and survive since we left Vanaheim after the Prime was murdered.
My sisters and I had searched the nine worlds for the traitor Balder Eldridge. He seemed to be ten steps ahead of us, using the magic he’d stolen from the Prime when he killed her to hide his whereabouts. We’d saved Midguard for last, because it was where the shifters and the rest of our Valkyrie clan lived. Once we arrived in this world, I felt my mother’s magic. It was slight, but it was out there, which meant Balder was there too.
No matter how much we tried, we couldn’t track the magic. He was doing something to keep us from finding him.
The one thing I hadn’t done yet was face Talon, the Alpha of the Steele Clan. It’d been just shy of two centuries since I last saw him. That was a long time for a shifter to be without his mate. Although we never started the soulbond ritual.
Turning at the sound of footsteps on the hiking trail a few feet behind me, I met Winter’s grief-filled gaze. She wore a pair of black designer jeans, paired with a lavender button-down and a pair of chunky-heeled boots that were both fashionable and comfortable enough for hiking in the woods. Her dark blonde hair was twisted in a neat bun at the base of her neck.
I wasn’t the best at offering comfort, but when she reached me, I opened my arms. Winter instantly stepped into my embrace. We stood there for several seconds, hugging, while the sounds of the forest enveloped us.
Winter was close to all our agents, but she and Jess shared a special bond since they were the youngest of all of us.
After another moment, Winter stepped back and wiped the tears from her cheeks as she pushed her emotions to the far corners of her mind. Conjuring her tablet, she scanned the area and got to work accessing the scene. “Where’s the Sheriff?”
“He was working a car crash when he got the call and said he’d meet me here.” I came earlier than planned because I wanted to get a sense of the area before Mitch, the Sheriff, arrived.
