Page 65 of Broken Mate

“She… told me to tell you she loves you.”

Her eyes softened with a love I felt ashamed in the face of.

“I miss her.” Maria sighed, rubbing her stomach. “Hopefully, she’ll be able to find me without too much fuss. Our coven was split right down the middle by the time she came of age, so joining the Paras was more of an expectation than a desire at the time. I’m glad we were able to start moving forward and help—”

No.

“She’s dead, Maria,” I interrupted, unable to listen to another word of this. “She… she died. I’m so sorry.”

I’d known the Captain wasn’t a terrible person, yet hadn’t done a thing to save her. Sitting here, listening to her mom talk about how much she loved her? Unbearable.

Maria stared at me, wide-eyed. “What?”

The way she almost laughed at the end knocked the wind out of me.

Dr. Vasille was quick to catch the other woman when her knees wobbled beneath her. “Very tactful, dear.”

Her dry reprimand didn’t feel any worse than the sob that choked out of Maria, magic billowing out of her. After helping to settle her into the small chair she used to draw her patients’ blood, Vasille winced. Not that Maria noticed; the walls of the clinic were trembling around us in her shocked grief, wind billowing and taking off with stray papers.

“How?” she groaned out between sobs, like speaking was causing her agony.

I hesitated. “I don’t think—”

“How?!”

This time. it was a scream. Vasille cursed when several glasses shattered on her bar, and I blew out a long breath.

“G-Gabriella did it herself while we had her and a few others held prisoner. They’d attacked the compound, and the last time I spoke to her, she told me about you and asked that I tell you she loved you. We didn’t know they would—” I cleared the lump from my throat, blinking back tears I didn’t deserve to shed. “We didn’t know.”

Not that any of us had intended a better fate for them. I might have wanted to help, but I’d been vastly outnumbered, even among our inner circle. Auren had never said what he’d planned for them, but considering how Zuzanna had been snapping necks right before I’d taken responsibility for the Paras, it was all the same destination.

At least Gabriella had gotten to choose how she got there.

“Did she do it with a knife? A gun?Magic?How, Aria!?” Maria demanded. Dr. Vasille was no help when I looked to her for advice on what to do with the inconsolable witch.

“We think it was a spell,” I finally admitted. “The Council’s spell. To keep them from going turncoat.”

Closing my eyes didn’t block the feel of her magic lashing out at every wall of the clinic, but it hid the tears trying to overflow from me.

“You killed my baby,” Maria sobbed. I let that accusation wash over me without trying to deny it because we had.

We hadn’t been the ones to order her into battle, but we hadn’t given her a reason to hope we would let her go home, either. Maybe if we had, Gabriella Velez would have thought twice before following in the other Para’s footsteps. I’d known she was better than the others—better than Aster, who’d been in complete denial—and I should have done something more to help.

I sighed heavily. “Here’s your file, Dr. Vasille.”

I laid the folder on the nearest flat surface, then spun on my heel. Another useless apology to the grieving mother just seemed cruel.

A blessed-blood wolf was running toward the clinic as I was leaving. I figured that must be “Chandru” from how panicked he looked; I wondered how far Maria’s residual magic must have reached for it to lead him to her.

Aria?

Sariel broke through the turmoil that was rolling around in my head, and I tried to breathe through it.

I met Maria Velez, I admitted quietly.

Understanding and shock mingled together before pure concern hit me in the chest.

I leaned back against the closest building with a choked sob. My head fell against the brick, and I tried to breathe despite the tightening of my chest and throat.

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