Page 14 of Midnight Sanctuary

I walk into the living room and start pacing.I need to plant men in the ring. I need to get information on future auctions. I need to determine where she’s being moved. If she’s already been sold.

Fuck.

Fuck.

FUCK!

“Brother.”

I come to an abrupt stop and turn to Nikolai, who’s standing in the threshold of the door. “Take a breath,” he advises.

“Youtake a breath. How can you be so calm?”

“Because we can’t both be a mess right now.”

I glower at him. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” he hisses. “And you need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know you feel responsible—”

“That’s because Iamresponsible, Nikolai. Pol and Lev, they’remyresponsibilities. It was my job to keep them safe. I’m the one who exposed them to Alyssa. I’m the one who turned a blind eye when they started forming attachments with her.”

“Neither Polly nor Lev are babies anymore, Uri. You can’t control everyone all the time.”

There it is again, that word:control. Alyssa flung it at me enough times, with enough disdain, that it came to feel like a dirty word. An accusation. A curse.

“I’m not trying to control anyone; I’m trying toprotectthem! It’s all I’ve been trying to do for the past eight fucking years!”

Nikolai takes a deep breath. “You can’t blame the girl for this, Uri.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you suggesting I’m being too hard on her?”

He doesn’t blink or back down. “She’s been through a lot. Maybe, instead of blaming her, you should go down there and talk to her.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Listen, I’m just—”

“One minute, you’re telling me I’m too close and now, you want me to go down there and talk to her? Make your mind up,brat.”

“I get that you’re angry. And worried. I am, too. But blaming Alyssa isn’t going to change the situation. You need to talk to her. See if she can remember anything that might help us get Polly back.”

He’s making a lot of sense and it’s pissing me off. But I’m entirely too worked up right now to take his advice, good as it might be. It’s hard to accept that I’m falling to pieces. It’s harder still to accept that Nikolai is the one with a cool head on his shoulders. That maybeImight be the one who’s being unreasonable.

“You know what? You wanna waste your time talking to her—go right ahead. Me? I’ll be looking for our sister.”

Then I storm off, feeling the guilt follow me like a bad stench I can’t scrub off.

7

ALYSSA

“Are you pregnant?”

I’ve been dreading this moment since the second I was told by Uri’s stone-faced brother that a doctor was coming in to see me.

Luckily, he didn’t stick around for the entirety of the appointment. Although, if he’s anything like Uri, he’s probably lurking in the shadows on the other side of the locked basement door, waiting for Dr. Emily Popov to finish examining me.

“Please,” I say, grabbing her hand. “Pleasedon’t tell him.”

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