Читать книгу Noah - Jacquelyn Frank - Страница 10

Something disturbed Corrine in her sleep just enough to make her brow furrow. She turned her head restlessly, but was suddenly halted as an abrupt hand on her mouth stilled her movement and pushed her head back into the pillow with a heavy weight.

Despite the depth of her sleep, Corrine’s eyes flew open wide. She panicked for all of a moment, but then realized she recognized the man who was leaning over her in the slightly brightened room. She exhaled with relief as she looked up into Noah’s gray-green eyes.

Her relief was short-lived. As she looked up at the King, Corrine was overwhelmed with the very powerful intuition that something wasn’t right. First of all, Noah would never approach her in such a rude manner. No matter how badly he might need her help, he simply would not ever wake her behind her husband’s back. Or, in this case, leave him sleeping beside her in ignorance. Corrine’s heart began to beat a rapid cadence as the King leaned farther over her, boring his gaze into hers so deeply that she felt as if he were strip-mining her thoughts with angry clarity.

“If you attempt to wake him, I will be forced to drain his energy even more than I already have,” Noah whispered to her, his gentleness of voice and manner giving her a terrible chill because it was so clearly in opposition to his actions. “If I do that, it will leave him quite weak and vulnerable to the day. He is young yet, Corrine, and I do not know what that would do to him.”

Corrine flicked a wide, frightened gaze from Noah to her defenseless husband. She couldn’t control the panic in her thoughts, so she closed her eyes and briefly prayed that Noah’s manipulations and the lethargy of the day were enough to keep Kane from picking up on her alarm. The connection that had grown between them was now so strong that there was very little guarantee of that. For the first time she wished she were still at that weaker level of telepathy that had made it so hard for them to communicate mentally early on. She had no idea why Noah was leaning over her, threatening her and her husband in the bright light of day, but instinct screamed at her that it wasn’t quite Noah who was looking down on her.

She opened her eyes once more, giving a single, distinct nod. It would be senseless to fight him. Not only because she had no power with which to do so, but because even if she did, he could easily overcome her.

How she longed for her sister’s ability to siphon away power in that moment. Oh, she had a version of this herself; every Druid did. However, in their human/Druid hybrid way it tended to be limited only to their Imprinted partner. It was part of the balance that helped soothe the Demon soul and control a Demon’s power in its less controllable moments. As with Bella, the trick was to turn it off. It was this ability, as well as the emotional weaving of souls, that kept a Demon safe from madness. It was another reason why an Imprinted partner was even more precious to a Demon than diamonds.

Noah was dragging her out of bed with a painful hand around her arm when that thought and all its implications sank into Corrine’s awareness. It was nearing Samhain, the moon becoming fuller every moment, the pressure of its influence weighing down heavily on even the most powerful and moral of Demons. The realization altered her entire perception about what was happening; however, she couldn’t protest in any fashion. Noah’s grip was like iron, holding her to his body and forcing her into silence. The Demon King was hot against her back, completely at odds with the few degrees cooler that normal Demon body temperature was compared to humans. His bare fingers scalded her lips and cheeks like tea that was a little too hot. He marched her out of the room and closed the door behind them. Only when he shoved her toward the stairs did he finally release her.

Corrine didn’t even look back at him. She lowered her head and obeyed his obvious command in silence. She preceded him down the stairs as she tried to force herself to think. If she attempted to wake Kane, Noah would instantly recognize his shift in energy. She wasn’t even sure she could rouse her husband so far into daylight hours and after he had been manipulated by Noah’s powers. Noah was right. Kane was too young to have even the dregs of a hope of coming up against the King’s powers. Corrine was even more disadvantaged.

When they reached the first floor, she realized with increasing dread that she wasn’t Noah’s sole focus. Leah, who was curled up asleep on the couch and sucking her thumb enthusiastically, was also involved. Corrine was frightened and baffled as she rushed over to her niece. She gathered the babe to her breast protectively and searched her quickly for damage.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” she cried out, glaring at the Demon King with the infamous temper that ran through the blood of her family. Noah smiled, and somehow that chilled Corrine more than his anger would have. He moved over to her and Leah, leaning forward slightly to meet her wide, green eyes.

“Your sister and her husband will be here soon. Even my talents are not enough to mislead their chase for very long.”

That was his answer. There was only one thing that would make him avoid the Enforcers, and he had confirmed what Corrine had already been coming to understand.

Noah had succumbed to the madness of the Samhain moon.

Corrine felt a stab in her heart, realizing that she had partially caused that. The understanding that his destined mate was dead, and in a violent manner that could have been avoided had he only acted sooner, would make for a powerful catalyst toward a surrender to the Hallowed moon. She and Kane had made a grave mistake letting him go off alone in grief.

“Noah, whatever you’re thinking of doing, you have to know that it will bring you into conflict with those you love! You will force Jacob and Isabella to—”

“They can try. However, I doubt they will be too eager to do so with their daughter and you, Corrine, in the line of fire. Now stop stalling and get into the back room. The longer you take, the more you increase the chance of them actually taking part in that confrontation you so dread.”

Silently, painfully, she tore her gaze from his and obeyed him. The implications of the situation she found herself in were almost too excruciating to bear. She hadn’t done many searches for mates thus far, but she had never once entertained the idea that there could be negative consequences. If she had taken a moment to worry about it, she would have understood that an incident like this could very well keep Demons away in droves. Even more so than they already were.

She was occupied with this thought when she was harshly shoved into the room she used for meditation, the one that had seen such tragic revelation only a few hours ago. She fell onto her knees in the mess of soiled pillows and tumbled herbs that Kane had coaxed her into waiting to clean up the next night. The room still smelled heavily of burnt herbs, the char of fire, and even the traces of that moment of time in Chicago.

“Wake the child,” Noah commanded frigidly, righting a few candles and lighting them and the remnants of herbs in the brazier with a simple thought.

“Impossible. Not at this hour of the day.”

“I will help you,” he said, again gracing her with that disturbing smile.

Sure enough, Leah stirred in her arms with a cranky protest and a whine. Corrine hushed her as she apprehensively watched Noah manipulate the surroundings of a place she held sacred.

“Noah, please, what do you expect me to do? I don’t even know what I did the first time!”

“Just do what you always do,” he said serenely. “It was Leah who brought me to her. You merely gave her a path.”

Corrine realized the truth in one heart-stopping breath. Of course! She knew the prophecy of Leah’s birth as well as anyone. Why hadn’t she realized this earlier? The incident had happened the moment her niece had intruded on their ritual. And now Noah clearly hoped to reproduce the effect. But to what end?

“I will not let her die, Corrine.”

“Oh my God, you want to bring her into the present,” Corrine gasped, the realization horrifying her. “You want to try to save her and bring her here! My God, Noah, do you have any idea what the ramifications of playing with fate can be? You and your Demons revere Destiny. It’s your religion! And you don’t even know if it’s possible to—”

“I know that if I can do this, it will save her life,” he interrupted her coldly, “and that is all that matters to me.”

Of course it would be that simple to someone in his state of mind. Isabella had once told her that no one could reason with a Demon in the throes of a Hallowed compulsion, save maybe the Enforcers. Their presence alone tended to have a powerful quelling effect. However, Corrine was beginning to doubt that the mere act of the Enforcers materializing before him would have much of an effect on Noah. He knew what he wanted, and clearly he was willing to do anything to get it done. Even things that, when he came back to his own ordered senses, would devastate him.

Tears filled the young Druid’s eyes as she thought about that. The only thing she could be grateful for was that Leah was far too young to understand what was going on and would probably not think twice about treating her uncle Noah the way she always had. Corrine knew that even if this all stopped that very moment, she wasn’t capable of doing the same.

“Noah, you can’t be sure you can do this. You could be risking all of our lives for a life that ended a week ago. Please! Please don’t—”

She choked on her next word when the King’s hand closed like a brutal vise around the back of her neck. He gathered her hair in his fist and jerked her head back so she could see his eyes. Cold and gray and lifeless, they radiated the distance of his rational mind.

“I suggest you start focusing on your task.”

Jacob materialized out of a cloud of dust seconds after his wife. She was already several feet in front of him, reaching out with every known sense for any trace of their child.

“I don’t understand,” she bit out with helpless frustration. “This is the second time we’ve taken the wrong path, Jacob.”

“What I do not understand is why Noah would take off with Leah in the first place. Perhaps it was against his will? I cannot imagine how that would be possible, but the confusion of energy we keep encountering…”

“It is as if we are being purposely misled.” His wife completed his thought for him, drawing her bottom lip between her nibbling teeth. She shivered violently, wrapping her arms around herself as if trying to give herself comfort. “I should have known something was wrong when the castle was empty. Instead, I waited for an hour, wasting precious time thinking that any minute Noah was going to materialize with our baby in his hands.”

Jacob stepped up to his distraught mate quickly, drawing her into a comforting embrace. He fought the urge to get wrapped up in her emotions, knowing all too well that one of them had to keep their head. He would wait until he found Noah before he did anything rash. The truth of the matter was that he had an inexplicable urge to throttle the monarch, whether this was something he could have prevented or not.

Even so, he tried not to follow the specific line of thoughts ghosting ominously in the back of his mind. If he contemplated the worst, it would make Bella even more upset. It was near impossible to keep thoughts away from one who was as intimate with his mind as he was, but he would damn well try for her sake. Still, he was all too aware that this year’s Samhain moon was unusually potent, the very reason they had been forced to have someone babysit their child from dusk to dawn night after night in the first place. Combine that with the fact that Noah’s behavior had been somewhat erratic lately, and it made for a frightening recipe.

Still, no one had ever heard of a Demon harming a child while in the throes of Hallowed madness.

“There’s always a first time for everything,” Isabella whispered softly.

Jacob cursed under his breath. He hadn’t meant to fully entertain his thoughts. “It could be that he left Leah somewhere else and what we are following is Noah playing whatever tricks he feels are necessary to delay us while he engages in whatever mayhem. I do not believe for a second that Noah would harm Leah.”

“Why now? It’s daylight. How can he be expending this amount of energy? What would drive him so hard against his own sense of right and wrong when the moon is not even out?”

“It is out, love. The moon is always out. It never goes away. It is not like the sun, which is blocked from our sight and senses by the whole of the Earth on a daily cyclical basis. When the moon comes into phase, it remains in that phase day and night. And I think we both know that Noah is far too powerful and efficient at his skills to have to worry about replenishing every iota of energy he expends, whatever the time of day.”

“And so…” she prompted.

“And so I say you quit playing this game of merry-go-round and go to the most reasonable place you think Noah would leave Leah if he were dropping her into someone else’s care. Borrow enough of my power to get you there and let me know what you find. Meanwhile, I am going to make sense of this trick of trails and hunt down our monarch before he does something he will sorely regret.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She quickly kissed his mouth. She closed her eyes, but didn’t take the time to enjoy the intimacy of the touch. She focused inside herself where she kept her ability to siphon Nightwalker power. She didn’t hesitate to tear an enormous chunk for herself out of Jacob’s power. He would replenish quickly once she was out of range, using the resources of the Earth around him. Her borrowed resources, however, were limited to what she stole and the amount of time she could maintain a grip on them. It had taken her quite a bit of practice to engage in even the most rudimentary form of this skill; this one was a little more on the monumental side.

As she fled in a frantic cloud of dust, Jacob exhaled and sat down hard on the ground. In his sudden physical weakness, he could only watch her go. But it wasn’t long after that before he got up and began to unravel the web of deceit his liege lord had woven for him.

“You don’t count?” Sands asked.

Kestra glanced up at him from beneath lashes as white as her hair, her almost translucent blue eyes training on him.

“Do I need to?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?” she asked casually.

Sands laughed. “Are you kidding? Anyone who would try to cheat you would have to be insane.”

“And there’s the reason why I never have to count,” she rejoined, picking up the box and tucking it into her purse. She shouldered the leather accessory with ease, as if all it had within it was a comb and lipstick, not nearly a quarter million dollars in cash.

“We’ll be calling you again,” Sands said cordially.

“I would imagine so.”

Sands stood up, wiped his palm on his kerchief, and extended the hand to her. Kestra merely smiled politely and kept both her hands on her purse strap. Handkerchief or not, she wasn’t about to get slimed, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to grab her by her hand.

The thought gave her pause. That was when she realized something wasn’t quite right. The shiver that suddenly walked up her spine, resting with a sharp tingle at the base of her hairline as it was doing right now, had never failed to alert her that something bad was about to happen to her.

She lowered her thick white lashes until they all but obscured the blue diamond irises of her eyes. She glanced around the room yet again, as she had been doing since stepping into the unknown territory. This time she caught the slightest shadow of movement in the hallway behind Sands’s back.

She sighed, long and regretfully, flicking open her icy eyes so she could give him a cold glare. “Whatever you are planning,” she hissed chillingly, “let me warn you it’s not a good idea.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she swung out with her heavily weighted purse and clocked him upside his head. Kestra popped out of her heels and made a mad dash across the room. Heading for the door would be a mistake, leaving her too open if the person in the hallway was armed, so she dove over the breakfast bar and into the kitchen where she would be out of his or her line of sight. Unfortunately, it put her far from the only apparent exit from the penthouse.

She reached into her bag for her gun, dropping everything else as she cupped it in her hands and laid her finger over the trigger. All the clues to trouble were now in the forefront of her mind, making her curse herself for missing them at the outset. She glanced toward Sands as she eased into the kitchen entrance. He was out cold and bleeding heavily into the formerly pristine carpet, near her abandoned shoes. The question on her mind was how many others might be hiding in the enormous suite.

She was screwed, and she knew it. A second later the wall near her head exploded. She yelped as drywall was flung everywhere and in rapid succession as someone shot through it from the opposite side. All she could do was drop down to the floor as the wall shattered above her, raining plaster and water down onto her. As the path of holes being blown into the wall started to descend toward her prone body, she had no choice but to get out of range as quickly as possible. She scrabbled against the Italian tile, her stocking feet sliding without purchase as she pulled forward on her hands. She grabbed the carpet, her fingers of her left hand gaining purchase on the thick fibers of the pile. She barely had both knees on the carpeting before a huge hand grabbed her by her thick blond braid and jerked her hard to her feet.

She felt the burn of a hot gun muzzle against her temple.

There was the slap of flesh meeting flesh a second before the gun fired near her ear. Kestra dropped to the floor, but miraculously found herself with her head intact. Her ear was ringing painfully, but her attacker had missed. She looked up quickly and saw why.

A tall, black-haired man with the build of a roughneck had the gunman by the arm and did exactly what she would have done had she been given the chance. He broke it clean in half. He grabbed the screaming thug by the back of his collar, slamming him face-first into the near wall so hard that Kestra could easily imagine the snap of one or two more bones, even though she would be lucky if she could hear herself sneeze at that point.

But there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

She watched as her assailant was dropped at the other man’s feet without even a hint of care or concern for his life, an attitude of contempt she was very much inclined to share. Then she saw a second male, no doubt the one who had been playing turkey shoot with her through the wall, run around the bend of the back hallway.

“Look out!” Her warning was apparently unnecessary. So was the bead she drew with her suddenly remembered weapon. The newcomer left his first victim behind him as he stepped into the path of the second. It was as if he couldn’t care less that these men were armed. James accused her of having a death wish sometimes; this man who was in the process of saving her life was that term personified, apparently. He was also incredibly fast. One second a gun was brought up in his face; the next he had hold of the other man’s arm, wrenched it almost completely around, and moved to strike him in the face with a speed that was unreal for someone his size. She knew an expert fighter when she saw one, but this was out of the scope of even her experience. There was no trading of blows, just him eliminating threats with perfunctory ease.

He turned as the second gunman fell, and her eyes went wide at the imposing sight he made, sturdy legs braced apart, hands half curled into fists, green-gray eyes lit high with the fever of the fight. All of this while dressed in a wardrobe she could only identify as being antiquated. With skintight breeches and a loose, billowing shirt of silk tucked in at his lean waist, he looked like he had stepped off an old pirate ship. Right down to his highly polished boots and the brief ponytail held back by a simple black strip of leather or something like it.

“Come with me.”

He held a hand down to her as she stared at him.

“As if!” she exclaimed, getting quickly to her feet and backing away from him. “Thanks for the help, but I am so out of here.” She raised her weapon, eyeing him so he would take the threat seriously. She barely completed her next step back before he wrapped fingers like steel around her left upper arm, disarming her with embarrassing speed and ease, turning her to him and stepping close enough that they bumped bodies.

“Come willingly or not, it is your choice, but you are coming.”

For a single suspended instant, Kestra felt the fit of their tense bodies as they stood close enough to exchange heat. Her heartbeat fluttered as she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she knew him somehow. Somehow, his fit and warmth and even his commandeering attitude were instantly recognizable to her. Recognizable, but not identifiable.

“I choose not to come,” she snapped at him.

She moved with lithe, determined speed, breaking his hold on her arm swiftly as she recoiled to strike him. He barely ducked fast enough to miss getting clocked in the nose by her palm. She unleashed herself on him with rapid violence, landing half the strikes she intended to, clearly learning as she went how best to feint and orchestrate his responses. But Kestra fought with her emotions in this instance, probably without even knowing why. Her true advantage was that he refused to strike back at her.

He had been human.

But Noah was not human, and he was not very full of patience at the moment, either. Ungrateful thing that she is, he thought with an inner chuckle. Kestra was suddenly faced with nothing but air. Then she felt an arm wrapping around her from behind. He jerked her clean off her feet and up into his body, pressing her back and bottom tightly to the contours of rock-hard muscle beneath the delicate fabrics he wore. Kestra gasped when his free arm crossed over her breasts, trapping her beneath flat, open palms of his powerful hands.

“Good night, Kikilia,” he whispered on a hot breath into her ear.

Kestra opened her mouth to lambaste him, but the next thing she knew her body was draining of energy so rapidly she was suddenly terrified there wouldn’t be enough left for her to draw her next, much-needed breath. She fell down into the will of his embrace, blackness overwhelming her.

Isabella coalesced with a sharp snap in Corrine’s living room. It made no sense to her that Corrine would take Leah without sending Kane to them with a quick pop-in-o-matic message telling them so. Even if it had been terribly close to dawn, Corrine would have known she’d be mad with worry and would have found a way to reassure her that her daughter was safe in her care. Then again, Kane was limited to teleporting to places he had been to or seen before. With the two Enforcers running around like they had been, getting a locus on them would have been impossible for Kane.

Bella rubbed her hands together anxiously as she oriented herself to her surroundings. Right away her hunting senses flared to life, alerting her to the presence of not only her daughter, but her sister and the elusive Demon King. Instantly on the heels of that was the aura of something else…something powerful and distorted…and a blanketing underlayer of fear that was so potent, the little Druid could practically taste it.

Everything she sensed went directly into her husband’s awareness, but she ignored his shouting voice of warning in her head as she ran across the room to Corrine’s meditation quarters. She threw herself at the door, which burst open with the momentum of her weight.

The room was swirling with eerie, alien energy, a fog of smoke, and a crackling web of lightning that ran along the ceiling. The rush of air the opening door sent into the room pushed the center of the cloud of smoke back in an angry swirl. The wild billows and curls parted with abrupt violence, revealing the imposing figure of the Demon King standing within.

In his arms he held the limp form of a human woman.

Isabella gasped with shock, no matter how much Jacob’s thoughts had warned her she might encounter something exactly like this.

“Bella!”

Isabella turned at the sound of her sister’s voice, instantly making out Corrine’s huddled figure and the fact that her daughter was clutched desperately in her arms.

“Be careful! He’s gone mad!”

Isabella snapped her attention back to Noah. She instinctively braced her feet as she took note of his abrupt advance on her, the unconscious human woman still clutched in his powerful arms.

“Noah,” she addressed him quickly and softly, “what are you doing?”

“Making things right,” he answered as if it would explain everything. “She is mine.”

“That may very well be,” she said hurriedly, purposely putting herself in his path when he made the move to go around her.

He could have altered form in a blink, but he knew as well as she did what that would force her to do. If there was truly one person in all Demon society who could bring this to a quick end, it was Bella. But there was a price to pay when she snatched someone’s power, so if she could avoid it, she would. She had taken of the King’s power once already, with disastrous consequences that had nearly cost several lives, including her own. It wasn’t something she wanted to repeat, especially with her vulnerable family in such close proximity.

“Noah,” she continued, her voice pitched with calmness and gentleness. “If she is your destined mate no one will keep you from her. However, this isn’t the way to bring the woman into our world. It isn’t our way or the way of your laws.”

Bella glanced down at the woman in question, taking a better look at her. Her head hung limply back over the King’s left arm, a braid of pure white hair swinging in the smoky air. She was pale, clearly drained of most of her vital energy, a condition Isabella was familiar with enough to know who had initiated it. Since Noah had committed his crimes in Corrine’s presence with apparent purpose, it was very likely that this woman was his intended mate. However, she could also be an innocent on the wrong end of the King’s misdirected and volatile emotions. Either way, Noah was in no state to be in charge of the fate of a vulnerable human female.

“She looks weak,” Isabella noted softly. “Let me help.”

“Stand back, Enforcer. You will not take her from me.”

“I didn’t say I would,” she agreed quickly. “But if you force us into an altercation, Noah, it could harm everyone in this room. Leah, Corrine…and this female as well. You’re so powerful that I’d have to dampen your power with every ounce of my strength. There would be little room for finesse, Noah. The young woman you hold couldn’t stand such a drain on her energy.”

“As you say, Leah is in this room. Can so young a child bear the brunt of her mother’s power?” he countered coldly.

“Perhaps not. But I can guarantee that you will not survive her father’s wrath if anything happens to her or any of his family.”

Noah looked up over the tiny Druid who blocked his path, to meet the black gaze of his male Enforcer. He realized then that Isabella had been stalling him while awaiting her husband’s arrival.

Finally, the monarch visibly hesitated. One Enforcer; perhaps he could get away with the advantage in such a battle. However, the matched set was something else entirely.

It was this moment of hesitation that always heralded a turn in the dynamics of an enforcement situation. Jacob was quite familiar with it after all these centuries. The hesitation was no doubt as selfishly motivated as anything else the King had done in these past few hours, but it was also the first step toward logical reasoning. If he realized how futile his situation was, he would be on the path of recognizing the other flaws in his uncontrolled behavior.

Jacob put a hand on his wife’s waist, nudging her gently in the direction of their child. As Bella hurried to inspect and protect her sister and her baby, Jacob squared off with his longtime friend.

He observed every detail of Noah’s body language for a quick second, everything from the solid brace of his feet to the death grip he had on the blond woman hanging so limply in his arms. She would sport some serious bruises come the evening, but Jacob was determined to see that was the worst of the damage. It worried him that her breath came so shallow and that she was so deeply unconscious, but his senses, as sharp as all of nature, told him Noah hadn’t had the time to put any other marks or damage on her.

“I will not allow anyone to take her from me. I no longer care what sacrifices have to be made, I will make them to keep her. Do you understand me?”

Jacob understood perfectly. In that moment, the King would go through every single living being in that room—in their very society—to keep his prize. Jacob knew the feeling well. Even he had once threatened Noah when he’d been forced away from Bella after their first intense encounter. It had torn at his soul and his sanity in a way that he didn’t think he could ever truly bear again. Not without becoming pure animal and instinct, pretty much exactly like the Demon before him.

“I understand. But the only way you can truly keep her is to obey the law and its protocols. You realize that, do you not?”

Noah hesitated again, taking a moment to shift the weight of his burden a little higher against his chest. Jacob watched the King’s eyes close briefly, his face turning closer to the woman’s, the sound of his breath loud in the room full of people holding theirs.

“Very well.”

Jacob and Isabella both cautiously exhaled. Corrine was less able to control her emotions, bursting into tears and falling against her sister in relief. Bella had no choice but to push her away. Her husband’s command was ringing in her head and she rose straightaway to obey. She approached Noah carefully, swiping damp palms down the thighs of her jeans.

“Let me have her, Noah,” she beckoned with a half smile and all the feminine coaxing she could muster. If Jacob had reached for Noah’s possession, there was no telling what volatile reaction it could spark. To this day, Jacob himself had difficulties with other men touching or intending to touch Isabella. Therefore, he was highly sensitive to who should make the necessary move of retrieving the King’s would-be mate.

The unconscious woman was nearly six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than the petite Enforcer, but Bella was far stronger than she looked. Jacob watched her work her soft, soothing magic on the Demon King, her hand reaching to cover his warmly where it gripped his captive’s shoulder.

“She…she is drained,” he warned her, clearly reluctant to release her to anyone.

“I know. I see that. She will come around soon enough,” she assured him.

“Only I can reverse it. I can feed her energy in general, but she is to be my one true mate. It is my energy she will crave as she becomes Druid. She must stay close to me.”

Bella glanced at Corrine when she caught her nod of agreement out of the corner of her eye.

“Then she will stay close to you. Only, let me carry her. You…” Bella hesitated for a long, painful second that reflected a fear only her husband was fully aware of. She spoke before he could stop her. “You have frightened Leah. Go and comfort her. You know she always stops crying for you.”

Isabella knew her husband was flushed with mistrust and barely repressed outrage at the idea of Noah touching their child after he had behaved so badly and with so little regard for her safety, especially because neither of them was at all certain Noah’s episode was past him. However, Isabella knew that Noah would never relinquish the woman without redirection.

He finally acquiesced after a long moment, hoisting his burden into Bella’s arms with a tenderness that belied all of his actions of the past minutes.

“Don’t worry,” Bella whispered to him. Noah nodded, drawing away slowly. He paused for several beats before turning toward Leah. What he ended up facing was the expressions of fright that neither of the females huddled together could have repressed even if they’d had all the time in the world to prepare for it.

It was this evidence of the cruelty of his actions that finally and truly hit home. Noah exhaled sharply with shock and breathless pain as true awareness battered him from all sides. He was surrounded by a roomful of loved ones he had betrayed. He had been running on borrowed strength and power for several hours, burning it off as fast as he could replenish it in his maddened momentum. When the insanity abandoned him, so, too, did his strength, and just as suddenly. Noah stumbled forward onto his knees, only the brace of his hand preventing him from falling facedown onto the debris-scattered floor.

With a child’s fickleness of memory and emotion, Leah scrambled out of her aunt’s arms and hurried to help her uncle. Her little hands cupped his face for a moment, and then she hugged his head and made the soft, soothing sounds her mother and aunt used to comfort her when she was hurt or upset.

It completely undid the Demon King. He blindly gathered the little girl in his arms, sobbing once with incredible pain into her neck before completely giving in to his emotions in front of them all.