Call of the Siren(73)

He’d have to.

From somewhere outside the bedroom, his phone buzzed again.

Shit.

It could only be one of his brothers. They were the only ones who had this number. The four of them had ditched their old phones before embarking on their mission to retrieve Lina, since the Council could use them as trackers.

After rising carefully from the bed and assuring himself that Lina was still sound asleep, he stalked outside the room and gently clicked the door shut. The light trickling in from the windows told him it was sometime in the morning, which meant he and Lina had gotten at least a couple hours of sleep.

He searched the small living area of the cabin until he found the phone lying on the kitchen counter. The caller had already hung up, but there were a couple of missed calls from Taeg. He pressed the button to call him back and held the phone to his ear. It only took a second for his brother to answer.

“What the fuck, bro? I’ve been hitting you up for over an hour.”

“Sorry.” Trailing a hand over his eyebrows, Dagan headed to the nearest window and peered out at the gloomy morning. “We fell asleep.”

“Where are you?”

“Found an empty cabin.” He gave Taeg the location. “Why?”

“That mage I told you about, he thinks he can help disable the bomb. I’m sending him your way.”

“That’s great.” Dagan paused. “How are things over there?”

“Okay. We’ve been weaving around the state, making sure we weren’t trailed by any of Belpheg’s men. We’re headed back to the cave now.”

“Take care of yourselves.”

“Always, bro,” Taeg drawled. “Everything okay on your end?”

Dagan grinned, unable to help himself. “We’re hanging in there.”

There was a pause, then Taeg, said, “Good.” His voice sounded all too knowing. “Take care of yourself, baby brother. Be safe and smart.”

He heard Taeg’s subtle warning. He was worried about what Dagan and Lina would do…and how Ronin would react to it. While Dagan appreciated his brother’s concern, Taeg didn’t understand what had happened between him and Lina. What they meant to each other.

Soon enough he would. They all would.

…

“Does it hurt?”

Lina bit back a groan of pain and forced herself to answer the mage standing above her just as dispassionately as he’d asked the question. “Not enough for you to stop.”

Crouched above her on the bed, he continued his improvised surgery with a grunt. The man was a true professional. Even though her T-shirt was hiked up almost to her breasts and nothing covered her lower body other than the thin bed sheet, he didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in stealing a peek. A lock of his dark brown hair fell down over one eye as he worked.

Truth be told, he didn’t look much like a mage. More like a young, semi-hot doctor in training. But then, she supposed every mage started off young. This one happened to be human, which was pretty rare. From what she’d heard, the human race as a whole tended to lack the powers and abilities common to so many other species.

Of course, you had the exceptions like Maya and Brynn, who made it seem pretty awesome to be human—or in Brynn’s case, mostly human.

When Dagan had woken Lina from her coma-like sleep to tell her a mage was on his way to attempt to disable the bomb, she’d joyfully thrown her arms around him. The mage would be able to do it. He had to.

“How’s it going?” she asked when impatience got the better of her, daring a glance at her abdomen. There was a bloody, gaping wound where the mage had magically cut into her flesh to reach the bomb.

“Hold still,” he replied irritably.

When the mage had first arrived at the cabin, he’d told them he could do one better than simply disabling the bomb. He thought he might be able to remove it entirely, eliminating any and all possibility of the dark fae somehow reactivating it later. Since that had sounded damn good to her, she’d been on board with the surgery, even though she’d known it was going to hurt like a mother.

“Fuck.” She bit down on her lip to stifle the urge to cry out at a particularly vicious jab. Damn, this hurt like hell, but she wasn’t about to scream. No way.

“How are you doing, sunshine?” Dagan, who sat beside her on the bed, grasped her hand.

Lina turned her gaze to him, willing herself to concentrate on his face rather than on the pain. “I’m good,” she rasped out, squeezing his hand tight.

The mage’s fingers dug into the slippery device, which as best as she could tell resembled a rectangular black box no bigger than a cell phone, and she let out a whimper.