Shock, a freezing cold fist to his throat, squeezed the air from his lungs. He felt encased in ice, the bitter chill spreading to every extremity, numbing him from the inside out. His knees hit the pavement and he was surprised he didn’t shatter into a million shards.
“Pria,” he rasped.
His bondmate.
His dead bondmate.
* * * * *
From his perch atop the pharmacy roof, Evander chuckled.
The shock on Nicolai’s face. Priceless.
And to think he’d almost ruined this moment with his impatience.
The dark excitement that had poured through him as he’d stared down into Tamar Ridgeway’s upturned face had nearly jeopardized his ultimate goal. Anticipation and hunger for her pain and death had consumed him. He’d forgotten the plan, revenge and Nicolai. All he’d lusted after was her blood and agony. After four weeks stalking her, the wait had proved too much.
He supposed he had Nicolai to thank. If not for his former commander’s timely arrival, Evander wouldn’t have Nicolai’s suffering and torture to look forward to. The irony was just too good to be true.
The frenzied activity on the street below electrified him. The crimson blur of the ambulance lights, the gathering of busybodies outside the yellow police tape. The scurrying of paramedics and law enforcement as they scraped the blonde’s body off the ground and hoisted Tamar Ridgeway onto a gurney to be transported to the hospital. And off to the side, hidden from human eyes, lurked Nicolai, his attention glued to the woman who was a living replica of his dead mate.
Evander smiled, grim satisfaction pounding within him.
Unlike humans, he could see through the gyges. And on Nicolai’s face he spied shock, pain and—glee leaped in his chest—longing. Such longing.
Pleasure coursed through him, the power so strong it neared sexual.
He backed farther into the shadow of the rooftop in case Nicolai sensed his delight or one of the krinos still searched for him. The Fates had handed him this victory on a silver platter—or rather, a news segment.
Several weeks ago, holed up in another motel room, he’d glanced at the muted television in time to catch a news piece. But the vapid red-haired reporter hadn’t snagged his attention. That honor belonged to the picture flashed across the screen. Pria. His breath had stalled in his throat, disbelief and astonishment had knocked him back to the bed.
As his ass hit the mattress, he’d snatched up the remote and adjusted the volume. The broadcast had been about a lone survivor of a plane crash from three years earlier. The woman, who could have been the twin of Nicolai’s dead mate, resided in a Massachusetts town called Grace Crossings. Immediately, the possibilities of how he could use her to torment Nicolai amassed in Evander’s head.
Bastien’s death had torn Nicolai apart. This woman—Tamar Ridgeway’s death—would destroy him.
And Evander’s hand would deal the final blow.
* * * * *
The hospital’s stringent smells of disinfectant, ammonia and floor wax singed Nicolai’s nostrils. He couldn’t decide which was worse—the industrial-strength cleaning fluid guaranteed to destroy everything from urine to flesh-eating bacteria or the stench of human grief and hopelessness.
Both scents would remain with him long after he left the controlled chaos of this emergency wing.
Yet standing over the bed of the unconscious woman who resembled the mate he’d lost five hundred years earlier, his mind acknowledged that she couldn’t be Pria. He was a being of magic, had witnessed things in his nine-hundred-year existence that defied reason, but reincarnation wasn’t one of them.
Once the soul left the body it traveled to Eirene—a place of peace and eternal rest. To rip a spirit from that beautiful land was considered deygma, an abomination. Not that it hadn’t been done. Out of grief, greed or evil, souls had been called back from Eirene and forced into the world of living. But that was reanimation, not reincarnation. And the beings—for they were no longer free-willed, free-thinking people—didn’t resemble in appearance or soul the individuals they’d once been. They came back empty-eyed, mindless…hungry.
No, this woman with Pria’s bright coloring wasn’t one of those vapid creatures.
Besides, Pria had been more than his mate—she’d been his bondmate. While hippogryphs could take another mate if their chosen partner died, they had only one bondmate. And his had been Pria.
And therein lay the difference. Mates were chosen. Bondmates were fated. A hippogryph could take a partner and enjoy a life filled with love, children and happiness. But for those rare males and females who found the other half of their soul—the one who shared their heart and gift—the bond went much deeper than the union that resembled human marriage. The bonded pair experienced an enduring love, a passion and desire that intensified as the centuries passed.