Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [22]
Shuddering at the thought, she tossed the mail onto the little table next to the door, flipped the locks, and shuffled toward the kitchen, hoping the few scoops of coffee she had left could be stretched into a full pot. But as she turned the corner to the hallway, she came to an abrupt halt.
The door to her office was open.
She hadn’t been inside that room since she’d closed down her practice. Oh, God, what had she done in her sleep? A muted sense of anxiety shimmered through her as she crept down the hall to the open door.
She’d done a lot more than drink vodka and roll around in the dirt while sleepwalking.
Boxes of supplies lay scattered on the floor, their contents spilling out. A dark substance that looked suspiciously like dried blood was spattered on the walls and pooled on the tiles, and when she stepped fully inside the room, she got an eyeful of tumbled furniture and smashed cabinets.
What had happened in here, and whose blood was that?
And why, dear God why, did she feel like someone was watching her?
Spying could normally be considered a skill. Unless you were a supernatural being who could hang out in a khote. So yeah, Ares didn’t exactly feel like he was doing anything but being a Peeping Tom, as today’s population called it.
But he couldn’t exactly pop out of thin air and ask Cara what she’d dreamed about last night. Not when she’d just discovered the mess in her veterinary office. She might appear outwardly calm, but the color had drained from her face, and when she backed out of the room, she stumbled.
And Ares nearly stepped out of his khote to catch her.
Idiot. He watched her trudge down the hallway to the kitchen, where she made coffee, poured herself a bowl of generic bran flakes cereal, and ate with mechanical, precise motions. She had to have known that her pajamas were filthy with dirt and dried blood, but it didn’t faze her. Shock. Definitely.
The hardened, battle-edged commander side of him wanted to tell her to snap out of it. To grow a set and get over it, soldier. But another side of him wanted to… what? Comfort her? Fold her into his arms and whisper sweet, mushy things into her ear?
Fucking idiot. He brushed his finger over his throat, and his armor snapped into place. It had been foolish to come here without it.
Ares had been raised to be a warrior—and he’d been a damned good one, had learned the art of war from the human he’d believed to be his father, which honed the instinct he’d been born with, thanks to his demon mother and battle-angel father. But then, when the Seals were doled out according to “best—and worst—fit” for each sibling, he’d also been supplied with a massive dose of insta-expertise.
The desire to fight a good battle had always been there. No blaming that on the stupid prophecy.
Time to kick his own ass and do what needed to be done. The fate of all mankind rested on his shoulders, and if he traumatized one little human female to save the world, so be it.
He was about to let down the khote when Cara grabbed the phone, dialed, and said in a droning voice, “Larena, it’s Cara. I need to know what dreaming about a black dog means. It was howling, in a cage. And if the name Sestiel means anything to you, that would help, too. Thanks.”
Caged? That meant that Sestiel was in possession of the beast and not the other way around. Was he hoping to bond with it? Even though fallen angels belonged to a small handful of beings who could tame hellhounds, now that the beast was bonded to Cara, no one else could control it, tame it, or bond with it. Sestiel must not be aware that his hopes for a hellhound protector, at least from this specific hound, were dashed.
But Ares’s hopes were still alive. The hound could be the one he wanted, and Ares’s blood sang