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Tonight the lair he’d gone to great pains and expense to construct was gone, but Dragos preferred to think of it as a necessary step in the evolution of his plans. Now he would begin a new phase in his operation, and he could hardly wait to get started.

Dragos leaned his head back against the soft leather seat and watched through the rear window as a thread of pale clouds skittered across the milky moon overhead.

Andreas didn’t wake up once during the three-plus hours it took to drive back to the Order’s headquarters.

Nor the entire next day.

Claire heard Tess use the word “coma” in conversation with Gabrielle and Savannah when the three women had been preparing the private apartment for him in the compound early that morning. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t worry her, and the longer he stayed unconscious, the deeper her dread became.

This slow, helpless waiting was even worse than watching him rail and struggle against his pyrokinesis. Claire held his hand as he lay unmoving on the bed. She knew he was in there. She could feel his blood moving beneath his skin, could see the occasional flicker of his closed eyelids when she spoke to him.

“Is there anything else you need?” Tess asked gently, drying her hands on a paper towel from the bathroom. Dante’s mate was trained in veterinary medicine and had possessed an even greater psychic gift for healing with her touch before her current pregnancy had inhibited her talent. Now she laid her hand softly on Claire’s and offered a kind, compassionate smile. “You really should eat, you know. And get some rest.”

“I know,” Claire said, glancing to the tray of uneaten food on the rollaway table brought up from the infirmary and now sitting beside the bed. “I’m fine. I’ll have something in a little while. I’m not really hungry. I just want to sit with him for a bit longer.”

Tess didn’t look convinced. “I’m going to come back and check on you in a couple of hours. Promise me that sandwich won’t still be sitting on that plate.”

Claire just smiled with an assurance she only wished she felt. “Please, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Tess gave her a faint nod. “Let someone know if there is any change in him, okay? You both are in everyone’s thoughts and prayers right now, Claire.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, touched by the kindness everyone in the compound had shown her. They loved Andreas like one of their own, treated him like kin, and because of that, she loved them all, as well.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Tess said as she slowly closed the door behind her.

Claire turned back to Andreas and smoothed her hand over his forehead, brushing his tousled brown hair back from his face. She watched him, wondering where he was in his deep, trauma-induced sleep.

Wondering when—and if—he would ever find the strength to return to her.

“Oh, Andre,” she whispered, gazing at the proud, handsome face she had loved for so long. She brought her lips to his and kissed him, unable to stem the tear that rolled down her cheek when his mouth pressed soft and warm, but unresponsive, against hers.

Claire moved up on the bed beside him, needing to be closer. Stretched alongside him, she laid her head against his shoulder and placed the palm of her hand over the steady beat of his heart pounding beneath his sternum. She closed her eyes and let that hardy pulse buoy her thoughts.

Andreas was alive. So long as she could touch him, breathe him, she would not give up hope that he would be with her once again.

And if he wasn’t ready to come back to her, then she would go to him.

“Forever this time,” she murmured.

Letting her eyes drift closed, she sought him out in the dream realm.

He wasn’t hard to find. Claire walked into a bleak, black void, drawn to the glow of a fire burning hotly in the distance. She was alone and naked, her bare feet walking over a length of cold, dark stone that seemed to stretch out for interminable miles … terminating at the place where the flames danced like orange streamers far ahead.

Andreas