Lover Enraptured: Thieves of Aurion, Book 2 (33 page)

“She was injected with the formula.”

His expression matching the awful emotion residing in Jerrick’s chest, Thane sprinted to his side. “We need to get her to Howertech’s lab.
Now.
”

Heart in his throat, Jerrick secured Avi tight to him and raced to the waiting hover jet. He spared the briefest glance to the activity commencing around him, barely registering the militia members being rounded up. He spied Leena in one of the groups, crying her eyes out. The hover jet’s doors hissed shut, sealing her from view.

His ex was the last thing on his mind right now. She was the past. His future lay unconscious and frighteningly vulnerable in his arms.

If Avi died, he’d have no place to go but with her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He’d never been happier to see white lab coats in his life.

Staring helplessly at the commotion around him, Jerrick held tight to Avi’s hand—the one lifeline in his nightmarish world.

She hadn’t roused at all during the twenty-minute flight to Howertech Laboratories’ corporate headquarters. The additional two minutes it’d taken them to ready a makeshift emergency room for her amped his desperation to the breaking point. He needed to
do
something, damn it. Not sit here, watching the life force slowly drain from the only good thing he’d ever known.

A shuffling noise sounded. Jerking his head up, he met Thane’s worried gaze. “How long will it take them to create the vaccine?”

“I don’t know.”

That wasn’t fucking good enough. They needed to be in here now, doing everything in their power to make Avi better. To bring her back to him.

His mind insisted on torturing him with constant flashes of the vacant eyes of Kiantu’s man. The greasy ball of nausea churned relentlessly in his gut. “The case-study patient. What was the time frame…?” He couldn’t bring himself to choke out the words.

Thane gave him a sorrowful look. “An hour, tops.”

“Then they better have that goddamned vaccine ready soon.”

“I’ll go check on its progress.” Thane slipped away from the doorway, his footsteps diminishing into a distant echo in the cold, sterile hallways of the laboratory.

Lifting her hand to his face, Jerrick rubbed his cheek into her palm, the faint moisture from his eyes glistening on her pale flesh. The pain and misery residing within him crushed him under a relentless wave. He could feel the light fading from her as distinctly as the slow extinguishment in his own soul.

An agonized sound tore from him, and he tucked her fingers to his lips, shaking from the brunt of his emotions. “Avi, please don’t leave me. I need you. I’ve always needed you. Baby, come back to me.”

Another faint swish of fabric announced the arrival of a lab tech. Not bothering to hide his anguish, Jerrick watched the woman prep Avi. When the female chambered a vial of clear liquid into a syringe gun, he lowered Avi’s hand from his mouth. “Is that the vaccine?”

“No, this is a blocker that will hopefully slow down the advancement of the toxin.”

“Will it make her better?”

“It isn’t a cure, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her gaze softened. “The scientists are working hard on the vaccine.”

He didn’t want to hear that. He wanted it ready now.

The woman repositioned Avi’s arm and aligned the syringe gun with the inside of Avi’s elbow. With a small blast of air, the tech delivered the shot and then gently swabbed the area and bandaged it. After that she left Jerrick alone with Avi and the company of his grief.

Seconds felt like they stretched into hours while he waited for news on the vaccine. Thane reappeared several more times and fruitlessly tried to offer Jerrick comfort before wisely concluding that was a fool’s mission.

Just about when Jerrick had given up hope of seeing another technician enter the room, a group of scientists arrived. They spouted off numbers and ratios and a whole host of things he didn’t understand while they prepped Avi yet again. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about their scientific jargon. Could they fix Avi? That was the only thing that mattered.

Monitoring their every move like a hawk, Jerrick continued holding her hand, his eyes stinging. She was so frail like this. Her fire and spark missing. He needed her sarcastic quips. Her teasing. Her laughter and joy. The innate goodness in everything she touched.

The needle punctured her skin, the slow disappearance of the vial’s contents lighting a match to Jerrick’s dwindling flame of hope. “Now what?”

The nearest scientist peered at Jerrick over the frame of his spectacles. “We wait and see.”

The wait stretched into infinity. When shadows gathered outside the tall windows of the laboratory and Avi still hadn’t awakened, Jerrick’s torment shifted to rage. He cursed at anyone who dared enter the room with no answers for him. He cursed the sisters of fate for taking Avi from him. But most of all he cursed himself. For not protecting her as he’d sworn to do. For bringing her pain all of those years, and even more recently for foolishly believing that not speaking the truth in his heart would somehow trick the fates.

Thane appeared in the doorway. “You need to eat. Starving yourself to exhaustion won’t help her.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?”

The man abandoned his station and halted beside Jerrick. “You blame yourself for her being here.”

Anguish shredding his insides, he gazed blearily at Thane. “I am to blame.”

“No, Kiantu and Rodale are the monsters responsible for this.” Thane gestured to Avi’s frighteningly lifeless form. “Don’t deprive them their rightful place in hell by shouldering their crimes.”

His eyes sore and his heart miserably heavy, Jerrick stroked Avi’s dear face. “I just want her to wake up. Grace me with one of her grins and call me some properly despicable name.”

Thane grunted. “You two have the strangest relationship I’ve yet to come across.”

“She completes me in a way that didn’t exist before her.” It was all too true. Prior to Avi joining him as his partner fifteen years ago, he’d been an empty shell, missing the vital part that made him whole. Leena had destroyed him, but Avi had been the one to put him back together piece by piece.

“Then you’re indeed the luckiest individual on the planet.”

He returned Thane’s solemn expression. “I will be, once she’s healthy again.”

A strange noise filtered from Avi. His gaze shot to her, painful hope filling his chest. Until he noticed her eyes had opened and were rolled back in her head. She began convulsing, her body twisting with horrific shudders. His heart splintering in two, he leapt to his feet and shouted for the technicians. A team of them raced into the room, their lab coats frantically swinging about their bustling bodies.

“She’s seizing,” one of them shouted. Another grabbed a nearby tray of vials and chambered one into the available gun. He administered the shot into Avi’s neck, and she immediately ceased her thrashing.

Jerrick swallowed thickly, certain he was seconds away from heaving up his guts. “Your goddamn vaccine is doing
nothing
.”

The man offered a commiserating look. “We’re trying our best to cure her, Mr. Hunter.”

Jerrick clamped the tech’s throat in a vise grip and bared his teeth. “Your best isn’t fucking good enough.”

Thane approached and pried Jerrick’s fingers free before the tech’s face turned a darker shade of purple. “I understand your strong desire to kill someone, but these are the men most equipped to help Avi. I advise leaving them in one piece.”

Jerrick watched the tech rub his abused neck and rush to join his wary colleagues. After some low whispers, they shot leery glances in Jerrick’s direction and piled out the door. He didn’t possess the energy to care that they were likely diagnosing him for a padded cell. Rubbing a shaky hand down his face, he returned to Avi’s bedside. She looked frailer than ever. The black morass of his agonized thoughts welled within him like a slick, oily beast determined to smother him beneath its oppressive weight.

He didn’t know how long Thane lent his quiet vigil. Sometime around midnight he finally glanced up and noticed the room was empty. The quiet hush in the room only added to his strained nerves.

He longed to hear the sunshine of Avi’s laughter, so much so it was a physical ache in his soul. Reaching for her listless hand again, he squeezed her fingers tight, his lips reverently tracing each pad, his tears leaking into her skin. He raised his eyes to the window, a long-forgotten prayer forming in his mind.

It’d been many moons since he’d sought the council of his divine ancestors. The words were hard coming. “This woman is my light. My soul. I’ve pledged my heart to her and no other. Our bond is unbreakable. Forged upon your command and desire. I would give my life for her if you’d only bring her back.”

A shimmering funnel of sparkles appeared and spiraled down before him. They slowly took shape, transforming into the form of a woman with flowing silvery locks. A simple white sheath accentuated her lush frame, a startling contrast to the sexy business attire he’d last seen adorning those curves. He gaped at the goddess for an endless moment, his tongue refusing to cooperate. Finally he managed to spit out two words. “Madam Love.”

She cocked one of her imperious eyebrows. “Just one of my many favorite guises.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that you’re not very quick getting with the program. Much to my everlasting frustration all these years.” She sighed heavily. “Do you have any notion how many times I’ve longed to deliver a swift kick to your ass? Particularly when you ignore my guidance and continually summon me with your surly rants?”

He frowned.

“Do you not see it? Every time you look upon the moon and curse those who carry the same emotion you’ve stubbornly kept locked in your heart—emotion
I’ve
provided, mind you—your words carry to my ear. And let me tell you, there’s been plenty an occasion I’ve tempered the urge to smack you upside the head.” She plunked her hands on her hips and glared at him.

If not for the glittery corona sparkling about her and the whole divinity thing, he would have sworn she was the spitting image of Avi. Likely it was the smacking-him-upside-the-head comment that drew the comparison.

The goddess looked upon Avi and nodded. “Now you know why I picked her for you. I wholly approve of any woman wise enough to put you in your place.”

“Amora—”

“Ah, so you do know how to speak my name without stringing a
damn you
in front of it.”

He was too miserable to take the slightest pleasure in her sparring. “Don’t take her from me. Please.”

“Why is it you ask this of me?”

“Because I need her. She’s my everything. My reason for living.”

“Do you love her?”

“Beyond reason.”

“Then say the words. To her. Your bonds started long before you sealed your union yesterday. You knew this in your heart, but your head resisted. Saying the words will set you free…and her. She’s always held the power to save you. But you also hold the key in saving her.” Amora crossed to him and placed a hand on his and Avi’s hearts. “It rests
here
.”

With those final words, Amora drifted into the ether.

Returning his focus to Avi, he stroked her cheek. The emotions welled to impossible limits inside him. Instead of being afraid of giving them voice, he kissed her lips and whispered the words he’d kept caged far too long. “I love you, Avi. I always have. Always will.”

A radiant glow surrounded her, billowing out to envelope him. It cocooned him in the most powerful, glorious essence of bliss he’d known. There was peace here. Joy and laughter. An aching sweetness that made him tremble and brought renewed dampness to his eyes.

He was touching her soul.

Nothing could compare to the rapture of it.

That assessment changed slightly when in the next instant her eyelashes fluttered and a single word escaped her lips. “Jer.”

There. That was the true rapture. He crushed her lips beneath his, the emotion bursting from his heart and scattering the darkness. Sliding his hands through her hair, he looked into the eyes he’d feared forever closed to the light.

A tear slipped down her cheek. “I heard you calling me. You said you loved me.”

“I do. With everything I am.” He repeated the devotion singing through his veins. “I love you, Avi.”

“I waited fifteen years to hear you say that.” She lifted a shaky hand and caressed his jaw. “So worth it.”

“I’m going to make it up to you by saying it every day, every minute, for the next fifteen years. And the next fifteen years after that. Into infinity.” His future beckoned, bright and shining with the dazzling promise of forever.

Madam Love’s—Amora’s—wise words blossomed in his mind.
Nothing is out of the question when you want something badly enough.

At last he accepted the blessed truth of it. Even an undeserving, stubborn thief could hold love in his hands when the woman who’d healed his heart and soul stood beside him.

Epilogue

The streets of Tul’dea were bustling, as they should be during such a hallowed celebration. Love was in the air. But nowhere more vivid and radiant than at the corner chapel down the street from The Fairest Rose.