“Because your life mate is the one we will contact to arrange the trade. He is the one who will be most willing to turn Liam over to get you back.”

“No, he won’t,” she said with certainty.

“Our kind will die for our life mates, girl. He will think nothing of turning over a child to get you back. Especially when Liam is not his child and he would be turning him over to his father, who I will explain merely wants to raise him.” Abaddon nodded firmly. “And when I then tell him what will happen to you if he does not turn the boy over . . . Well . . .” He shrugged.

Allie swallowed, some of her certainty slipping away. Magnus might give up Liam to save her if he thought Liam wouldn’t be harmed. He might convince himself that they could get Liam back once he had her safely away from Abaddon.

“Which one is it?” Abaddon asked now. “Tybo or Magnus?”

“Who says it is one of them?” Allie asked.

“I say, because I know the others are all mated,” he growled impatiently. “Now, which one is it?”

Instead of answering, Allie asked, “Why haven’t you read it from my mind? Can’t you read me?”

“You were in too much pain when I tried earlier,” he said with irritation, and then his eyes narrowed. “But the pain is not as bad now.”

His eyes shifted to her forehead and narrowed. Knowing he was trying to read her, Allie did the only thing she could think to do. She slammed her head back into the wall. Pain burst through her skull like fireworks, shooting out to every corner of her brain, bright white and hot, then black. She wasn’t conscious to hear Abaddon’s curses, or feel his kick before he stormed out of the room.

Nineteen

“We’ll find her. We’ll get her back.”

Magnus grimaced at Tybo’s words as the man dropped into a chair at the dining room table with him. He was the third person who’d come to give him that reassurance in the hour since he’d left the room where Drina was being treated. He wasn’t reassured.

What he was, was terrified. He couldn’t lose Allie. She was . . . everything.

“Magnus?”

Lifting his head, he peered at the boy approaching the table, and had no doubt his expression was probably as blank as his thoughts at that moment. He hadn’t once thought of Liam since learning Allie was missing, he realized. He was the boy’s father now, but he hadn’t even thought to ask where the boy was, or if he knew what was happening.

“Where’s Mom?” Liam asked, pausing beside him, a troubled expression on his face as he rotated a small toy car in his hands. “Teddy thinks the bad men got her. Did they?”