Blood Assassin (The Sentinels #2)(5)

Her heart screeched to a painful halt. “Where are you going?”

He hesitated, but he refused to turn around. “To pack.”

She glared at the broad back covered in swirling tattoos. God. He was destroying her.

Did he ever care?

“When are you leaving?”

“In the morning.”

Not giving her the opportunity for further discussion he simply walked away, his shoulders squared and his head held high.

“Bastard,” she breathed.

Chapter Two

Serra left the gym and headed toward her private apartment three floors below.

Valhalla was the official home for many high-bloods, and by far the largest of all the various compounds that were based throughout the world. Including the monasteries where the Sentinels were raised, and where they were able to use the portals to travel from abbey to abbey.

Located in the Midwest, it was a vast community that had workshops, garages, and a large school spread over several thousand acres. There were also extensive vegetable gardens, a lake large enough to support a fishery, and heavily timbered hills that were home to protected wildlife.

In the center was a massive building constructed in the shape of a pentagon with a large inner courtyard.

There were few visitors who could claim to have ventured beyond the official offices on the main floor or the formal reception rooms, although they did have a few guest rooms for VIPs. Absolutely no one who wasn’t a high-blood was allowed to explore the nine levels of private quarters and secret labs that were dug deep into the earth.

Leaving the gym, Serra took the elevator to the lower floors and stomped her way down the long corridor.

The thick-skulled, tattooed lummox.

He wanted to scurry back to his monastery and forget she existed?

Fine.

More power to him.

She hoped . . .

She hoped one of his students accidentally chopped off his dick during sword practice.

Then he could be a real eunuch and not just a man too scared to take on a real woman.

She grimaced, her steps slowing as she neared her door. Okay. She didn’t want him to be castrated. Not even she was that vindictive. But she did hope he was miserable without her.

Jackass.

Reaching her apartment, she placed her hand on the touch screen, waiting for her prints to be scanned. The door was sliding open when she noticed the tiny, gift-wrapped box by the doorjamb.

She leaned down to pick it up, frowning as she stepped into her private rooms.

It wasn’t her birthday. And Christmas was five months away. So who would be leaving her gifts?

A secret admirer? Yeah, right. More likely it was something her biological parents had sent.

When Serra had first displayed her psychic talents when she was barely five, her parents had wisely brought her to Valhalla where she could not only be trained, but where she would grow up surrounded by others like her. But despite not living beneath their roof, her parents had remained in close contact. Not only taking her home whenever she felt the need to bond with them, but often sending her little surprises just so she knew they were thinking about her.

She crossed her living room that was decorated in shades of silver and plum. The furniture was sleek stainless steel with overstuffed cushions and a large mirrored coffee table in the center of the tiled floor. She had one wall that was covered from floor to ceiling with shelves to hold her collection of romance novels and in one corner a curio cabinet that held the exquisitely carved wooden figurines that Fane had given her over the years.

It’d never failed to astonish her that a man who was prized for his strength was capable of creating such delicate beauty.

Jerking her gaze away from the painful reminder of the man who’d just ripped out her heart and stomped on it, Serra tossed the box onto a table before heading into the kitchen.

She rarely drank since it affected her ability to shield out the psychic noises that constantly bombarded her, but she was in desperate need of something to wash away the bad taste in her mouth.

A shot of tequila might just do the trick.

She’d just entered the kitchen that echoed the rest of the rooms’ sleek, minimalist style, when she heard the sound of her front door opening.

“Can I come in?”

Serra rolled her eyes. She didn’t need her psychic ability to know who was intruding into her privacy.

Callie Brown . . . no, wait, she was O’Conner now . . . was more than just a friend.

They’d been raised together as foster sisters and were as close as any blood sisters despite the fact that it was Callie whom Fane had bonded himself to.

Today, however, Serra wasn’t in the mood for company. She wanted to be alone so she could get shit-faced and forget the miserable day.

She was dusting off a shot glass her parents had sent her from Paris when Callie entered the room, looking gorgeous as usual with her red hair, cut short and spiky to emphasize her pale features, and her slender body, displayed in a lemon cotton sundress. But few people noticed anything about Callie once they caught a glance at her eyes.

They were the gemstone eyes of a necromancer. Perfectly faceted they shimmered with a pure sapphire glow. The beauty of those eyes was breathtaking, which was why she usually kept them hidden behind sunglasses when she left Valhalla.

Serra would have been jealous as hell of the younger woman if Callie weren’t so impossibly sweet and utterly loyal.

“It’s not really a good time,” Serra said, pulling the bottle of tequila from the glass-paned cabinet.