brother, that’s what needed his attention. Not wasting energy on remembering a place where he could no longer return. Through the gift of time travel that he’d given Thane and the team, they could do what he couldn’t. Intervene and prevent danger. Stop the threats. Instead, the former Special Operatives now hunted for his brother.
Where was Kell hiding? They had to find him. Dalir’s heart rate spiked. Heat coursed through him. He rolled his shoulders and forced a deep breath. He concentrated on the time stream. The intertwined ribbons of seconds, hours, and months flowed smoothly in front of him. Farther up, part of the stream splintered into pieces as thin as threads. His heart sank. Not all of the fractures had healed.
A hammer banging on a wall, and what sounded like furniture legs dragging across the floor downstairs, broke his concentration. Women’s voices penetrated the closed bedroom door.
A month ago, allowing Thane and Reid’s fiancées to stay at his home in The Drift had made sense. In the Earthly dimension, once the guys traveled time, Celine and Lauren would forget them. The Drift was the only place the women’s memories would remain intact. Damn it. What were Lauren and Celine up to now?
Sunlight filtered through pale, sheer curtains that lifted with the breeze, revealing the blue sky and snowcapped mountains.
What he’d give to have the same peacefulness in his home again. Dalir sprang to his feet. He combed his fingers back through his long hair, and it fell along his shoulders. As he tightened the strings on the waist of his gray sweats, cool air drifted over his bare torso. Dalir snagged a dark tank shirt from a drawer in the pinewood dresser and put it on. He stomped past the thick-columned footboard of the poster bed and went out the room.
Wood floors gleamed in the hallway. The doors to the three guest bedrooms, occupied by Mace, Colby, and West, remained shut. It was only a matter of time before the women’s renovation project steamrolled upstairs and obliterated the clean, perfectly good, white walls.
In the beginning, Celine and Lauren had treated their time at his home like a resort vacation. They’d slept late, lounged in the gardens, trekked in the mountains, and sunned by the lake. Then boredom from isolation had set in. The team began including the women in some of their training at the shooting range and on the obstacle course to help breakup the monotony.
Somewhere along the line, Lauren and Celine’s interests had turned to his home. They’d claimed it needed a woman’s touch. Painting walls, adding a few frilly pillows, moving things around. That’s what he’d expected. What could it hurt if it kept them occupied? He’d mainly consented to keep the guys on task with the mission of finding Kell. Then all of the sudden, the women went rogue. He should have never given them access to power tools.
Colby jogged up the stairs wearing tennis shoes, shorts, and a sweat-stained T-shirt. His damp blond hair clung to his forehead. “Wouldn’t go down there if I were you. They’re moving furniture out of the sunroom.”
“For what?”
“They’re changing the back wall into a built-in bookcase.”
Why couldn’t they just read the damn books instead of turning everything fucking upside down? “Where’s Thane and Reid?”
“They made themselves scarce early this morning along with Mace and West.”
Of course they had. Thane and Reid had led the team to stop rebellions, disasters, even a super virus from destroying humankind, but they couldn’t control their fiancées. The flush spreading over him and supernatural energy expanded in equal proportions.
A buzz emitted from the light switch.
“Whoa. Chill.” Colby raised his hands. “You’ll fry the circuits again. No electricity will only prolong the agony. Just do like the rest of us and leave.”
“You’re still here.”
“Not for long. I’m on recon duty.”
At least someone was getting some real work