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Maxime dug out his phone and sent off a text. “Nathalie will show Grace up to a room, get her settled while you retrieve the grimoire.”

The door opened and in strode Nathalie.

“Best you get back here as quick as you can.” Maxime patted the journal. “Once you’ve clued Grace in, there’s some information in here you’ll need to know about.”

Alain snarled and shoved back his chair. Pounding on Maxime might make him feel better, but it wouldn’t help him with Grace. He pointed at Maxime. “You stay away from her.” It was irrational. Maxime didn’t want Grace, but Alain couldn’t help it. “And keep the other males away from her, too.”

A hand rested on his shoulder. Nathalie.

“She’ll be with me, Alain. And only me,” she said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

He heaved out a sigh and nodded before turning and leaving the room. Staying under the same roof as Maxime for more than a few hours was going to test every ounce of his control, but he’d do it. To be near Grace. His wolf would have it no other way.

He jumped into the SUV, slammed the door and keyed the engine. His hand on the gearshift, his vision wavered.

He was in a long hallway. White walls, white ceiling, white tiles. Fluorescent lights eye-wateringly bright. A man in a lab coat turned the corner, coming straight at him. He passed right by Alain, not acknowledging him. He couldn’t. Alain wasn’t really there. The man in the lab coat swiped a card in a lock. It beeped, and he disappeared through a doorway. Alain got a glimpse of a hospital bed, and the steady beep of a heart monitor muted as the door closed.

But this didn’t look like any hospital Alain had ever seen. All the doors had locks. Psychiatric institution, maybe? A woman hurried along the corridor, stopping at a door a few feet from him. She looked up and down the corridor before swiping her card and opening the door. What he saw beyond the door chilled Alain to the bone.

Restrained on the hospital bed with cuffs of silver, a bag of liquid being fed into his veins via a cannula in the back of his hand, was Maxime. The woman closed the door and went to Maxime’s side. She cupped his face. Maxime’s eyelids fluttered, and he leaned into her palm. With a wary eye on the door, she ripped out the cannula and released the silver shackles.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Grace jerked out of her thoughts when someone touched her on the shoulder. She spun around. Alain was gone. Maxime sat at the end of the table, staring off into the distance and an unfamiliar woman stood behind her.

“Hi.” The woman smiled at her. “I’m Nathalie d’Louncrais.” She jerked her thumb toward Maxime. “This big oaf’s younger sister. You must be Grace. I believe you met my mate last night.”

Grace frowned and tried to pull herself together, but she was stuck on the notion that Annabelle, the High Priestess of her coven, had known about the grimoire all along. Who it belonged to, and that Alain had it. She’d sent it to Alain.

“He drove you out of Paris,” said Nathalie.

“Oh, okay.”

Grace liked Annabelle. She was a strong blood witch, but nice, and from what Grace had experienced, a fair and responsible leader. Both her and her great aunt Marjory Jackson, the High Priestess before Annabelle, had been very accepting of Grace and her mama. Had welcomed them into the coven with open arms, despite the obvious tension between the Jacksons and the King family.

“Come on.” Nathalie jerked her head toward the door. “I’m not sure what time you came in last night, if you got enough sleep or had a chance for a shower, so let me get you settled in a room and you can do all that if you want to.”

Grace nodded and followed Nathalie from the room and down the hall with all the portraits. She stopped in front of the first one. It was of Nathalie. The one next to it was a woman so similar she had to be Nathalie’s sister. Then Maxime, his gaze no less intense in oils than in person. The fourth photo was of a family—a mother, father and three children—a boy of about eight or nine, a daughter, four, maybe five years old, and a toddler cradled in the father’s arms.

“I take it this is your family?” she asked, pointing at the portrait.

“Yes. My mother and father, Maxime, my older sister Stefanie, and me.”

“Where does Alain fit in with all this?”

“Alain is my cousin. Here, look, I’ll show you.”

She led Grace down the long line of portraits, paintings large and gilt-framed, their subjects wrought in thick layers of oil paint. Most had dark hair and brown eyes, though some had green eyes like Nathalie and Stefanie, and there was an occasional blond. The style of clothing changed the farther along the wall of images they went. From modern day, back through the seventies to top hats for men and long dresses for women, to more elaborate garments and wigs and codpieces, then armor. Centuries of d’Louncrais staring out at her from the wall.

Nathalie stopped in front of four portraits. These were smaller, a collection of sketches, not paintings, done in black ink and protected under glass. Nathalie pointed to the first two. A man in medieval armor, not dissimilar to Maxime, if Maxime had a beard. The same nose, same eyes, same hair, paired with a woman in medieval garb, looking every inch the lady of the manor.

“This is Gaharet d’Louncrais and his mate, Erin. From the tenth century. We, that is, Maxime, Stefanie and me, are their direct descendants.”

She pointed to a second set of portraits. The first one was of a man with the familiar d’Louncrais face, but younger, and with an angry slash where his right eye should be. His expression was more guarded, and he had a haunted look about him.

“This is D’Artagnon, Gaharet’s younger brother. And this”—she pointed to the second portrait—“is his mate, Constance.”

There was a softness about Constance, a gentleness. Grace leaned closer. She hadn’t been mistaken. The eyes, they were in color. One blue and one green.