lost contacts from icloud

I lost my contacts from icloud on all my devices. I was editing my contacts list on my mac book pro (through icloud). I went to delete a set of contacts because I had two. I tried to restore them from icloud and they are not there. I also looked at restoring them from my itunes account, but my contacts are set to sync with icloud. Are they gone forever?? I looked in my macbook's trash to see if they went their but they didn't. No, I don't have a time machine backup either. I have an external back up but it is not that recent. I thought icloud was a backup.