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“Kain!” I scream. “Kain, wake up!” I sob, yanking the mask from his face. He’s still breathing. He’s still alive. He has to be.
But if he’s not… I refuse to believe it. Refuse to let that be a possibility.
“You can’t leave me!” I cry, cradling his scarred face in my palms. “You can’t! You promised!”
Hopelessness grips my heart, squeezing with its icy, cruel fingers. And then I see it. There. His eyes fluttered.
I don’t care if it’s a trick of the light. I don’t bother to think about how it might be a hallucination of my deranged mind.
“It’s okay now,” I promise, starting to rip his shirt to get a look at the wounds. “Everything will be okay.”
I don’t know who I’m trying to lie to, but it doesn’t matter. It has to be okay. I’m going to make it okay.
“Lillith.”
I freeze, not sure if I hallucinated that weak, breath of a voice, or if—
“Lillith,” Kain rasps. “Leave me.”
My mouth pops, but before I get the chance to tell him I’m most certainly not doing that, he speaks again.
“Lillith… please.” His eye cracks open, blessing me with a shard of that glimmering silver. He must be delirious with blood loss because a slow, lazy smile curves the hard planes of his mouth. “If the last thing I get to do is look at you, I’ll die a happy man.”
“You’re not dying,” I assert, shaking my head. “I won’t let you.”
A sad little smile tips his lips, and his eyes flutter closed once more. No, no, no.
“That’s an order, Kain!” I sob, my voice cracking with every word. “You’re not dying! I’m not allowing it!”
He chuckles weakly, the motion causing the blood to spurt between my fingers. “I’m the one who gives the orders around here, Lillith. Now go. Run.” His face crumples with the same expression from all those years ago, and suddenly, I’m six years old and watching my parents bleed out in an alley—watching the only people I love be taken from this world—without a damn thing I can do about it.
I refuse to let that happen again. I can’t. I won’t
So even though his last breath was spent telling me to run, to save myself, I don’t. Summoning the same desperate strength from earlier, I grab Kain’s forearm and pull him to his side, using my knees as a block to keep him from tipping all the way to his stomach.
I’m deaf to the sound of footsteps prowling closer by the second. The footsteps don’t exist as I shove all five of my fingers into the holes circling Kain’s heart—don’t exist as blood pools around my digits knuckle-deep in entrance wounds on his back.
You’re not dying. Not today. Not on my watch. I just need to control the bleeding, and then… and then…
My heart bottoms out as reality comes crashing in. There’s nothing I can do. He needs a hospital, and no one is coming. We’re miles from the main road, miles from the nearest person who can call for help…
A sob escapes my mouth as I look down at Kain—my Kain—and how utterly, impossibly fragile he looks right now. This is wrong. One person shouldn’t have to suffer such pain, such crippling, terrible pain. He’s already been through too much, and I can’t do anything. Can’t—-
“My, my. This really is touching.” The voice that rings out behind me raises the hair on the back of my neck and has my gut screaming to follow Kain’s advice and run.
“Get any closer, and I’ll claw your eyes out,” I hiss, turning to face the monster with a nasty snarl.
He tilts his head, baring those pointy teeth as he takes in the situation. “It seems your hands are tied. But that was really cute.”
“Fuck. You,” I snarl, my muscles tensing as he steps closer. “I wasn’t trying earlier.” A bluff. A goddamned bluff, and he knows it by the way that predatory smile widens.
“By all means, then. Show me what you got. “He holds his arms out to the side and does a little twirl, that smile never wavering. “Ohhh, that’s right. You have to keep your fingers in those holes, or your precious Kain will bleed out. How sad for you.”
He steps closer. Once. Twice. “I think I’ll make you watch him die, then I’ll have my way with you. How’s that sound, Lillith?”
“Fuck. You.” I snarl, turning a feral gaze toward those soulless black eyes.
“How unoriginal.” Callum rolls his eyes as he reaches out, gripping my forearm in a steel grip. “Come on, now. You know he’s going to die anyway. Let’s not drag this out any longer.”
