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“Liquid sunlight. They’ve infused the air,” Riaz growled. “You have to get Jeremiah here, Remmus—he’s the only one who can fix this!” In another breath, he shouted, “Where is Cortana!”
“Floor eighteen,” Toni answered. “Second door on the left!”
With a clattering sound, the phone went dead, and it was all Cortana could do to cling to the hope Riaz would find her. Blood had slowly begun to seep from her mouth, pooling on the floor below her, and her fingers and feet had begun to tingle.
Moments later, the sound of her front door splintering inward met her ears, and she’d never heard anything so beautiful.
Riaz.
Because of the way she was lying facedown in her entryway, the only thing she could see through half-closed eyes was her brunette braid, dipped in a growing pool of red from her mouth. Gasping, Riaz skidded to her side, dragging her into his arms and clutching her against his chest.
“Rise and shine, Cort. Wake up, baby.”
Sputtering, she inhaled, her eyes flying open. He covered her mouth, eyes intense as he fervently shook his head. “Don’t inhale deeply, Pet. Sunlight in the air.”
Wide eyes, the color of burnt orange, looked back at her as he carried her to big window, opening it as far as it would go to let fresh air in. Tears misted in her gaze as she looked at him, knowing there was so much left unsaid between them.
“Later.” He pushed his wrist against her mouth. “Drink.”
Grimacing at him, Cortana fervently shook her head, pushing his wrist away weakly while tightening her bloodied lips. Growling, he brought it to back to her mouth.
“Please, Cort, drink!” And then, knowing how to gain her acquiescence, he barked, “You’re wounded; no good to your people if you can’t remain awake!”
It was the truth, and determination filled her anew. After a pregnant pause, her fangs sunk into his wrist. The splash of his powerful blood against her tongue helped to sate the hunger radiating from her gut, the influx combating the sunlight poisoning. When she’d taken enough that she no longer felt dizzy, she sealed the wounds on his wrist.
“I need to get you out of here. Is the outside safe for you—with the sun out?”
She nodded weakly, and Riaz scooped her up and held her against his chest. A second later, they were flying. Faster on foot, he bolted into the stairwell, racing down the stairs and toward the relative safety of the outdoors.
Bursting into the lobby, they found several other vampires being herded by a visibly distraught Drake and his wife. All of them wore something over their mouths, but many trails of blood had dripped over the flooring.
Riaz didn’t stop until he was outside. Vampires were already converging on the opposite side of the street, looking exhausted—some even collapsing on the sidewalk.
Gently, he set Cortana down, his eyes racing over her form to ensure she wasn’t suffering from any other type of injury. Assured of it, he turned to go back inside—just as an explosion and accompanying mushroom cloud flamed above the roof, billowing towards the heavens.
In that moment, Cortana felt his response through their mating bond: terror. Debilitating, incapacitating, bone-deep terror.
It funneled like a tidal wave through their unfinalized link, with a potency that all but drowned her in its wake. Gasping at the strength of it, her hand reached out to grip his wrist, locking him to her as involuntary tremors wracked her frame.
“Don’t, Riaz,” she whispered, not yet trusting her voice. “You don’t have to go back in there.”
When he turned, his russet eyes betrayed the all-encompassing assault of dread that beat against his psyche. “They’re your pack, Cortana. Your family. I won’t stand here and be the coward when I can rescue them.”
The memory of the words she’d lashed at him was poison, her vitriol spewing back at herself. Her proud, amazing wolf was going to risk his life to save people he didn’t even know. And while another version of herself would’ve allowed him to go back for the people she so desperately loved, the selfish voice within her warned not to let him go out of her sight.
“Riaz, you’re not vaccinated!” Desperation deepened her voice, her grip weak on his wrist. “The sunlight could turn you rabid!”
And then, quietly, he whispered back, “Nothing scares me as much as losing you, Cortana.”
When he pivoted and pulled out of her grip, her devastated cry tore across the street after him. By that time, the masses of vampires in the streets had blocked the flow of traffic. Cortana, too weak to help her people, could only sit idly by as they bumbled out of the now burning skyscraper.
One increasingly dangerous trip after another, Riaz exited the building with more and more of her people. Some conscious, some not. And yet, he kept going back in, though she could feel the dregs of his fear eating him alive as he returned, again and again, into the heavily smoking structure.
Riaz.
With every person he saved, he was putting his life on the line for people he didn’t know—a selfless act that she’d never dreamed of asking him to do and would never have expected. While she was resting, trying to wring the last bit of sunlight from her system, she entrusted her people’s safety in his hands. Because her mate didn’t abandon those in need, no matter what; he had come for her, even after everything she’d said to him—putting two and two together and trusting his gut that something didn’t feel right when the Citizens emptied the warehouse.
Riaz was no coward: he’d faced his own demons saving her, and then again, every time he went in to save her people.
