An elbow slams into my ribs, shoving me to the side as someone pushes past me, fighting with the rapidly thickening crowd. I stumble back, crashing into something hard. A sharp pain lances through the back of my thigh, and despite my attempts at shouting, I know it’s pointless. If my hearing is this destroyed, theirs will be in far worse shape.
Lurching forward, I almost fall flat on my face as an intense wave of exhaustion slams into me. Only an arm banded around my stomach keeps me from collapsing and getting trampled by the crowd. As I’m hefted up, the guys are nowhere in sight, my vision swimming as nausea hits me hard, sending my stomach on as wild of a ride as my head.
Still, I continue to shout, praying that someone around me will give a damn. Yet no one even turns my way, focused on the explosion and the emergency vehicles starting to pull up to the scene.
Shoving at the arm hauling me back, the attempt is pitiful, my movements growing more sluggish by the second. When I’m dragged into the backseat of a car, I get a brief look at him, only his grey eyes visible above the black, fabric mask that he’s wearing over the lower half of his face.
Shifter. Blocking out the smell.My thoughts are sluggish, whatever he injected me with swiftly moving through my system.
He smacks the center console, the other guy pulling away from the curb and out into the heavy flow of traffic. Struggling to fight through it, I fumble the door handle, pushing it open a crack before the guy that grabbed me reaches past me to yank it shut again. The lock engages automatically, the driver smacking the button as the man forces me into the middle seat. I can’t hear a word he’s saying, but he straps the seatbelt over my waist, and when my head starts slumping as I start to pass out, he yanks me against him.
Forced to use his shoulder as a pillow, I try to punch him in the crotch, planning to throw myself out of the car while traffic is keeping them from flooring it out of here. Instead, my finger barely twitches, my muscles all but useless.
Vision blurring, I glance in the rearview mirror; familiar, soulless eyes looking back at me before I pass out.
Chapter 22
Stryker
––––––––
Ears ringing, I pullmy hand away, fingers wet with blood that I can’t even smell over the noxious scent. Whatever caused that explosion, it was mixed with something so potent that it overrides everything el-
Risa.
The crowd is buffeting each other out of the way, either rushing toward the scene or away from it. What should be a dull, thundering roar as they stampede around us, is only a high pitched ring that won’t stop. She was standing right behind me with Bane, but all I see is him in a similar state as me, recovering enough to realize that she was completely right.
We walked right into a trap that we never saw coming, so focused on our hatred of Blake, assuming the trap was in his apartment. Which means the photos weren’t fromhim,they were from someone that wanted to drive us to his apartment and blow us all to hell in one fell swoop.
I shout at Bane, but I can’t hear the words to know if I’m even making sense. By his confusion, he can’t hear them either, but there’s really only one thing any of us would worry about in this situation, and that’s getting our mate the hell out of here. He reaches for her, disoriented and realizing that she’s not beside him anymore. Horror and grief war for dominance on his face, the two of us scanning the surrounding area, trying to catch sight of her.
Tapping into the bond, I don’t even get a blip of fear from her. With as strong as the emotional connection has grown between us, that should be impossible unless she’s asleep.
Or unconscious.
Reaching behind me, I snag Mason’s wrist hard enough the bones might crack, dragging him with me as I latch on to what remains of the sire bond. It’s faint enough that I’m panicking; far less intense than during her transition when she was asleep, before it had even fully formed.
