The room spins again even though I’m on my back, and my eyes drift closed.
“No. Stay awake, Firefly.” He pulls a pair of pants on me, the pain of the movement enough to make me gag again. “I’ve got you. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you’re going to be okay. I promise.”
“Don’t-don’t make promises you can’t-can’t keep, McBride.”
He grunts. “You’re too stubborn to die, Raven. Remember that.”
I try to laugh, but it hurts too much and I just end up sobbing and dry heaving as the pain overwhelms my body.
Connor’s deep, rumbling voice fills my ears as the world starts to disappear.
“Raven, stay with me. Stay awake. Raven!” His hands capture my face again, and he gently presses his lips to mine on the side where it isn’t split. “I need you to stay with me. Promise me.”
But I can’t.
Not when the darkness is too inviting.
21
CONNOR
Killian glances up at me in the rearview mirror, his piercing blue eyes filled with the same kind of haunting awareness I have that things have completely gone to shit. “How’s she doing?”
I offer him a grim look as a response before immediately returning my focus to Raven cradled in my lap.
Her skin is too pale.
The lips that are always so pink and perfect are now split and bleeding, and I never thought the day would come when I would so badly wish she would open them and argue with me.
The hours and hours it took to hike down the mountain—switching between me carrying her and Killian forcing me to allow him to for short periods—felt more like it took days. Partially because she never woke once during the half-day hike, but also because the bleeding in some of her various wounds doesn’t seem to want to stop.
That deep one on her side has already bled through the haphazard patch job I did in the cabin. Likely due to how badly she was jostled during the hike despite our best efforts to make it comfortable for her.
But we didn’t have a choice.
A chopper can’t get that high in the mountain, and our attempts to call Tony on the satellite phone once we reached Liam at the homestead have been unsuccessful.
We need to get her into town and have Tony call from there, or drive her to Asheville ourselves like I did with Liam only a few months ago.
Liam turns around in the passenger seat and examines us. “I still can’t get a hold of Tony.” He holds up the satellite phone. “He still isn’t answering. Neither is anyone at the main sheriff’s office number.”
Killian’s jaw hardens. “I don’t like this. Tony always answers.”
Our shared silence holds the weight of all our worry.
Too many things have gone wrong.
And now the one person we’ve always been able to rely on when we need him is nowhere to be found.
Given the warning Raven gave us in the cabin that there were additional men sent by Lorell, the feeling that we might be facing something much bigger than we ever imagined sits squarely on my chest.
I brush my fingers gently over Raven’s cheek, marred by a darkening bruise, a deliberate thin slice from a blade, and dried blood that trickled from the large cut above her eye.
That fucker manhandled her.
Hours of holding her like this, having to look at what that man did to her, has only allowed my fury to fester. It makes me want to hike back up the damn mountain and kill him all over again—only drag it out this time.
A slow, painful death that he deserves for what he did to Raven.
