“What’s going on?” I cried as thethud, thud, thudtraveled through his body and jolted mine.
“I don’t know.” Twisting, he frowned at the door. “But it’s nothing good.”
“How—?” I blinked and Radu was gone, leaving nothing but the echoing slam of the door ringing in my ears.
I held still for a minute, wondering if he really just took off and left me after my escape attempt.
No, that wasn’t about me. That sounded like an explosion, and even worse, it sounded close. Of course he had to check it out—
The door creaked open.
“Ugh, back so soon, Professor Prick?” I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. “I guess whatever that explosion was wasn’t an emergency.”
“Oh, no, it was definitely an emergency.”
I bolted upright.
“One that’s going to buy us time to get away.”
I gaped at him—my heart leaping back into my butt and racing into my throat. “N-no,” I whispered, lips trembling. “I can deal with the dizziness and the jelly limbs, but hallucinations are too cruel!”
“This isn’t a hallucination, Charlie.” Tristan cupped my chin, smiling into my eyes. “I’m really here, and I’m really saving you from that fucking leech.”
Tears collected on my lids, making the apparition twist and bend even more. “This can’t be real. I don’t have it in me to hope for something as wonderful as this.”
Tristan scooped me into his arms. “We’ll talk about how real I am when I’ve gotten you far away from here. We can’t stick around,” he said, racing for the door. “Radu could be back any second.”
Tristan crushed me to his chest as he ran through the pitch-black hallway. I could only cling to him, scarcely letting my heart believe that after three and a half long weeks, it was finally over. I was done being that vampire’s blood bag. I was done with making Dora wait. I’d find Sabrina, and end this hellish nightmare once and for all.
Tristan sprinted through the open doors of the vampire dorm, and kept running for the main corridors. We reached the branching hall leading off to various wings, but instead of heading for the demon wing, Tristan veered off in the opposite direction.
“Wait, where are we going?”
“Werewolf wing,” he replied. The man was running at full speed with over a hundred pounds in his arms, and he wasn’t even winded. Put it down to Radu’s vampire aphrodisiac, but all I could think about was how sexy that was. “It’s the only place in the castle that vampires can’t enter.”
“But I thought you couldn’t enter either?” The words rattled out of me. This was quite a bumpy ride.
“I can now that I’ve put down every alpha who’s challenged me.”
My eyes bugged. “Challenged? You mean that sick blackmail scheme? They actually made you go through with that after... what happened?”
“When a challenge is put forth and accepted, there is no backing out. Not even the murder of one’s brother changes that.” Tristan whipped around a corner, taking me and my whiplash with him. “But as ridiculous and twisted as it all was, I faced the challenges and won because I had to. I knew I needed somewhere safe to hide you when I realized Radu lied about killing you, and had been keeping you hidden the entire time.”
“You knew?” I cried. “How?”
“Your scent. Yourrealscent. The scent of Charlie Hunter was all over the leech,” he forced through gritted teeth. “And there was only one reason I could think of for why he was walking around smelling like a mortal woman.
“So I fought my way back into the pack dorm, and then I pledged to be the exclusive weapons-maker for House Belphe.”
“Belphe? You mean Ronin Belphe?”
“Yep. That black-blooded bastard extracts a high price, but it was the only way to get him to cause the distraction I needed to get the vampires out of the way. That whole never-fucking-sleeping-thing is a real bitch.”
I was too stunned to speak for a full fifteen seconds.
“My gosh, Tristan,” I whispered, burying my head in his chest. “You did all that... just to rescue me?”
“What? Of course I did,” he replied, laughing. “You didn’t think I’d abandon you, did you?”
