The questions disappeared from my head, however, the moment the attacker launched one of the daggers into the wolf’s side.
Lucien howled.
I heard a scream.
I didn’t realize it was mine until Thayer grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
But I couldn’t stop screaming until something hard hit my head and darkness swallowed me whole.
Chapter 18
The Precipice of Eternity
I woke up in an unfamiliar room.
Terribly confused by where I was, and how I got here, I sat up, wincing when I felt dull pain in my right side. I went to lift up my shirt and investigate the source, but I realized my clothes had been changed. Gone were my jeans and band tee, replaced instead by a simple gray nightgown.
Finding my glasses resting on the nightstand, I slid them up my nose and pulled the nightgown up.
My skin was clean. No wound—not even a scratch. I frowned, still feeling that dull pain, but seeing as I was utterly healthy, I lowered the fabric back down, my confusion growing.
I looked up and studied the room. It was a simple bedroom with a cottage feel to it: wooden dresser and TV stand, wooden nightstands next to the wooden-framed double bed I was currently sitting upon. The door to my right, wooden as well, was closed, and the window to the left showed nothing but a mass of glaringly green bushes and an assortment of lanky trees, seemingly leading to a forest beyond.
Considering there was no forest within the city of Los Angeles, I concluded I was far away from any sort of urban area.
And that made me wonderwhy.
The last thing I remembered was seeing Lucien being stabbed in his wolf form ...
I froze.
Lucien.
Panic set in, and I pushed the heavy duvet away and stumbled off the far-too-tall bed. Someone had placed a pair of slippers nearby. I put them on before I opened the door and exited to find a short corridor outside.
The corridor was short, leading to a couple of other doors, while opening at its other end to a surprisingly spacious living room, a kitchen, and a modular desk that was probably a makeshift study.
The common areas were empty, though. Voices came from behind one of the doors to my right.
I pulled the first door open and saw another bedroom, a mirror to the one I’d just woken up in, but it was empty. The next door led to a stunningly luxurious bathroom that seemed out of place in the general cottage design of this house. Finally, I tore open the last door.
Lucien was there. He was still in his wolf form, awake, and lying on his front on top of a king-size bed, with Enoch, no longer wearing his doctor’s coat and dressed casually, spreading some sort of creamy liquid over Lucien’s back—and raging red wound. He was assisted by a petite, pretty woman with slanted dark eyes and brown skin, who was continually murmuring something, reading out from the huge, thick open book she was holding.
Next to the bed sat Thayer, whose face was as white as a sheet.
The moment I opened the door, though, Enoch and the woman paused and turned to look at me. Thayer immediately jumped to his feet and strode toward me, lifting his arms as if to hug me.
I flinched.
It was an instinctual response. I didn’t mean to. But the thought of hugging my older brother after a year of him refusing to acknowledge my existence as if I were carrying a contagious disease was too much for me at the moment. Him flying over and telling me aboutthe threat to my life might’ve been enough for other people, but it wasn’t enough for me.
Him worrying about my living or dying wasn’t enough to make me forget all the ways he’d hurt me.
When he saw my stiffness, Thayer froze a few feet away and slowly let his hands fall, pain crossing his still-pale face. He then said in a hasty tone, “I was just about to come check up on you.”
I folded my arms. “How long have I been out?”
“Three hours,” he replied, gray eyes scanning my face before he swallowed and shifted from side to side. “Drew, I ... I mean ...”
