Page 55 of Feral King

“Call Kozlov. We’re going to my place. I want a medical team here, and another there waiting for us.”

“Got it.” He slips out his phone, wincing as he angles it in his hand and makes the call.

Julian turns his attention back to me. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m sure. You covered me.”

“Then I did my job.”

“Yourjob?” My voice cracks a little but I’m too mad to care. “Julian, you threw yourself on top of me. You took a bullet?—”

“A graze. This is nothing.”

“You took a bullet that would’ve hit me, then emptied your gun into a moving car, and now you’re telling me you’refinewhile blood is pouring from you?—”

He pulls me in and crushes me against his chest, away from the wound. I can feel his heartbeat again, still maddeningly calm and steady. I press my face into his neck and breathe him in. It is in that moment that I realize with total clarity what just happened;whatalmosthappened.

Someone tried to kill us. And they might’ve succeeded if they’d been just a little more accurate—or if Julian hadn’t moved as quickly as he did.

This is the world I now live in. This is what happens when you fall for a man for whom dodging bullets is just another Tuesday.

I pull back.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper.

His expression doesn’t change but his eyes do. They soften a little, as if I’d said something that he’d been half expecting to hear for days.

“I know,” he whispers back.

The medical team arrives. Ethan is carefully loaded into a black sedan. Anya goes with him, his blood still on her hands.

Julian doesn’t let go of me until we get into the other car.

Then his hand finds mine and he holds on tight, as if it’s the last time.

CHAPTER 19

JULIAN

“It’s not serious.”

The doctors are taking a look at Ethan, who seems annoyed by their presence.

“Through and through,” Ethan announces after they walk away. “Clean exit. Missed the subclavian by two centimeters.” He’s sitting up, shirtless, his right shoulder packed and bandaged. “I’ve had worse—back in Busan I took a round to the kidney.Thatwas bad.Thisis nothing.”

He narrows his eyes at me.

“I’ve been looked at.” I’m leaning against the frame of the doorway.

“You let a nurse clean it off and put a bandage on it,” he says. “That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s a graze.”

“It’s a six-inch laceration across your ribcage that’s going to get infected if you don’t?—”

“Ethan.”

He stops, letting out a sigh and shaking his head. The doctors, who’d been watching the exchange, take the opportunity to slip out.