Page 19 of A Trial By Blood

“Rose?”

She jolted in my arms, her entire body going stiff before a cry exploded past her lips.

I cupped her face. “Rose? Rose? What’s happening?”

CHAPTER 6

Rose

Come to me, child. Now.

A female voice rang through my mind.

“Rose?” Ronan said gruffly, taking hold of my chin and turning me to look at him.

“She’s c-calling, Ronan.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“The mother. It is too l-late. Oh god, it’s too late.” This couldn’t be happening. I wanted to pull Ronan down, beg him to feed, to end this now. But I didn’t know what would happen if Ronan went ahead and ended my life, not now that the mother had called. I couldn’t risk it.

“What can I do?” he said. As always, he wanted to help, to make it better for me, even though I was sure he didn’t understand it or know that’s what he was doing. It was always his first instinct to protect me.

But there was nothing else I could do. In a split second, everything had changed. “Keep me a-alive…at least until I talk to her?”

“Why would you do that?”

I gripped his hand tighter. Ronan knew what my sisters had been through before me, why the mother was calling, and why it was so important to our coven. What he didn’t understand, was why I couldn’t ignore her call now. Not only would it infuriate her—and losing her favor wasn’t something any coven wanted. But the main reason? “I have to at least try to explain my situation to her. To a-ask her to spare my family. To beg her not to take away their gifts because of me.”

He nodded slowly. “Where do you need to go?”

Thank god. “Oldwood Forest. But it’s dangerous. There are…d-demon’s everywhere. I’m so sorry to ask this of you—”

“You won’t be in any danger with me, Rose.” He lifted me and lay me back on the bed. “We need to dress you. It’s cold outside.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I’d been prepared to die tonight, not this. Ronan was opening and closing drawers, pulling things out. I hadn’t worn actual clothes in months. Nothing I owned fit me anymore. Everything hung from my body now.

He slipped thick socks on my feet, then a second pair over the top of those. Then he worked a pair of sweats up my legs, carefully lifting my hips to pull them up to my waist under my nightgown. I blushed but fought back my embarrassment. There was no one else here to help. And thank the goddess for that. My family would never have let me go. They would have resigned themselves to losing our gifts or, worse, one of them would have gone in my place and risked the mother’s wrath.

“Lift your arms,” Ronan said.

My face grew hotter still as I did as he asked. He lifted the nightgown over my head, and I did my best to cover myself as he pulled a thermal over my head and helped me put my arms through the sleeves like a toddler. I hated this so damned much I wanted to scream.

The timing of this, of her calling to me. Could that really be a coincidence? She was everywhere, saw everything. The mother had engineered this, she had to have, and I hated her for it. Ronan put a shirt on me next, then a sweater.

“Jacket? Hat?” he asked.

“Downstairs.”

Ronan scooped me into his strong arms and carried me downstairs. Sitting me in the armchair by the door, he propped me against the back, then found a woolen hat and pulled it down low before searching through the jackets hanging by the door. He grabbed Mom’s long quilted one and helped me into it, pulled on his own, then I was back in his arms, and he was carrying me outside into the snowy night.

Despite all my layers, the cold bit into me instantly. Ronan strode quickly to his car and carefully sat me in the passenger seat, buckling me in, then around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine.

The snow grew heavier as we drove, but it didn’t take long for us to reach Oldwood. The forest was just beyond the city itself, at the southernmost end of the larger Roxburgh State Forest.

He lifted me out and strode toward a gap in the trees.

“What about the demons?”