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Bronywyn
Everything feels so surreal.
Lights burn my eyes, though I cannot see a thing. There is no clear sound, just echoes—voices calling out instructions that I can’t quite make out.
I do feel pain, though. A burning in my spine that singes me from the inside. I can’t feel my legs, my arms; can’t move them to fight off the hands that flip me over onto my belly. My chin presses into something soft—a pillow perhaps?
Which, of course, makes no sense. Why would my attackers want to help? Someone grips the blade. Panic surges through me as I realize they’re going to try and shove it in further. Any further and I will die.
I’ll never make it home if I can’t—
“Hold her down!” someone orders, as my hearing finally begins to clear. The whirring is now a steady humming, and around me, the room comes into focus.
Delaney is in front of me, face expressionless as she listens to something another woman—Rachel, maybe? —is saying from just out of range.
“Harrie,” I try to murmur, needing to warn them of the treacherous snake we’ve had in our midst this entire time.
Delaney looks to me now, eyes full. “We know. He set us all up,” she chokes out.
Rachel’s face swims into view. “I’m going to remove the blade, okay?”
I don’t respond, mainly because I don’t feel I have the energy to mutter even a single ‘okay.’ Delaney kneels in front of me and grips my hands. I can feel the contact, her squeezing to let me know that it’s okay—that I’m not alone.
“Tarnley?” I barely manage. She doesn’t look at me, though. Did I say anything at all? Or are all of my sounds in my own head?
More pain. I try to scream, and Cole is there, right beside Delaney, his hands going to my shoulders to hold me down as I cry. Heavy tears slip from my eyes as she yanks again, the tugging somehow even worse than getting stabbed in the first place.
“We haven’t found—”
“Not now, Ridley,” Delaney scolds, tilting her head my way.
Tarnley.“Wh—”
“Stop talking,” Delaney urges. “We will fill you in as soon as we get all the silver out and can give you some blood. Please,” she whispers. “Please just give us a few more minutes.” The pleading tone—her pained expression—they don’t paint a pretty picture, and although my own panic is suffocating, I swallow it back. Something else tugs in my left hip, and I cry out as more pain radiates up and down my leg.
“Got it. Okay, flip her over—carefully.”
Cole moves away from my shoulders, and Delaney releases me as two sets of hands slide beneath my right side. Carefully, they roll me over, and I take my first deep breath as I stare up at Elijah and Cole. They release me and step back, and Rachel moves over me.
“We’re going to give you some vampire blood, okay?”
I nod. “Tarnley?” I choke out.
She looks over my head at Delaney, then sadly looks to me. “Not this time.”
Brad steps into view above me, his face battered and crusted with dried blood. His hair is a complete disheveled mess and is caked with what I imagine is a combination of blood and dirt. He lifts his wrist and bites down then offers it to me.
“Tarnley.” I shake my head. I don’t want anyone’s blood but my mate’s.
“You have to take it, and then we’ll find Tarnley, okay?”
“Find—” My throat is dry.
Delaney steps forward and takes my hand. “I know you don’t want to, Bronywyn, but we need you. The others—” She closes her eyes as tears slip freely down her cheeks.
I shift my attention to Cole, to Elijah, hoping one of them will give me any indication of how fucked we are, but neither of them even bothers to look my way.Oh no.Those two words echo through my mind as I nod and accept Brad’s gift.
The copper hits my tongue like acid, my body unfamiliar with his blood. Tarnley’s was difficult enough to take down, but over the years, my body grew accustomed to it, and other than some nausea, I manage it okay.
