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10
Every breath hurt. The air around me felt warm, and I could feel sweat sticking my hair to my skin. I tried to open my eyes, but every time I did the world around me was a blur. The only think I could make out were faint voices in the distance.
“How did she do it?” a male voice asked. “We’ve been trying for months, and she does it like it’s no big deal?”
“I don’t know,” said another male.
I recognized them, but their names wouldn’t surface through the fog in my mind.
“Mmmm,” I tried to call out for Maria, but my jaw throbbed with the effort.
“Is she awake?” A female asked. Ronnie. That voice I’d have recognized anywhere. She was the only one in the pack who spoke with that sort of venom.
“No,” the first man answered. “The fever still has her in it’s grasp.”
“Will she live?” Ronnie asked.
“If she survives the night then…maybe,” the first man answered again.
“She’ll survive,” the second man barked. He was closer than the others. Standing somewhere beside me. “She has to.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Ronnie said.
There was a sudden screech as someone’s chair was thrown back, and the second male growled. “Get out. She wouldn’t want you here anyway.”
Ronnie laughed. “She wouldn’t want you here either boy. She’s hated you since high school.”
“I don’t care.”
“Jamie, calm down, boy. I only let you stay because your presence kept the girl calm. Change that and I’ll kick you out too,” the first man said. I recognized him now. It was Gregor’s brother. Hamish. The man who ran the med tent outside during training days.
“I’m not leaving,” Jamie said, and I heard the chair moving off to my right again. Something cold touched my hand and I exhaled a low sigh. It was Jamie beside me. Things were getting clearer.
“J…Ja…mmm,” I groaned rolling my head towards him.
“Eve?” He gasped, coming closer. “Can you hear me?”
“J…Jamie,” I rasped. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a hot coal.
“Oh, thank God,” he sighed, and I felt something cool touch my shoulder. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought.”
I tried to open my eyes again, and this time I could make out the shape of him sitting at my side. “What…what happened?”
“Is she awake?” Hamish asked from somewhere in the distance, near my feet.
Jamie ignored him. “You killed the thing in the forest, but it hurt you. You were injured.”
“M-maria?”
“She’s okay,” he said. “She got knocked around, but she’s okay. You got the worst of it.”
I nodded weakly. “It hurts like a bitch.”
“Not surprised.” He laughed. “How did you kill it, Snow? It was…”
I couldn’t be sure if he’d trailed off or if I’d fallen unconscious. But when I opened my eyes to search for him again it wasn’t him sitting beside me. Maria sat in the chair beside me staring at her cellphone.
Blinking a few times, I cleared my throat. “Good to see you’re alive.”
