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“You can’t keep me here!” I fight. “No!”
“It’s for your own good,” Patrick replies.
The white wolf is pulling Reyes back into the woods; I can’t see where he was shot, but my whole chest aches. The other wolf, though—Arden—trains her eyes on me.
She moves toward me, glancing from me to Patrick to Enid.
She’s trying tohelp me.
“Arden, don’t!” I scream. “I’ll get myself out of this. Don’t put yourself in danger!”
She balks, lifting one paw, and then the red laser sights from the watchtower find her chest.
She vanishes into the grass before they can hit her.
I give myself up to my sister and Homestead’s mayor, letting myself be dragged back inside. I’m not a prisoner here; after things settle, I can go back to the den.
At least that’s what I tell myself as the gate shuts behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
?
REYES
My whole world is pain and absence.
The absence of somethingessential.
I start to shift out of pain and adrenaline alone, but not even my lycan form is strong enough to pull me out of this stupor. I’m hauled onto the back of a horse and I feel the strong arms of someone else holding me up, a pang of agony shooting through me as we start to canter.
“Easy, buddy,” a voice says. “I’ve got you.”
Grant. Grant ishere, despite my instructions.
I try to tell him he wasn’t supposed to come, but I can’t seem to even form the words. I sense two others as well, catching glimpses of them from the corners of my eyes. Elijah and Arden.
Someone is missing.
“Mi reina…” I groan.
No one hears me.
?
I lose five hours like that.
The pain is almost too much, drowning me in darkness. My chest aches, an open wound in the air, like my heart itself has been torn out. When we pass out from under the Celestial Curtain, the light of the late afternoon sun hurts my eyes, the thundering of hooves lulling me into a sleep I’m not sure I’ll wake up from.
Our healing powers are superhuman, but even monsters can be killed by a direct shot to the chest.
The next thing I hear is voices surrounding me, hands holding me as I’m carried off the horse and into the den. Familiar scents envelop me, my family holding me in their embrace. Someone is crying, salt on the air. A bandage is placed over my chest. Ithurts. I don’t want the ache to go away when the reason for it is notably absent.
Is this the pain of a gunshot, or heartbreak? Is this what it feels like to be torn away from your mate?
“Thank God you were there,” a woman’s voice says. I recognize it, though it’s not the voice I’m yearning to hear.
“He didn’t want us to come, but I figured things might go south, and Arden didn’t seem comfortable with it at all…”
