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Sympathy panged, followed by sadness.
“Say you’ll come with me.” Stepping toward me, he winced when his toes kissed the cold river. Holding his damaged arm with its long stem tied around the torn pieces of his flesh, he came closer. “We’re meant to be together.”
He’d die if he didn’t see a healer. Everything he told me could be a lie. If there were no wolves, then there was no cave. And if there was no cave, he’d disappear into the grasslands and most likely be dead by morning.
My stomach clenched painfully at the thought.
“Don’t you want to know why we’re drawn to each other?” He held up his good arm, his fingers outstretched. “Don’t you feel it?” Wading closer to me, his smoky eyes locked with mine just as his eyebrows shot upright and he tripped.
His foot slipped on the algae bottom, his arms flying out for balance. He managed to keep his feet, but it cost him dearly.
A flush of malaise covered his face as he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. His skin shone with new sweat. His breath was shallow as he opened his eyes again, his voice not nearly as strong or commanding. “Please don’t send me away.”
My heart skipped.
He literally faded before my eyes.
The grey parlour of his skin grew greyer by the heartbeat. Every instinct urged me to gather him close and give him what he wanted. He needed to reserve his strength, but if I touched him...I didn’t think my life would ever be the same again.
“Please—” He went to cup my elbow just as his feet slipped a second time.
He tumbled.
This time, he didn’t have the power to stop his fall, and he splashed into the river.
The faintest blue glow sparked in the current, licking around him, sucking him deep.
A flash of blue lightning forked through the ripples.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he breathed, his lips finding mine again. “Anything apart from that. I won’t let you go, no matter how forbidden—”
The vision flashed and faded.
For a moment, I just stared at the flowing river, struggling with past and present.
Help him!
Urgency kicked me and I dropped into the current. I dove my hands to where he’d last been. It took a few swipes before I found his fever-scalded skin. Locking my fingers around his good wrist, I yanked with all my power and pulled his torso out of the water.
He didn’t speak, didn’t breathe.
Dragging him toward the bank, I crashed to my knees and cradled him close as his head lolled loosely. My skin tingled where I touched him but there was no life in him. No fierce belief or terrifying certainty.
“Breathe!” I shook him, hating how his head flopped forward. How the assuredness and passion he wielded remained as silent as the dead. “Come on!” I pushed him onto his back, laying his upper body on the shore. His hips and legs remained in the water while I leaned over him and tapped his hot cheek. “Breathe. You have to breathe.”
Nothing happened.
The water swirled with its glowing blue, kissing his feet that still swayed in their domain. The haunting lament I’d heard before returned, sending prickles all over my body, filling me with longing.
The song came from within me and outside of me. It came from him, the river, the moon, the stars, and when its musical whispers seeped into my skin and played its despairing chime in my bones, the man jerked by my knees and breathed.
Chapter Fourteen
. The Stranger .
I SCRAMBLED OUT OF THE water as if it’d turned acidic.
The strange song I’d heard when I fell into the river no longer echoed in my ears.
What happened?
How weak was I if I could barely stand in the gentle buffeting of water?
Shame coated me as I looked back at the girl who still kneeled in the river. Kneeled where she’d saved me, watching me with shoulder-sagging relief that I was still breathing.
Her concern for me buckled my chest.
The new flush of affection in her pretty gaze made my heart burst with gratefulness.
Raking both hands through my hair, I winced as my bad arm twinged with agony. Droplets dripped onto my shoulders as the rest of the river sluiced off me, leaving glistening damp tracks on the leaf-littered earth as I stumbled backward.
“I-I didn’t mean to...” I swallowed hard, unable to say the word faint. I didn’t want her thinking less of me. Lesser than she already did. I didn’t want her to believe I couldn’t protect or hunt for her. If a female of Salak’s pack had witnessed the alpha passing out and almost drowning, he would no longer be alpha.
Rubbing at the pinpricks on my nape, I shook my head. “The bite has made me tired.” Spying a large rock by the river’s edge, I tripped to it and sat heavily. My wounded arm throbbed with never-ending torture and whatever sickness seeped into my blood from the lynx’s teeth only grew worse with every hour.
