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He was where I had learned it from. Don’t talk, never share. What was private was private, at least with strangers, not with us. That had all changed, and it hurt. I didn’t know this man anymore. He was hard and calculating. He wasn’t my protector, my best friend, my big brother anymore.
“What are you doing?” I whispered angrily. My heart monitors jumped all over the place, and I cursed them. Before, it was embarrassing. Now, it was life-threatening.
Kyle stared at me, then his eyes darted to the hall. He worked his jaw like he always did when trying to work something out.
The pause gave me enough time for my senses to re-engage. I scented Ridge’s blood on my brother’s arm.
The heart monitor went berserk. “Please, I beg you, don’t do this. Please don’t do this.” I fought to get out of the bed, but the pain forced me back.
My brother stepped forward, fear lancing his eyes before the shield slipped back into place. “Keep quiet.” Popping his head outside the door, he said, “It’s just an injured human in here. We have enough for the extraction. Load ’em up.”
No. No. No.They couldn’t take him. They had Ridge. They couldn’t take him.
As I struggled, my stitches split open. Blood seeped through the gauze and gown. Kyle stepped further into the room and pushed me back onto the bed.
“Stop it. Be quiet, or they’ll hear you. You were lucky I was the one who intercepted the old woman’s message about you being in this town. Dad doesn’t know you’re here.” He glared down at me. “You’re a monster. I should be killing you right now, but I can’t. Once upon a time, you were my little sister, and I loved you.”
Loved, not love. It hurt to hear it, even though I’d known all along. All this time, I’d hoped he’d still love me, but now that was done.
I struggled to sit up again, but he pushed me back down and covered my mouth with his hand.
“I’m warning you, don’t come after us or the shifters we’re taking. Keep quiet, keep your head down, and run from this place as soon as possible.” His jaw ticked. “The next time I see you, I’ll have no choice. I’ll have to bring you in.”
Swiping at his arms, I tried to push him, tried to argue. My body was too weak and wouldn’t cooperate.
I needed to get to Ridge because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they weren’t taking him.
“Stop it, Tori.” He didn’t break a sweat as he manhandled me, and then he injected something into my neck.
I swiveled my head and noticed it was the hunters’ sedative for shifters. Panic overwhelmed me. I would be out immediately.
Glaring at my brother, I vowed retribution.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, turning away.
Screaming every foul word I could imagine, I spewed rage at him with my eyes as the sedative trapped my vocals.
Never before had I hated my brother. We were only products of our environment. But taking Ridge from me was an act of war I couldn’t walk away from. I was going to do absolutely everything I could to get Ridge Blackwood back if it was the last thing I did.
My heart pulsed with fiery anger, and then everything went black.
Chapter30
Tori
I woke up groggy, my nose itching and a foggy haze at the edges of my vision. My hands seemed to swim through the astringent odor of antiseptic as I raised them to my face. The air was thick like molasses, and movement was slow and difficult.
Carefully, because everything at the moment was hard, I used the heel of my hand to remove the grit from my eyes. The incessant beeping of monitors forced my eyes to open because I wanted to get rid of the irritating noise in any way I could. I managed to turn my head to look at the various machines.
A bank of monitors stood to my right. I couldn’t tell which one was beeping, but oh, how I wanted it to stop. Cables coiled across the bed and beneath the sheets, linking me to the beeping sound I couldn’t escape. Apart from that, the sterile room was devoid of anyone other than me, at least from what I could see through the darkness.
Thank goodness for my wolf sight. The thought took me by surprise. I’d never considered my shifter abilities an asset before I arrived in Blackwood Creek, but as I lay here in the dark, being able to see as if the light was switched on, I couldn’t help but be grateful. In the glow from the equipment to the side of me, a glint of something caught my eye, and I tried to turn my head more fully toward it. Red and blue lights flashed behind the blinds covering the window. With the amount of color sneaking in, there had to be a trail of emergency response vehicles outside. If the blinds were open, the room would have lit as if a Christmas tree with flickering lights stood next to my bed.
When I lifted and moved my head, I felt like there were weights strapped to my forehead and the back of my scalp. I stopped trying and lay back. The beginnings of panic stirred deep in my gut. Why was I in the hospital? I closed my eyes again and tried to piece the puzzle together of what the hell was going on and why I felt like I was missing something important.
Fumbling one hand—the other didn’t move so well—across my body and on the mattress on either side of me, I located the controls for the bed and held the button, raising the head of the bed to a more upright position. I was still disoriented, my memory still fuzzy. What I did remember didn’t add up to the condition I found myself in.
Mrs. Marrow, the librarian, had stabbed me, but that didn’t explain why the doctors had drugged me so deeply. I knew being stabbed with silver significantly slowed my shifter healing—another ability to be grateful for—but I wouldn’t have thought my injuries warranted such enforced rest.
