Chosen Fool (Forever Evermore #5)(74)
“Thank you,” he stated humbly and placed it on his wrist carefully. “She’s…unique.”
My lips lifted. “Her differences will liberate her.” I flicked a finger at him. “Just make sure she has at least one good friend amongst the herd.”
That night, shouts and the sounds of breaking items twirled through my mind, becoming a part of my frenzied dreams, but when the bed under me began shaking, my eyes shot wide open, staring into my dark bedroom. With my breath caught in my throat, I managed to grab my gun off the bouncing nightstand before it fell to the ground. I tumbled out of bed to the shaking ground, which stopped quaking when I heard multiple gunshots.
From my retiring room, King Zeller bellowed, “It’s Sin! Don’t kill him!”
Eyes still huge, breathing not yet normal after the furious rumbling that had awoken me, I jumped to my feet and raced through the room, falling down once as I tripped over a shoe before I got the damn door open. I rushed out with gun in hand, eyes darting across my torn up retiring room. I noticed Frost first, lying on the ground with his eyes closed and a bloody nose, a cell phone still gripped in his hand. Farley was sprawled over the crooked couch and the broken wooden coffee table. His head was bleeding, and his eyes were closed. Furniture had been tossed everywhere and bullet holes peppered one wall.
King Zeller had his hands up, his expression calm as he stood inside the opened door of my room. He spoke in a smooth tone, “They’re still alive. I’m sure he didn’t realize they were protecting her. From what I heard, they attacked him as soon as he walked into the room.” The eavesdropping Vampire had been hard at work.
I turned to where he was speaking. My gaze stalled on the other side of the room.
Terror seized my throat and froze me solid.
Because the One, wearing only a pair of white pajama bottoms, his muscled back to me, knelt on the floor with Sin lying on his stomach between his legs. The One had a fistful of Sin’s green hair to hold his limp head back. Sin’s eyes were closed. He was out cold.
The One held a wickedly curved silver knife to his throat.
The One asked slowly, his voice deadly, “This is Sin?”
Instant reply from King Zeller. “Yes.”
“Shit,” the One muttered, and he quickly yanked his blade away from Sin’s vulnerable neck. “Let’s not tell her about this, all right? Help me wake him before she sees him like this.”
“How about we have your gunshot wounds looked at first?” King Zeller murmured casually, slowly dropping his hands. But he tilted his head in my direction. “And she already knows.”
The One’s head snapped in my direction and he blinked, his silver eyes staring at me as I labored to breathe. He started cursing profusely, setting aside his silver knife and placing Sin’s head softly on the floor. “Put the gun down, Ms Jules. I’m not going to hurt him.”
My hand started trembling, and I looked down at the gun I hadn’t even realized I had aimed at him, my finger cramped on the trigger. I swayed, my arm instantly dropping to set the gun on a tossed chair, and I placed a bracing arm on the wall before I fell over.
“Go help her,” the One barked.
He fell forward, catching himself on the ground over Sin with an extended arm.
“I’m thinking the man bleeding silver needs help first,” King Zeller mumbled, instantly pulling a cell phone from his pocket, pressing a button, and placing it to his ear. He lunged forward, grabbing the One around his chest from behind—eliciting a deep grunt from the One—as he started to fall completely on top of Sin’s unconscious form. I stood there shaking like a girl, dazed from Sin almost dying and from being a trigger-pull away from killing the One. King Zeller barked into the phone, “I don’t know how the hell you slept through that, but get to your f*cking Prodigy’s room now and call Bindi because she’s needed.” He tossed the phone aside, grabbing the One’s unconscious form with both hands and ordering me over his shoulder, “Shock time’s over, Caro. Get your ass over here and help me.”
“Okay,” I whispered, his demand floating through my mind for a good ten seconds before I registered what he wanted. Then I was walking on autopilot. I was not quite sure which route I took through the debris, but when I blinked, I was kneeling next to King Zeller and helping him lift the One from Sin’s body, his bulky, dead weight freaking heavy as we maneuvered him directly next to Sin. We laid him on his back…and I froze solid again, staring wide-eyed at all the blood on his chest. “There was none on his back. The bullets are still in there.”
“I know,” King Zeller muttered, tilting the One’s head back before he blurred and placed his mouth to the One’s. He breathed air into the One’s lungs, only speaking when he lifted his head for another breath. “He’s not breathing, but his heart’s still beating.” He ducked his head down, breathing into the One’s mouth again. The One’s chest rose and fell with the work King Zeller was doing.
Instantly, I asked, “Sin?”
“Just unconscious,” King Zeller murmured before blowing more air into the One’s lungs.
King Collins raced into my room. “What the hell happened in here—” He dropped next to me, his brown eyes flying wide at all the unconscious, bleeding forms. His phone was already at his ear as his eyes assessed the One’s injuries. “Bindi, hurry the f*ck up! The One’s shot. And three others aren’t moving except to breathe.” His phone got tossed, then his eyes turned utterly cold and deadly and flicked to King Zeller. “Did you see who did this?”