Mated Girl (Wolf Girl #4)(30)
“NO!”
There, standing just behind my incapacitated wolf, was the fucking vampire queen. She held some kind of Taser device, and when she turned a dial, my body and wolf simultaneously felt like it was consumed by fire. Every nerve ending frayed and the world spun and sweat broke out onto my body. My wolf shook, her teeth chattering as the electricity rocked her small form. My human self lunged forward, placing one foot on the windowsill, and was reaching over with my left arm to remove my right cuff when one of the tall fey guards from the gym room, who was clearly no longer unconscious, burst into the room, gun raised.
It all happened so fast, too fast. The muzzle of the gun flickered with light and then something sharp pinched my stomach. Fresh, hot warmth trickled down into my underwear, and I swayed. I flew backward into someone’s arms and then Sawyer screamed. It was gut-wrenching and inhumane as it turned into a howl.
It took a moment for me to realize he was screaming for me.
“No! You idiot! I need her alive.” The queen’s voice sounded warbled and my body shook. “Cuff the wolf and bring up the protection field,” the queen snapped.
Then Sawyer said the three most horrible words I’d ever heard. “Go! Leave her!”
Without even considering another option, Pearl kicked off the ground and her wings snapped out as she pumped us high into the air. My wolf lay on the ground inside of the room shaking and whimpering from the high-voltage electric current pulsing nonstop into her body.
Everything felt so light, and cold … I was so cold. My teeth chattered as we flew further and further away from my wolf, my other half of my soul, my savior.
“Sawyer don’t … make me … I can’t,” I rasped. There was pressure on my stomach, and I looked down to see a panicked and wide-eyed Walsh trying to plug all of the holes there.
Oh my God. There were so many holes in my body. How was I still conscious?
It that moment, the shock wore off and the woozy heaviness of sleep pressed down on me along with a pain so horrifying I nearly passed out.
This was how I died. I knew it. Felt it deep inside of my soul.
I reached up with bloody fingers and trailed them down Sawyer’s cheek. “I want you to know…” I rasped, as breathing became too hard. “That you were loved. Not for your money, or because of some stupid mating year. I…” Why was breathing so hard? Sawyer’s eyes filled with tears as he shook his head in complete denial of the situation. “I loved you so madly and wildly. I want you to … know … that. Tell Creek that … I loved him too. Unlike any other.” Once the last word slipped from my lips, a deep, heavy blackness, unlike any I’d ever felt before, washed over me and pulled me under, like a tsunami dragging a victim to their grave.
SAWYER
She went limp in my arms and every rational thought left me. This wasn’t happening. Not like this. “Demi!” I shook her lightly, but her head just lolled onto my lap.
No, no, no. Fuck no. Not her, not the love of my life…
“Take off the cuffs!” Sage half sobbed as those of us who knew her best lost our collective minds. Walsh ripped her cuffs off and I once again cursed myself for making them. These things hurt her more times than they helped her.
“With the cuffs off, will she heal?” I asked my best friend. My voice sounded hollow, and even I knew that there was no healing from this, not without a trauma team and top-notch hospital, which we didn’t have anymore. It had been bombed by the fucking vampires.
My heart thundered in my chest as I gripped my dying wife’s blood-soaked t-shirt.
Think. Breathe. Fucking hell.
“Astra.” Walsh’s voice was barely a whisper. We were flying on a fucking dragon over the entire city of Light Fey and no one looked at us, which made me think the dragon had some type of cloaking ability.
“What?” I couldn’t concentrate. All of my medical schooling was trying to take up residence in my brain at the same time as my grief and it was short-circuiting my brain. Demi wasn’t someone I could fathom living without. I tried in prison and almost committed suicide. I’d never loved a creature so much as I adored and worshiped this woman in my arms. She couldn’t die. Not like this. Not after everything we’d been through.
“Astra! Is that chick still alive?” Walsh screamed at Sage.
Sage’s face brightened, which gave me hope as I remembered the story of the Paladin priestess healing Walsh when he was injured … near death.
I looked up at the troll girl who seemed to be in charge of the dragon. “Take us to Astra.”
She looked confused. Fuck. Why did she look confused?
“Paladin Village, in the Wild Lands, I’ll show you the way,” Sage barked. The troll nodded and her named popped into my mind. Marmal. This must be Marmal from Demi’s time stuck in the Magic Lands.
There was so much blood. Even with Walsh and I plugging holes, they bled through to her back. My gaze flicked up to Luka, whose eyes were practically glowing with hunger. Her blood, it would be nearly impossible to resist for him, especially since they half-starved him in prison. “You good, bro?” I asked.
He swallowed hard and nodded, looking away from Demi. I trusted him with my life, we knew everything about each other, the last year had brought us closer than brothers. If he felt himself losing control, he’d jump off this dragon before harming my wife. He knew what she meant to me.
If I had a surgical kit and operating room, I might be able to do something. Right now I was utterly fucking useless … about to put all of my faith in a teenage girl with supposed healing powers…