Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
He reached in through the open passenger door to retrieve something while she was still trying to come to terms with his short and succinct summary of the situation. Theo didn’t have panic attacks. She’d never have survived in her family if she allowed panic to steal her breath—they’d have killed her. Literally. Most of her family had been waiting for her to die since she was first graded as a 2.7.
“Here.” Yakov twisted off the top from a fresh bottle of water. “Get a little of this into you. It’ll help clear things up.”
Numb, she accepted the offer because water was always good, and took a sip. Only then did she realize it was fortified in some way. She kept drinking. Her muscles ached as if she’d been running full tilt for an hour.
She didn’t stop until she’d drunk a third of the bottle. “Thank you,” she said afterward, and wondered dully what Aunt Rita would say about accepting this food-related gift from a bear.
Shock, she was in shock. This was no time to be thinking about bears offering food. And the situation was so far beyond Theo’s normal as to be anarchy. None of the usual rules applied.
Yakov took the bottle once she was done, put the cap back on, and dropped it on her seat. “No problem.” Narrowed eyes as he looked past her shoulder.
Her skin crawled.
“You’ve been here before.” It was a statement, not a question.
She couldn’t blame him for the assumption. “If so, I have no memory of it.” She held a gaze that had gone a striking yellowish amber, waiting for him to snort a rejection of her words.
But he nodded. “Yeah, I figured. No reason for you to panic that way if you’d prepared yourself for it.”
Theo swallowed. Her normal mode of operations was to keep her mouth shut on any possible vulnerability. Even with Pax, she was careful, not wanting him to see the truth of what Grandfather had done to her, what he’d made her. It would break her brother into a million bloody shards.
Fingers shaking, she rubbed the bracelet on her wrist. And knew she had no other option but to trust this bear with her current state. “I’m having trouble making myself turn around.” A noxious realization had begun to bloom in her brain, a horror so bad she could hardly face it.
Her name in the mangled file Pax had found.
Memories of medical masks and scrubs.
Echoes of childhood terror.
Yakov didn’t tell her to stiffen her spine and get on with it. “Do you want to?” he asked instead, those bear eyes penetrating her thin skin. “Or do you want to get out of here?”
Screams.
Masks.
Grandfather.
Straps tying her to the chair.
Cold that seared her blood, made her scream.
“I want to,” she said, her voice a rasp. She’d never sleep again if she didn’t find answers to the nightmare images.
“Then we might need to take a break,” Yakov said. “Maybe get an E out here to—”
Theo shook her head in a hard no. “I need to know what lies beyond. I’ll go mad if I delay.” There was no point in attempting to hide the depth of her reaction from Yakov, not when he’d witnessed it firsthand. “The terror will circle my brain until it cripples me.”
* * *
* * *
YAKOV wanted to vehemently disagree. He’d never seen anyone go that stiff, every muscle in their body locked, their breathing halting as if a switch had been thrown. And her color. Govno, she’d gone so white her skin was parchment, the blackness of her eyes stark pools against the white.
“I’m not sure you can physically do it,” he said, being blunt because he had no intention of allowing her to push herself into another panic attack.
A long breath, Theo’s chest rising and falling before she put her hand on the side of the car, then began to swivel on her foot very, very slowly. He knew when she caught first sight of the gates. Her entire body went rigid; her breathing began to accelerate.
“Theo.” It came out a warning rumble.
She held up a hand, palm out. It trembled, but she was still breathing, albeit rapidly.
And somehow, she managed to turn and face the gate full-on.
The woman didn’t only have claws, she had steel for a spine.
The two of them stood in silence for several minutes as she worked on getting her breathing under control, her body no longer as stiff as a plank of wood. “I can do this,” she murmured, and he wasn’t sure which one of them she was talking to.
Regardless, and despite the confusion of protectiveness and suspicion inside him, he couldn’t help but admire her courage. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t stupid courage—it was obvious she was putting herself through hell—but bears could often be bloody minded, too, so it wasn’t as if he had a leg to stand on there.