Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
There was a split second of suspended animation, as if both were waiting for the other to say something; then Apex was gone, and Kane was running up to his female and making a report.
“He’s going for what you need. He knows where to find…”
He stopped talking as he looked down at Lucan. The male was dying, and everyone knew it. He could tell by the way Mayhem was desperately trying to stop the bleeding, his two huge hands pressed into the male’s groin, his face a stark mask of pain, even though he was not physically injured. Meanwhile, up at Lucan’s head, Rio was at her mate’s ear, talking to him, urging him not to go.
As if the choice was his.
And in the center, Nadya was probing the male’s abdomen, like she was looking for more injuries.
Giving Apex the job of getting supplies had been the right thing to do.
Kane wanted to be here when his female lost her patient—and Rio lost her love. And as he stood over the sad tableau, he felt himself getting sucked back into his past… picturing Cordelhia in her bedchamber, all her blood out of her veins and staining the fine silk covers and woven blankets that her family had included with her mating payment.
When a wave of dizziness came over him, he threw out a hand and caught his balance with the help of a tree branch—
Something moved about fifteen yards away into the tree line.
Narrowing his eyes, he subtly turned his head. “I’ll be right back.”
With a quick shift, he ducked down and jogged in the direction of the disturbance. He’d thought it was down near the ground, only appearing to be higher up because of a rise in the earth. He was right.
It was a guard who had sustained a gunshot wound to the head. The neat little entry wound at the temple was very no-muss-no-fuss that was nonetheless very lethal—just taking its time to kill the male. The bastard was still moving, his hands making circles at his sides as if he were trying to paddle himself out of the Grim Reaper’s reach.
Kane knelt and thought about the fact that someone he knew very well and cared about a great deal was dying on a similar countdown.
Capturing one of those rotating hands, he yanked up the sleeve of the uniform, lowered his head, and bared his fangs—
At the same time he struck the flesh he had revealed, he reached up and slapped a palm over the guard’s mouth so the howl of pain didn’t travel far. And then he retracted his bite and watched.
As the flesh began to be consumed by some invisible, hungry force, Kane shook his head and wondered why he needed the confirmation.
Then he thought of Lucan’s cousin staring at him with wide eyes, telling him he didn’t have to worry about weapons.
Glancing through the trees at Nadya as she did what she could for a dying male, he focused on her hair.
The patches were disappearing because new growth was overtaking them, the baldness filling in before his very eyes. And her face was even smoother than it had been when she’d first appeared to step through a slit in the fabric of time and space.
As he fell back on his ass and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, he stared at the guard’s arm as white bone began to show through the red meat of the muscle and sinew. And then it was all bone, nothing else.
With the infection or whatever it was continuing to spread, Kane counted the passing minutes by how the back of the hand turned to a skeleton’s, and the nail beds were consumed, and finally the bones fell loose to the weave of pine needles in the same orientation they had just been connected in.
A deadly mystery.
He once again looked at Nadya.
That may well be a saving grace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Callum had been here.
That was Apex’s first thought as he burst into the garage. All he had to do was take a deep breath and he could catch the fading scent of the wolven with the talented mouth and hands. The male had come for weapons, not medical supplies, however, and as Apex hit the trigger to send the toolbox off its seat, he prayed it wasn’t going to take him long to locate the first aid shit down among the parkas and other provisions.
Actually, he prayed that that wolven would suddenly show up again, although that was less about the needle-in-a-haystack stuff and more about just wanting to confirm for himself that sonofabitch was still alive.
With the stairs exposed, he jumped down into the bunker and ransacked the otherwise neat and tidy arrangement of everything. He was looking for something with a red cross on a white background to it—come on, there had to be a duffle, a box, a collection, fucking anything that could help someone with a mission critical leak.