Page 86 of Blood of Vengeance

The green eyes I loved so much had met mine for a fleeting moment, all care and concern disappearing in that second. Our connection cold and quiet. Distant. I had fucked up somehow. Big-time. Whether it was the vampire attack or the demon or just the fuckedupness that the evening had turned into, something had caused my mate to turn cold to me. A fact that had my wolf mewling in my mind.

Adam sighed and shook himself like a dog, breaking my concentration and demanding all the attention in the room.

“I’m so glad I popped over tonight. This was an amazing show. I look forward to the chaos these women continue to bring us.” He grinned, his face stretching in unnatural ways, moving as if to pass me but never breaking eye contact. “The burns are surface-level and were done to protect the women. No vampire soldier would go up against a chaos demon for funsies.”

I nodded, understanding but still not liking it.

But Adam wasn’t finished. He held that uncomfortable eye contact, letting me see the fires burning within the depths of his eyes. Letting me know the demon was speaking for the man. “You owe me, Wolf Flinch of the Desert Hellions. For saving your fated mate, you owe me.”

I froze, knowing owing a demon was not something I wanted on my record. But there was no way around it—he had shown up to enjoy the chaos but ended up helping my mate. I did owe him. So I nodded once. Sealing my fate.

And immediately moving into cleanup mode. “Let’s get the women to the hospital.”

Twenty-Eight

Locklyn

I couldn’t even look at Flinch, and yet the sight of him naked before me, bleeding from gashes on his ribs and streaked with the black blood of the vampires he’d fought to get to me, refused to leave my brain. As did the pure animalistic attack I had witnessed from him. The way he had cut that vampire into ribbons would be something that haunted me…but more because he had done it to avenge my dad and protect me. He had lost all control, for me. Why that was so appealing and yet so horrifying in the same breath was not something I was ready to comprehend. So I pushed that aside and focused on another emotion of mine—anger.

I darted a glance his way every few seconds, afraid he would somehow disappear but wanting him to be gone at the same time. Loving and hating him in the same breath.

Why had he done something so stupid? And why hadn’t he told me anything about the bite and what it meant?

But the mess he had made was secondary to helping Zella.

We ended up in the emergency room. All of us, which meant me, Zella, and what looked like every member of the Desert Hellions. I doubted the place had ever seen that much leather and testosterone.

“Just hold on,” I whispered to my best friend, hanging on to her hand like a lifeline. She moaned and curled toward me, though I had a feeling the action was more in response to the pain crushing her than my voice. The pain that had gone from zero to a hundred in the time it had taken us to arrive.

“What do we do?” Cutter asked, looking harried and desperate. “How do we get this to stop?”

“We don’t,” I said, still focusing on Zella. “We wait for the doctor to give her some good pain medicine and hope it kicks in fast. Then she sleeps for a day or two.”

I ran my hand over her head, hating the way she trembled under my touch. I had seen Zella in pain before—seen her curled up on the couch, crying with it. Seen her limping into the bathroom in the hope that a hot shower would help. Seen her laid out for a day or so, unable to function without heavy doses of prescribed medicine to quiet the pain—or not-prescribed medicine to help her forget about it.

I had seen her pain, but I hadn’t ever seen her this bad—this lost to the screaming within her own body—or seen it take over this fast. My best friend looked as if she were dying, and that terrified me more than the vampires had.

Cutter slipped into my view from the other side of Zella’s bed, looking just as worried as I felt. He had donned a pair of Flinch’s sweats and acquired a flannel shirt from somewhere to cover his post-shift body. Neither of which looked right on him. But he was there, refusing to leave Zella’s side. Something I appreciated because carrying the load of concern for Zella had always been solely my job.

“How do you live like this?” Cutter asked as he leaned over her bed and softly touched her forehead. “You’re so strong.”

Zella didn’t answer him, and I couldn’t because how Zella lived with the amount of pain I knew her to be in on the daily was a mystery to me. But as we stood there watching her, as Cutter whispered words I couldn’t hear over her and ran his fingers along her skin, she began to unroll herself. To loosen her muscles and relax her body. Cutter softly soothing her also slowed down her breathing. The short, stubby gasps turned into almost normal inhalations, and her exhales quieted. That was a good sign.

Thankfully, a doctor came in at that moment, knocking on the edge of the opening into the room where we had been left then appearing through the privacy curtain.

“So, what’s happening here?” she asked, glancing over her tablet and tapping on the screen before giving Zella a soft, tired smile. “Looks like we’re in a lot of pain.”

The “no shit” I wanted to say stayed inside my head, though from the look on Cutter’s face, he was thinking the same thing.

“Hi, Doctor,” Zella croaked, moving slightly in the bed as if to flatten herself out. “I have psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. I’ve been trying to handle my pain levels, but with stress and stuff lately, it’s gotten to be too much.”

The doctor nodded, tapping a note into her tablet. “You listed some pain medications on your intake form. Are they not working?”

“I’m traveling, and I don’t have any of my pain medicine with me.”

“Zella,” I hissed.

She pursed her lips. “I was in a hurry to catch a flight out here. Things were forgotten.”

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