Page 56 of Out of Peril

Logically, I knew what it had looked like to them. I could understand why Silas gave the shoot to kill order. He didn’t have all the facts. But I'd tried to wave them off and they hadn't listened. I didn't know if I could ever forgive them for that, or trust any of them again.

Time seemed to no longer have any meaning as I sat there cradling her head in my lap while Grant fought to save her.

“Stay with me babe. I love you so much. I don't want to live without you. Please. You have to fight. Do it for Maya and Dante. Do it for us. Do it for me.” I choked on the last word as I gently wiped the hair from her face. “I need you,” I whispered, leaning down to plant a kiss on her forehead.

I didn't know when it had happened, but every word I spoke resonated with truth. I loved her.

The tension around me eased just a little as the bullet was pulled from her body, but it was followed but a sickening silence.

I saw Grant shake his head. “She's lost too much blood. Even with the transfusion I'm afraid it's too late.” Still, he sewed her back up.

Shaking my head in denial, I screamed, “No! I can't lost her. She has to live.”

“I'm sorry. There's nothing else anyone can do. It's all up to her now.”

He started to remove the transfusion line, but I shook him off.

“Let her have my blood, as much as she needs. She can have it all if it means she'll live.”

Tucker looked away as our eyes met. He had mated young to a horrible person who had made his life a living hell. She was dead now, and he'd found his true mate. A year ago he wouldn’t have understood, but now that he had Abby, he knew the power of a true mate. If anyone could understand my desperation it was him.

No words were said, but no one tried to fight me over it. While others retreated, no doubt trying to discern how things had gone so horribly wrong, my team never left my side. They surrounded me and poured their strength into me with their presence.

Hours passed as everyone waited for her to breathe her final breath, but I kept insisting she'd be okay.

“Walker, you're losing too much blood,” Taylor said softly.

It sounded like she was at the end of long tunnel and her words took a while to reach my brain. By the time I realized what was happening, the transfusion line had been removed.

I cried. “No. Please no. Fight Lindsey. Damn it babe, I need you to fight.”

“Carefully move them both into the bedroom,” Grant said.

I was numb to everything around me and only vaguely aware of my unit lifting the two of us to relocate. It would be so easy to just close my eyes and drift away into the darkness, but I wasn't ready to give up on her yet. I wasn't ready to give up on us.

“Keep them together. If what he said is true he may just be the lifeline she needs to fight through this.”

“How did this happen?” Michael asked. “They told us the Experiments didn't have any signs of humanity, but look, she shifted into her human form.”

“She's just as human as any of us,” Maya argued and then I felt her little fists pounding against me. “You should have listened to Dante when he warned us. Now Lindsey's gone. You can't die too. You promised, Walker. You promised you'd take care of us if anything happened to her.”

My eyes fluttered open and I reached for her hand, a little freaked out by how weak I felt. I knew then that Grant had been right to remove the transfusion line. Then again, I wasn't kidding when I told them I'd give her every drop of blood in me if it meant saving her.

In that moment I hadn't thought about the kids.

My kids.

“Someone get these kids out of here. They shouldn't be in here right now,” Silas barked.

“No!” I managed in an almost normal voice.

“Walker? Oh thank God,” Michael said as he started to check me over.

“Don't take my kids away,” I told them.

Maya and Dante both smiled through their tears as they pushed the big strong men and woman of Westin Force aside and clung to me.

“It's going to be okay guys. I'm not going anywhere, at least not without you.”

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