Page 66 of Claimed By My Fiancé's Brother

Eleanor didn’t flinch, and her eyelids didn’t even flutter. She just lay still in my arms.

Small, still, pale, and so damn cold, with her heartbeat so faint it took me several panicked seconds to hear it. Her blood seeped through her damp clothes and into mine.

The monster within me howled in pain and the need to rip into something to avenge this attack on his mate.

I’d never moved so fast in my entire life—and yet it still felt too slow.

A quick mind link to the pack physicians ensured they’d be waiting to tend to Eleanor the moment I stepped into our home. I couldn’t take her to the pack hospital until I understood how she’d gotten attacked in our territory, which should’ve been the safest place for her.

I couldn’t move too quickly, lest I jostle her and worsen her injuries. On the other hand, if I moved too slowly, my mate would die in my arms.

As I ran, every single resolve I had shattered. I never should have left her alone.

I should have protected her.

I should have done a lot of things.

When I arrived at our home, the pack physicians tried to harry me out of the room, but I didn’t budge.

I couldn’t leave my mate’s side when she was unconscious and I was wearing half her blood.

I watched with bated breath, trembling with deep-seated rage as the physicians cut off Eleanor’s clothes to get to her injuries.

Eleanor’s body was peppered with little slashes and cuts that would no doubt have healed on their own if she hadn’t lost so much blood from the eight-inch long cut across her side and the claw marks running up her thigh that’d almost hit her femoral artery.

I didn’t want to think about what could’ve happened to her if I’d arrived even a moment later.

I didn’t want to think at all.

So I stayed at her side until the physicians were done. Finally, it was just the two of us left in the room.

Eleanor’s breathing was already regulating, and her skin was slowly becoming less pale, yet I found I couldn’t leave her even to change out of my bloodstained shirt.

Growing up the way I had, I’d never really wanted anything.

I’d never had a chance to want things, because almost everything had been just handed to me. But it was mostly because I knew how it would all end, and I’d accepted it. What was the point of wanting something you could never keep?

But now, staring at Eleanor, I felt a peculiar ache in my chest and I…I wanted something I knew I could never truly have.

As though triggered by my thoughts, I felt the beginnings of a migraine in the back of my head.

It would be the third one in less than a week. They were becoming more frequent.

Eleanor stirred, a pained groan escaping her lips, and her eyes finally fluttered open and latched onto me immediately.

We stared at each other for a second that seemed to span into hours.

“Alexander.” Eleanor’s eyes were wide with surprise. “You’re back.”

I had so many things to say to her.

But my words failed me. Before I realized what I was doing, I closed the distance between us and carefully slid my hand behind her neck to tug her into a hug.

Eleanor let out a small sound of surprise, but she didn’t move out of my embrace.

She smelled so damn good, so alive. I wanted to bury myself in her scent and never leave.

Sooner than I wanted, Eleanor pulled out of the hug, her gaze curiously searching mine as her hand settled on my wrist.

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