Page 117 of Wanted

There’s so much blood sloshing around in my stomach, I’m afraid I’m going to lose it all on the floor.

I can’t let a drop go to waste. This blood is meant for Alena. She’ll need it when I can turn her.

Trying to push into the bond, I meet resistance, but it’s not Alena’s wall. It’s something else entirely. Something sick and insidious clinging to the threads that bind us.

Tainting our connection… like Alena’s blood.

That evil bastard somehow attached something to our bond. Like a fucking parasite.

How the fuck?

The soul bond exists only between the vampire and their soulmarked.

Period.

No hitchhikers get to join.

Touching Alena’s face, I lean down and kiss her cheek. It’s so soft and warm… I can barely stand the joy it brings me to know my soulmarked is here, right before me.

I just need to fix this shit so that she can truly be mine.

Moving my lips to her ear, I whisper, “Come back to me, Alena.”

I want to push hard on our bond and make her obey. I want to force the other presence out of her. But I fear the bond might sever completely.

It’s been weak from the very beginning…

“She’s not waking,” Andrei mutters. His fingers pinch Alena’s arm hard. “It’s like she’s in a coma.”

A sudden shock of electricity jolts through my body and causes me to collapse to my knees. Every nerve and every synapse I possess is blazing as if they went up in flames.

“He’s hurting her!” I scream through the pain.

“Who?” Asher tries to take hold of me, but my arms push him away.

His touch causing me even more misery.

The pain quickly fades away, but a gnawing sadness grows inside me.

It’s the bond… All the pain is coming from the bond. Not from a direct attack on me.

Whatever my poor Alena is being put through, I can’t even imagine.

No, actually I can.

If I’m sharing this burden with her, then whatever she’s going through must be much worse.

“Fucker,” I snap.

Blood flies from my lips and lands on Alena’s arm.

Punching hard into the floor, my bones grind hard against the cement.

This motherfucker is torturing Alena.

“It’s through the bond?” Chloe asks as she moves to my side. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I answer, my teeth clenching together. “It’s through the bond. He’s inside her. I can feel it. But he’s pushed me out of our shared world.”

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