Page 67 of Watch Me Burn

The knife plunges into Conall and, between one step and the next, the wolf twists before he drops to the snow with an audible thud.

That’s bad enough. But the soft whine he releases before his eyes close is a hundred times worse.

And then I remember the knife Thorn showed me back in Clarity. It was silver.

Silver.

The only thing powerful enough to take down an alpha wolf shifter.

No, no, no.

CHAPTER 20

STARS

Idon’t even stop to think, or remember that she’s more dangerous than I would’ve thought. Only hoping that that was her only knife, I race over to Conall, dropping down to his side.

He’s still. When I find where the silver got him, his white fur is already slicked down with blood.

I swallow my scream and my panic. Instead, careful not to jostle the stab wound, I pat his fur all over, checking for a pulse, a breath,anything, all while talking to him, hoping he can hear me.

“Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t get to die on me. Uh-uh. You just promised me forever, Conall. You don’t get to take the easy way out now.”

But maybe he is because apart from the slightest rise and fall of his chest, he isn’t responding to me at all.

And that’s when the witch hunter draws my attention back to her with a smarmy life that sounds like nails running down a chalkboard.

“That was for Stephen. Now one supe down,” gloats Linda, shouting over the wind and the roar of fury in my skull. “One to go. And then the whole damn sanctuary is next.”

Shit. I actually forgot about her for a second there.

This is my fault. All my fault. Not the fire, obviously, but if I’d just taken her out instead of letting her run her mouth, Conall wouldn’t be motionless on the snow.

Fuck me. She was monologuing. I knew she was, but I was the cocky heroine who thought I could get all of the information from the reckless villain before I turned her in to the authorities.

What happened next? She tried to kill the authority.

She tried to kill mymate.

“Oh,shutup.” I flick my fingers. I don’t even give her the satisfaction of seeing my face as I send the most powerful stream of fire I can produce dead at her chest.

I can see her out of the corner of my eye, though. Unlike her precious partner, she doesn’t just catch on fire. No. The silhouette of Linda wrapped in my flames is an orange glow against the black of night for about two seconds before it winks out, and a pile of inky ash on the snow is all that’s left of the witch hunter.

Vampires are ruthless, but so are fire witches, I guess.

Thorn executed the witch hunter who attacked me in Clarity. Whether there are more of them or his partner was the only one gunning for me, I don’t care. Dyea is my home now. These people are mine.

Conall ismine.

He heals. Almost hysterically, I remind myself that I lit his tail on fire and he was healed almost immediately.

It’s gotta be the silver. With that in him, he’ll never heal. So, going against everything I’ve ever learned about what to do when you’ve been impaled or stabbed, I tug the knife out of his side, tossing it far away from me.

Blood pours out of the wound, staining his fur. It’s much larger than it should be, and that freaks me out even more.

What if he bleeds out before he can heal?

No. I can… I can do something.

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