Page 37 of Fated to the Wolf Billionaire

They went wide as her arms fell away from me, loose and disjointed, as the blue tinge to her skin started to fade. I clutched her to my chest, cupping the back of her head with my hand as we plummeted from the sky.

NINETEEN

Fiona

We crashed into the surface of the lake with the force of a speeding car hitting a concrete wall. Reed somehow kept me on top of him, cushioning my fall even as he took double the damage.

All the breath whooshed out of my chest, and I couldn’t draw it back in no matter how hard I tried. Water enveloped us, the green glow showing me Reed’s eyes wide with pain, the arm I could see bent at an odd angle.

I wanted to cry out, I wanted to help him, but I was too stunned to move.

This was it. We were going to die in a few feet of water, drowned before anyone realized we had fallen from the sky like birds with broken wings.

Sorrow bloomed in my chest, and I reached for Reed. I didn’t reach him before icy hands plucked me up from the water.

I gasped when my head broke the surface, gratefully sucking in life-giving oxygen. Elodie was my savior, drenched to the bone and wearing a fierce expression as she hauled me from the lake, carefully laying me on my back on the bank as I gasped like a fish.

“Reed, help him—” My words were choked, barely more than a whoosh of air, but she heard me.

“Lyna’s got him. You’re both going to be okay. That was one hell of a fall, and we need to get you both checked out by the doc.” Her smile was genuine, even as shame filled me. I had caused his hurt. I had broken him.

She shouldn’t be smiling at me. She should be booting me out of their enclave for endangering everyone. Most of all Reed.

The thought of how badly I’d hurt him filled me with fresh sorrow, tears prickling my eyes. He could have died, and it would be a hundred percent my fault.

All he did was care for me, and I’d sucked him into my storm and then dropped him from the sky.

The very thing I’d been so afraid of, come to terrifying fruition.

“Shh, it’s going to be all right. Reed took the brunt of it. He might look rough, but I have no doubt he’ll be fine. Wolves can heal from almost anything except a gutting and a beheading, and his guts and head are all still where they belong.”

She couldn’t read my thoughts, couldn’t know the way I’d loved every second of that terrible storm until the last second, when Reed had pulled me out of it.

The first time he had kissedme, tainted by evil power I didn’t know had been lurking inside me.

I couldn’t stay with these wolves. They’d shown me time and again how good, how pure they were. And whatever I was? It wasn’t that.

I was dangerous.

Evil.

Galyna lay a bruised and broken-looking Reed next to me, eyes fluttering under dusky lids.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, using the last of my energy to stroke his cheek, possibly the only part of him that wasn’t black and blue from the fall. “I’m so sorry.”

* * *

Even the bedhurt as Elodie laid me down on it next to Reed. Brielle and Olivia were rushing around his room, snapping orders and flicking on too-bright overhead lights.

Reed was much worse off than I was, and as Brielle tore his shirt down the middle with her bare hands, I saw the purpling all over his abdomen that had to mean internal bleeding.

Elodie had said a wolf could survive anything but a gutting, but what happened if all his internal organs were damaged? Was that really any different?

I didn’t know, and I cried as I held his hand, too weak to help, not that I knew how to anyway.

Olivia’s concerned face appeared above mine. Her damp red hair was beginning to frizz into a halo as it dried.

“You’ve got at least two broken bones we’re going to need to set. I’m going to give you a shot for the pain, and it’s going to make you drowsy, okay? But don’t worry, we’ve got you.”

---