Page 83 of Tethered In Blood

She was still conscious, but barely. Her pulse fluttered when my fingers pressed into her skin. My heart thundered in my ears, silencing the world beyondher.“Dilthen Doe,” my voice became quieter and filled with desperate urgency. “Hey, stay with me.”

A warm, sticky wetness seeped against my palm that shouldnothave been there. My stomach knotted, and a slow, creeping dread slithered through me as I shifted her to adjust my grip. My hand came away slick with blood.

”No.”The guttural word ripped from my throat. In the chaos, when she collided with me, everything blurred. The fire, the screaming, the thing burning. I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt it happen despite her body being against mine.

My pulse roared when I pulled her closer. My hands moved fast, searching and pulling at the fabric. A dark stain bloomed across her back, spreading fast.When she crashed into me, she had taken the hit in my stead.

“Fuck.” The rough and desperate word scraped from my chest. My fingers pressed against the wound as if I could staunch the bleeding. As if I could reverse time and undo the last few minutes. Her breath hitched again, and her body tensed weakly in my arms. I had been so damned distracted. So, fucking focused on its mind games, on its taunts, on the way it had echoed her past, that I hadn’t seen the real danger. I hadn’t seen it coming.

And she was bleeding out in my arms because of it.

25

Eden

AFAMILIARWHITE-HOTpainseared through my back. The pain throbbed, burning from the inside out, and every breath was a struggle against the tightness that twisted through my body. Voices murmured nearby, but were distant and muffled by the relentless ringing in my head. My heart thundered in my ears, drowning out everything else. I pried my eyes open and blinked while the dim candlelight above swam into view.

The voices sharpened into jagged edges against my skull, cutting through the thick haze in my mind. I tried to focus, to separate meaning from the noise, but the words were unintelligible. My body felt sluggish. Every muscle screamed in protest. Fire licked through my limbs, and pain seared through my back as I pushed up onto my elbows. A deep, pained groan clawed its way out of my chest.

Black spots wavered on the borders of my vision, creeping in like ink seeping through paper. I blinked hard, willing them away. The room came into focus in fractured pieces—the dark stone walls, the slanted ceiling, the heavy curtains suffocating the windows. The air was stale.

Dread split through me. My breath hitched, then quickened. Each inhale felt shallower, tighter, as though the walls were shrinking inward, as if the room was swallowing me whole. My arms snapped around me. My fingers dug into my shoulders hard enough to bruise, desperate to hold myself together. The air was too thin, too sharp. My ribs squeezed tighter.

I couldn’t be there.

I couldn’t—

Oberon was a stark presence against the backdrop of my unraveling senses. His lips moved and his brow furrowed with what might have been concern, but his voice reduced to a muffled echo beneath the rush of blood in my ears.

My eyes darted to the other man. His clothes were clean, crisp, and clinical.Physician.The breath in my chest turned to ice. Something metallic glinted in his hand when he stepped forward, and a searing wave of quick, brutal panic carved through me. My throat locked, and the walls of my mind folded in on themselves.

Every sound snapped into focus when he said, “She needs to remove her dress so I can—”

“No!” The word tore from me, scraping through my throat, broken as glass. A violent tremor ripped through my body, and my stomach lurched.

Oberon stiffened in my peripheral vision, his head snapping toward me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. My gaze remained locked on the physician. My hands clenched into fists around the sheets, gripping them until my knuckles ached. My skin felt too tight. My breath was too loud, too fast.

I couldn’t let him touch me.

I couldn’t letanyonetouch me.

If they saw—

If they knew—

“I’ll do it myself!” My voice wavered, but I forced steel into the words. “I don’t need help! I don’t need you!”

Oberon’s jaw locked. His eyes darkened, and tension rippled through his frame. He took a single step forward, and I flinched back. My grip on the sheets tightened. His eyes darted to my hands.

He saw. Damn him—he saw.

“Herbalist,” he urged. “You have to be treated.”

“I’ll handle it myself.”

“You can’t.” His tone hardened. “Don’t be fucking stubborn. You’re bleeding out.”

“I said I can handle it.” My throat clenched around the words, strangling them.

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