Page 95 of At the Edge of Surrender

“Pretty sure they’re going to want to meet you, too.”

My brow curled. “Why?”

A bolt of potency rocketed out of him as he sat back in his chair, that torrid gaze demolishing me. “Because they make it their business to know anyone who’s important to me.”

TWENTY-FOUR

EMERY

Darkness reigned.

Confounding.

Confusing.

Terrifying.

Her breaths were harsh and shallow.

Her blood iced over from the fear, though her skin was drenched in a sticky sweat.

She tore at the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles, pain biting into her flesh as she struggled to break free.

But there was nothing she could do.

Nothing she could do for any of them.

Suddenly tires squealed and the van they were in careened, their bodies rolling and bashing against the back wall when it came to a jarring stop. No way to stop themselves from the violent crash. Fear thundered through her veins when gunshots rang out, and it felt like razors dragging up her throat as she begged for help.

Begged for it because she felt the fight slipping away.

The terror took hold and seeped all the way down to take her spirit captive.

Metal clanked and moaned, and there was a shifting ofair.

Then her sister was screaming.

Screaming and screaming.

“She’s gone. She’s gone.”

With a cleaving of pain, my eyes bolted open, a rasp raking from my lungs as I was jerked awake.

Disoriented, my legs flailed as I scrambled upright, and my hands flew out to grip onto anything that would keep me from disappearing into the nothingness. To keep me from falling away with those who had been lost.

Then my hands clamped onto plumes of softness, and I gasped out again as I brought the plush blanket to my chest when I realized where I was.

The room I’d been given to stay in at Kane Asher’s house.

Darkness hung heavy within its walls, the only light the gentle glow from the moon that seeped in through the drapes.

The house was so quiet, I could almost hear its old bones moan.

Trying to draw a cleansing breath into my aching lungs, I pressed my palm against the hemorrhaging behind my ribs as if it might stand the chance of holding my heart inside.

Like it might keep the tattered, shorn pieces from completely sundering apart.

For years, I hadn’t suffered the dreams, but now that Emmalee was gone, they had returned in full force. It was as if the absence of her presence had ripped off the flimsy bandage that had covered the mangled, butchered wound from the trauma we’d sustained.

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