Page 33 of Threadbound

Dunatis help me, what now?

A woman leaned out of her rolled-down window. “D’you need help?”

Bran wanted to say no.

Jamie spoke first.

“Yes, please! Can you call for an ambulance?”

Bran managed to whimper a “No, please,” but Jamie ignored him.

“What happened?” The woman parked the car, turned on some flashing lights, and then climbed out, coming toward them, her phone in her hand.

“Jamie—”

“I know you don’t want to go to a hospital,” Jamie murmured back. “But youneedto.”

“Jamie, please…”

But then the woman was there. “Oh, love. What hurts?”

Bran didn’t want her help. He didn’t want her to call for an ambulance. He also had the sneaking suspicion that she was going to do both of those things.

“I think his arm might be broken,” Jamie put in when Bran made an odd gurgling sound. “And I think he needs stitches.”

“Oh, love. Let’s get you an ambulance. They’ll fix you right up.” She patted his knee, and Bran resisted the urge to wince as she made contact with the open wounds under his dark jeans.

Jamie carried him over to the verge, carefully and gently setting him down in the grass, wincing when Bran let out an involuntary groan. The fingers of his good hand gripped Jamie’sarm, the knuckles white and tight enough that his fingertips would leave marks on Jamie’s freckled skin.

Jamie covered Bran’s bloody hand with one of his own. “It’ll be okay,” he soothed.

Bran kept trying to protest, but forming words was becoming difficult. His chest hurt. His heartbeat felt like a vice.

Jamie was talking to him again, a hand on his battered cheek. “Bran!”

He managed to focus on Jamie’s blue eyes, wide, afraid.

Afraid for him.

The idea that Jamie might care what happened to him brought him some sense of relief, and a strange fuzzy warmness, although it flitted in and out of his brain too quickly to truly be considered.

And then there was the keening of an electric siren, flashing lights, and voices.

Adrenaline spiked through his bloodstream, and he tried to struggle against the hands that were touching him, moving him. Fingers that felt clinical and unnatural prodded, moved, put something that strangled him around his throat, and he fought back.

Curses, shouting.

Then Jamie.

“Bran! Please stop fighting.”

Don’t leave me. Don’t let them take me.He couldn’t form words, but he begged Jamie all the same.

“You have to let them help you.”

Please. Pleasepleaseplease.

Jamie bit his lower lip, then looked up. “Look,” he said softly, not speaking to Bran anymore. “He—he really hates doctors and hospitals. It’s a phobia. Can I—Can I come with him?”

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