There was never any fucking silence.
It was only when I reached to the back of the house did I hear something.
The London townhouse was where Camille lived when she wasn’t having treatments. She had the largest bedroom on the bottom floor that looked out onto their back garden.
And I didn’t worry about how she was hidden away from the main house because she seemed happy there.
But now those seconds it took to run from the front door to her room were a fucking torment.
As soon as I turned down the corridor to her room, a small sound whispered from the doorway where the light shone.
A rustling noise, like wind through the trees, followed by a heavy thump.
The light called me forward as the rustling noise came again, so bright that I couldn’t see the room until I stepped over the threshold.
And I froze.
And I stood there.
And I stared at the sight before me.
The three of them hadn’t noticed me. They were too focused on each other. Two of them moved around the room like it was a normal day and they weren’t just picking severed limbs from the floor.
I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t work it out. I couldn’t understand why the pure white room that I had spent half my life visiting was bathed in red.
“Caspian?” Camille rasped as she looked up from the far corner of her bedroom. Her face paled as she was hit with my shock.
She gasped, throwing herself backwards like she needed to escape. From me.
She knocked off the wall, landing with a hard thud in the crater under her feet. The wallpaper around her was shredded. Deep gashes, like an animal had sliced it, and huge cracks in the plaster shooting out from where she sat.
Ice white, her thin nightgown stuck to her body, red streaks of blood glueing the cotton to her skin.
“What are you doing here?” she choked, wrapping her arms around herself.
“It’s okay,” Flint said softly, discarding a bloody leg to crouch in front of her. “Just look at me.”
He held his palms flat out to her, murmuring to her, trying to hold her attention.
Something happened with his aura, some kind of wavelength which vibrated around them and covered her body like a force-field. Auras were meant to be an invisible energy field that couldn’t be seen, touched, tasted, or smelled. So how the fuck was there a cloud shimmering around her like a mirage?
“He can’t… Flint—” She dragged in a wheezing breath as she looked at her bodyguard, my former fucking employee, for help. “He can’t be here.”
Her chest heaved as panic beat out in her scent. Camille’s eyes widened, and I swear I could hear the walls creaking as she began to twitch.
“Flint,” she rasped, the floor shaking under her as she reached for him. “Flint, I—”
Her head suddenly flung back as a scream ripped from her and she slammed her hands against her ears, her stark gaze fixed on me.
“No, no, no, no!” she screamed again. “Caspian, please… You have to—”
But she jerked, her whole body spasming like she was having a seizure. The area around her cracked and splintered as another scream flung towards me, thumping me straight in the chest.
I gasped, grabbing the door, trying to stay standing as the force of it nearly knocked me over.
“Sin…” I croaked, looking at my mate, who watched us from the centre of the room. “What the fuck is going on?”
Sin arched a brow. I knew what he was holding in his hand. My eyes could tell exactly what it was, but my brain couldn’t register it was a torn up arm.