Page 191 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
“No,” I said, harsh and pained.
Someone closed the doors to the room, as if to hide me from the eyes of my clan.
My clan who needed to see me strong now more than ever.
But how could I be strong when Evie’s blood was draining?
I couldn’t say the words, not when Idris was here.
Evie was dying.
I felt hands on me, voices reaching through the haze of my panic and horror.
This was my worst nightmare—Evie’s life slipping away while I was powerless to stop it.
“We have to gonow.”
Harmony and Blade exchanged a single glance before they launched into strategy talk. They’d fed, but I knew my extraction team hadn’t had nearly enough rest for this kind of mission.
“You know I have to go with you,” Vesper said. “For her. And forhim.But we can’t yet. We don’t have the?—”
“I don’t care,” I growled.
“What is happening?” Idris yelled, fists clenched as something bright crackled in his palms. He jumped, looking down at his hands as if he were surprised by this development.
“Evie is wounded and likely magickally bound,” I managed, unable to breathe. “We were ambushed. They have surrounded the estate—nowhere in the city is more concentrated with born numbers.”
Idris released an exhale. “But she’s alive.”
Her blood was draining so rapidly now that I feared she’d been attacked by a vampire in bloodlust.
“Kylo, wait?—”
In a dissociative haze, I burst into the hall. Young turned were clinking glasses of blood, celebrating our first decisive win.
They turned toward me.
I fell to my knees. My hand clutched at my heart—the heart bound to hers.
Evie’s heart stopped. Our connection sifted through my hands like sand.
She was gone.
61
EVIE
Ifelt the moment our bond severed.
On the brink of death, I’d long since stopped my writhing and screaming. I floated in a tranquil ocean of blood.
The emptiness was terrifying without my magick. There was nothing to add meaning and light to the darkness that spread on forever.
That was until I fell into a place that didn’t belong to me. A small home on a river where insects were loud, the air was sticky, and a man in black stood with a belt in his hands.
My thighs stung, my face wet with tears.Useless.
Nothing I did was ever good enough. I couldn’t make him happy. Sometimes I dreamed of being rescued and taken far away from here. But that would never happen. He would never let me go.
