Page 68 of Mated To The King's Gamma
I clutch her to me, wishing I could take her pain away. Her heartbreak is palpable, a fissure that threatens to consume her. As one dynasty crumbles, but another awakens.
“I AM VALKYRIE!” she had declared.
And so, she is.
Empress of Lycania.
The Valkyrie Empress.
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Dustin and I try to remove Abbie from Gannon, but he refuses to let go. Gannon wails as I rip her out of his arms, and Dustin all but tackles him to stop him from trying to take her from me. I try to revive her. Gannon won’t survive this, not this time. Sia was one thing, but Abbie is his everything which is exactly why I have been feeding her my blood for days now, filling all her drinks in her fridge with my blood.
She made Gannon promise not to change her, but I never made that promise, and I refuse to watch my best friend tear himself apart again if she tried to commit suicide.
After everything she has endured and survived, I know she can survive this. Abbie is a fighter; I can bring her back.
Dustin tries to rip me off her seeing my attempts to revive her futile. I growl, shoving him back. “Come on, Abbie,” I growl furiously. Dustin and Trey grab me, hauling me off just as Gannon holds her again. Clutching her tighter.
“She’s gone. She’s gone. There is nothing you can do,” Dustin tells me, but I shake my head, punching him before reaching for her again.
“No! I have been feeding her my blood,” I snarl, tossing him off and placing my hands back in the center of her chest and performing CPR while praying we aren’t too late. No sooner do the words leave my lips, that we hear her gasp. I blink, unable to believe my eyes while Gannon rocks back and forth, wailing loudly at his lost love, her eyes open dazedly. They are obsidian as her hand rises and clutches Gannon’s arms, making him jump as she sucks in a breath and her eyes returned to their emerald color, life returning to her deathly pale skin. I fall back on my ass.
“Abbie?” Azalea whispers, choking on her sob, as Abbie’s hand moves to Gannon’s hair.
“Abbie!” Azalea screams. I sag against Dustin, collapsing between his legs as he breathes heavily.
“I told you, brother, I wouldn’t let you lose her again,” I breathe out, catching my breath.
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I don’t feel my world shift until her hand finds my arm. Cold fingers latch onto me with surprising strength, and I freeze mid-breath. The sound of someone shouting—Azalea, I think fades behind the roaring in my ears. My focus narrows in on the pressure on my arm. Her grip, her face, the impossible movement of her chest as it rises with new breath.
My gaze drops to where her fingers dig into my arm, long slender fingers digging into my flesh. Then to her face—the face I’ve memorized in a thousand expressions, the face I’d started to believe I might never see animated again.
Her eyes open.
But they aren’t green. They aren’t the emerald depths I’ve fallen into countless times before. They’re black. Not the dull, vacant gray black of death or unconsciousness, but liquid obsidian, swirling darkness that seems to pull light into it rather than reflect anything back.
My heart stops. A choked breath tears from my lungs, scraping against my throat as I stare into eyes that don’t belong to my mate, not fully. Not anymore. Something else lurks behind them, something wild and magnificent that I recognize on a primal level.
Then, just as suddenly, the color shifts. Green bleeds back in from the edges. It’s as if someone flips a switch and paints her back to life before my eyes, tinting her back to the woman I know and love beyond words can ever express.
She gasps—a harsh, desperate sound like clawing back to life after drowning and her chest rises under my hands. The movement is violent, her body arching up as her lungs heave to expand.
“Abbie,” I breathe, not even realizing I say it aloud, my voice cracking, barely audible even to my own sensitive ears.
Her eyes flutter again as they settle this time, focusing on nothing, then on me, then widening with confused recognition. Her fingers loosen on my arm but don’t let go completely. She is warm now. Alive. My relief isn’t just physical, it's soul deep as I collapse over her, trembling, unable to keep my hands from cupping her cheeks petrified. My mind has split and this is some hallucination of my grief, one I would live in if it means I can be with her.
Her skin no longer holds that deathly pallor, and her heartbeat is faint but steady, thrumming beneath my fingertips where they press against her neck. Color rushes back to her lips—not the blue-tinged paleness of death from minutes ago but the soft pink I’ve kissed countless times.
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. I’ve been holding myself together by threads for what feels like centuries despite only moments passing, and now those threads snap, one by one. My vision blurs. I blink hard against the burning in my eyes and bleeding of my soul, as the bonds stitches back painfully together, but its a pain I will gladly endure for eternity because she is here and mine.
Her eyelids flutter again, and I see confusion there and fear. But I also see recognition.
“I’m here,” I manage to whisper, leaning closer, my forehead touching hers. “I’m right here.”
A question forms in her eyes—what happened? —but she doesn’t have the strength to ask it or perhaps she is scared of the answer. Instead, her fingers tighten once more on my arm, a silent confirmation that she’s listening, that she’s present.
