Page 122 of Taste of Forever
“Putting pressure on her won’t help,” Des said. “We’re all worried, but she’s his blood mate. She’s already frantic enough.”
“We can just start driving,” Rhain suggested. “Split up, take a few different mountain roads and see what we find. Maybe she’ll start sensing him if we’re closer.”
“Great. Sounds like our only option anyway.” Thorne turned abruptly and headed for his motorcycle. Cyan and Des did the same, while Rhain and I climbed into the van.
“Fuck.” I brought my knees up and rested my forehead on them. “I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.”
Rhain’s seatbelt clicked into place next to me, then he turned the engine on. “It’s not your fault. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
I turned my head on my knees to look at him. His gaze was on his phone, scrolling through part of a map.
“Do you have a blood mate or…anyone special?” Now that he was talking, it made me realize how little I knew about him. He was definitely the most closed-off one of the group.
“No, I don’t.” Rhain didn’t pause in his scrolling.
“Any reason why?”
“Don’t want one.” He set the phone in the holder on the dashboard, then started to pull out of the parking space.
Before I could distract myself with more personal questions about him, a shooting pain zipped up my left leg. I clutched it with a small cry of pain, thoroughly confused and alarmed. It was not the same leg where my knee had been hurting.
“Heather, are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I gasped. “I don’t…fuck…I don’t know what this is.”
“Muscle cramp?”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain. It felt worse than a cramp. I’d had plenty of those during my dancing days. It felt like I was being stabbed right in the thigh muscle by a red-hot knife.
“Hey. I’m gonna reach over you and recline the seat, okay?”
“God, what the fuck!” I clutched my leg, trying to sit still as Rhain awkwardly reached over my lap for the lever on the far side of the seat. “Feels like my leg’s on fire.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help you.” Rhain looked truly stricken when my eyes peeked open. His phone was at his ear, his gaze averting when the call picked up. “Hey Thorne, something’s wrong with Heather. She’s in a lot of pain all of a sudden. I don’t know. Nothing happened.”
I started to hyperventilate, my breaths coming in short and ragged while my mind repeated,What the fuck? What’s happening to me?
“I don’t know, but there’s no way we’re driving up a mountain like this,” Rhain said. “She probably needs a hospital, a human one.”
“Ah!” Pain exploded in my left shoulder and I clutched it on a choked gasp. It felt like the flesh should be torn and ragged, blood seeping through my fingers, but there was nothing.
“She’s having a heart attack or something, I dunno! But I’m dropping her off at the nearest emergency room because…”
My vision and hearing faded in and out. I felt underwater—cold and disassociating but also burning hot and painfully present. The pain was so intense I thought I was going to die.
Just for a second, Rhain and the van melted away and my surroundings changed. It was quick as a flash, but I thought I saw…Soren?
Soren holding a bloody knife and a murderous look on his face.
The pain was so intense but so was my determination to fuck with Soren, to make this psychopathic piece of shit feel as small as possible. He had no fucking sense of humor, so it was honestly pretty easy. At least Heather was far away. That was all I could truly ask for.
Just as quickly as it came on, the pain, Soren, and the basement subsided, and the van came back into view.
But they weren’t completely gone.
I felt like I could reach out and touch them. Not with any physical sense, but with a type of knowing. Like that place and those feelings were on the end of a thread I could tug.
Laith!The realization was as liberating as it was heartbreaking. I was feeling Laith. Feeling his emotions and his pain as Soren tortured him.
