Page 39 of Hunted By Wolves and Shadow
Events, memories, glib comments and callous actions—the life I’d known back home crumbled and fell to dust. When the pieces reformed, the picture was one I’d been too afraid to see. I’d been too comfortable in my blindness.
Sunbeams, my whole family…
The lies…
I was still lost in swirling thoughts when the gate to Juliet’s yard crashed open. A man stumbled through the gap, bent double and barely able to stand. He was covered in blood, dark and wet and dripping. When he fell to one knee and looked up, his face was blanched, strained, and terribly familiar.
“Locke!” Juliet screamed.
“Keep pressure on it,” Juliet ordered as we lowered Locke to her settee.
We were both drenched with Locke’s blood from where it poured heavily from the gaping wound through his abdomen. My hands pressed into the slick heat of it. My stomach turned over at the sight of blood oozing through my fingers, the shift in pressure drawing an agonized groan from Locke.
“Weapon?” Jules barked, no nonsense, all action.
“Sword…” he grunted.
She ran for towels, and I peeled back the blood-soaked hem of Locke’s tunic to reveal the wound.
“Blue skies.” My words were a hushed oath.
“Bad...eh?” Locke’s eyes squeezed closed against the pain.
“You're run through. What happened? No, don't answer. Don't speak.”
Juliet rushed back into the room. I grabbed a towel to press hard into the wound. Locke groaned loudly, his eyes rolling back in his head. When we tried to roll him up to his other side so we could see the back, his scream bit off into abrupt silence.
“Thank sunbeams, he passed out,” Juliet muttered. Her hands were quick over his skin, pouring spirits from a bottle over the wound while clearing the worst of the blood, all while I tried to keep the towel pressed firmly to the front. The wound emerged from the gore, jagged and gaping.
Juliet swore, her eyes meeting mine with a flood of resigned horror.
“No.” I shook my head at her. “No, he saved me. He saved both of us, and now we're going to save him, Juliet. We have to. There has to be something we can do.”
A tear escaped over her lashes, and she shook her head slowly. “It's a mortal wound, Emi. He had to know it. I doubt he'll even wake up again.”
“What? No. I can’t…Iwon'tlose anyone else.” Everything was falling apart. My family had lied all my life, and Wolf might have been the only one telling me the truth. I’d lost what little love I thought I had, even Grandma’s memory tainted now, and I refused to lose one of the only people who’d ever been kind to me in return for nothing at all. “We have to save him.”
I grabbed another towel to press to the wound on his back and let his body roll down onto it so I could stem the bleeding from both sides. He had to live. He had to.
I couldn't save Grandma, I couldn’t do anything about the curse or figure out what to think about Wolf or help the people he cared about, but I wanted to save Locke. Iwouldsave Locke.
I just wanted to do something good.
Hidden stars, was this what Wolf felt? He’d sounded so desperate when he told me his truth. He’d wanted to do something good, even though it meant doing something terrible to achieve it. I cared about Locke, and more than that, I cared about Juliet. The pain on her face in that heartbeat was something I'd do anything to erase, but the man was dying before our eyes.
I had no time to process this wild flood of understanding for Wolf’s actions because everything was unraveling. Tears flooded my eyes. My throat closed.
Juliet leaned over Locke and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead, then she smoothed the hair across his brow, giving him a look more fond than I'd ever seen on her face. Her eyes were full of unspoken grief. “I was always your friend, Locke, no matter what you had to say about it. You’ve been like a brother to me and I love you, you stubborn mule. I know you care about me too. If you can hear me, I forgive you.” She took his hand and squeezed it, then abruptly left the room.
I felt like I just trespassed on something terribly private between them, or like I walked in midway through an oldconversation these two had been having for ages. My heart ached for whatever friendship there was left to salvage that would be lost if Locke died.
I couldn't let this happen. “You have to live, Locke. Don't give up. Please. For her. For me. For whoever you were trying to help by coming to my grandmother. Please live. Please don’t die.
“I wish I could help. I wish I could save everyone and end all this suffering. All I wanted—“ But I couldn't say anything more because pain ripped through my middle as if I was the one run through by a sword.
Sharp spikes of fire shot across my skin, my whole body burning. The agony bent me double, and I knew I'd lost hold of the towel on Locke's abdomen. I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t save him while this blaze burned through me. Blackness clouded the edges of my vision.
Locke would bleed out, all because I wasn’t enough. My family were all self-serving, and I was no better, banding my arm around my middle instead of holding on to him, trying to hold myself together while I let Locke slip away. A scream stuck in my throat—pain or despair, I couldn’t say.
