The knife slipped from my fingers, clattering to the ground—

“Guards!” Marcus bellowed. “Grab him. We’ll return to Cinderkeep immediately!”

Boots crunched on the driveway gravel, coming straight for me.

Panic crawled as hands landed on me, bruising—

Rook screamed and Whisper lost his mind.

The panther flung himself at the guards. With a deafening snarl, he bit one and shredded the trousers of another.

One guard screamed. Another ran.

A gunshot went off and Whisper ducked, flattening himself to the grass.

I tried to crawl out of my coffin long enough to protect my only friend. “S-Stop—” I folded forward, racked with another wet cough. “Don’t hurt him!”

“Do it,” Marcus commanded.

“NO!” Heat detonated in my blood. Fire surged up my spine.

I gasped as liquid, molten fury ripped through me, so hot and violent, it threatened to cremate me from the inside out.

For a split second, I thought Marcus had triggered the vitalsync core again, but...this was different. This heat came from somewhere deep inside, just waiting to burn the world to the fucking ground.

Another gunshot.

I convulsed—

Metal suddenly pressed against my throat as Rook wrapped her arm around me, hauling my lifeless bulk against her. I collapsed into her hold, her coolness colliding with my heat, keeping me awake, stopping the flames mid-lick.

“Shoot Whisper,” she yelled. “And I’ll kill him!”

Everything froze, even the rain.

“I’ll kill him,” she screamed. “I swear to God, I will. If you don’t leave Whisper alone and let all of us go, I’ll...I’ll...I’ll slit Lucien’s throat and spill the rest of his blood myself!”

My heart kicked in disbelief as the dagger broke the first few layers of skin. Pure adrenaline kept me awake long enough to suffer yet another crush of very inconvenient and highly complicated feelings.

What was she doing?

This wasn’t her fight.

She should’ve run—

“Don’t be stupid, Rook.” Marcus throttled his umbrella with shaking fists. “You didn’t want to harm him in Cinderkeep and you won’t harm him now. Besides...” He shrugged and cocked his head. “If it’s true that you are pregnant, who cares about him? You both carry the R gene which means your child will be even more potent than he is.”

R gene?

What the fuck is the R gene?

“So go ahead.” He shoved one hand into his trouser pocket. “I’ll wait.”

Whisper folded himself over my legs.

And Rook...ruined everything.

Repositioning the dagger over my jugular, she said ever so calmly, “I’m not pregnant.”

Marcus stiffened. “What?”

“I said there’s no pregnancy. We haven’t slept together. There is no child.” She laughed a little psychotically. “He lied to protect me from you, don’t you see? So if I kill him, there’s no one else.” Her voice turned so cold, a blizzard blew down my spine. “No more blood. No more whatever it is that you’re doing with it. Everything dies with him and you lose it all. So go ahead and test me, you bastard.” She shifted closer as if she would happily slit my throat. “Push me and you’ll see just how far I’ll go to ensure Lucien is never tortured by you again.”

My heart fucking ached.

Silence stretched for a moment before Marcus sucked in a furious breath. “Fine. What do you want? Money? Your freedom? Let him go and I’ll let you go. How about that?”

Her arm trembled and the blade stung as she cut me by accident. With a soft groan, she shut everything down. “Allow those two doctors to help him.”

“Done.”

“I wasn’t finished.” Her heart pounded against my back as she scrambled for a way out of this mess.

Her shaking increased and I wondered how much longer she could withstand the stress before her little habit of passing out appeared.

“You and your guards are going to let us leave. Whisper, me, and Lucien are going in one of those G-wagons with the two doctors. They can work on him while I drive us to the nearest hospital.”

“Ah, see that’s going to be a problem,” Marcus muttered. “No hospitals.” Pointing at the doctors who acted as if they wished they were invisible, he added, “They’re fully qualified to operate and save his life. They don’t need a hospital.”

“Fine.” Rook moaned a little, fighting her own misery. “We’ll go to the nearest hotel then. Somewhere public.”

“Fine,” Marcus echoed, his grimace turning into a sneer. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Her chin tipped up. “You’ll stay the hell away from him. You’ll let him go and—”

“I’ve agreed to your little demands about leaving the property. I’ll even secure the hotel so his whiskered beast can go with you. I’ll even agree to stay out of the doctors’ way until he’s stable, but that’s as far as my leniency goes.” He smiled thinly. “The moment he’s no longer on death’s door, he’s coming home.”

The feel of Rook’s arms around me, the sound of her voice breaking as she bargained for my life...it hollowed me out and left me in ashes.

I wanted to look at her, kiss her, thank her but...

Death opened its arms and snatched me—

Chapter Eleven

I PRESSED AGAINST THE CHEAP WOODEN door as the doctors turned calm into chaos. In the time it took to cross the threshold into the honeymoon suite in the nearest accommodation, they’d already placed Lucien on the king-sized bed—leaving him splayed out like a corpse ready for burial—and tore around in unison, preparing for surgery.

Whisper pressed against me, equally horrified as the older doctor—a man with silver-brown hair and black-framed glasses—swept the phone, complimentary notebook, pen, and handy guide of what to do around town straight off the desk with a single swipe.

“Help me drag it under the main chandelier,” he barked at his colleague. “It’s the brightest light in this gloomy place.”

The other doctor—a slightly younger man with dark blond hair that’d been cropped close to his skull—dumped his heavy medical bag and went to help.

Together, they dragged the large oak desk into the middle of the room, shoving aside the cream linen couch and glass-topped coffee table.

“I’ll grab the towels,” the blond doctor said, vanishing into the bathroom.

The other doctor completely ignored me and Whisper, busily dragging the coffee table to the head of the desk and dumping both bags onto it. Without a word, he pulled out a green surgical sheet, flattened it out, then started layering it with wickedly sharp implements.

I staggered against the door as my headache pressed from all directions.

Whisper nudged me, his golden eyes brimming with fear. I reached to pet him—and stopped breathing. Red. Everywhere. Lucien’s blood on my fingers, beneath my nails, up my wrists.

The image slingshotted me back to the awful drive here—

My bloody hands gripped the steering wheel as I drove through countryside hell. Blood covered every inch of my fingers. His blood. Blood from stabbing him, threatening him, hurting him to save his life.

He’s alive.

He won’t die.

Drive faster.

Gritting my teeth against the ice-picks in my skull, I made the mistake of looking in the rearview mirror.

Marcus and his guards followed not far behind.

He’d allowed the doctors to gather Lucien from the driveway, carry him to one of the G-wagons, and hadn’t said a word as they’d clambered into the backseat. He’d even waved politely as I’d begged a very reluctant Whisper to jump into the front seat and pleaded with my broken system to stay awake long enough to drive us the hell away from here.

My gaze shifted from being hunted by Marcus to the two doctors who sat on either side of Lucien. He’d been propped up, head lolling, entire body slack and lifeless. Neither doctor asked what was going on, why Lucien was so hurt, or why there was a jungle cat in the front seat.