Spinning in place, I spotted a fallen tree in the dark—the trunk horizontal and covered in moss. Carrying her to it, I draped her limp body face-down over the trunk, ensuring her torso hung over the other side, her arms dangling, and hair dripping onto the bushes.

Raising my hand, I hesitated for a heartbeat.

I didn’t want to hurt her but...I couldn’t let her die.

Taking a deep breath, I slammed my palm between her shoulder blades.

She jerked but remained lifeless.

I did it again, shifting her further over the trunk until her forehead almost skimmed the ground.

“Come on,” I growled, hitting her again. Harder this time. With my fist instead of my palm.

She moaned. A thin stream of water dribbled out.

Not enough.

Not nearly enough.

“That’s it. Come on.”

That strange bond in my heart caught fire, filling me with urgency as her soul flickered against mine, wanting to stay but fading, fading—

“You can hate me for this when you wake.” I hit her. Hard.

She jackknifed over the tree. A torrent of bloody water burst free.

I waited to see if she would keep retching.

But she went still instead.

That awful sensation of her leaving me wrapped viciously around my throat.

Still not enough. Not all of it.

“Again.”

I struck her. I whacked her hard enough to break a rib or two, forcing every last dreg to expel in a gush.

“Breathe. Breathe and—”

She gagged as her body jerked in a seizure.

“Shit.” Snatching her off the trunk, I placed her on the ground and tipped her chin up. Sucking in a huge breath, I sealed my mouth over hers and forced as much air as I could into her.

This time, her chest rose before collapsing.

“Wake the fuck up, Rook.” I breathed into her again.

I pinched her nose and kissed her hard, forcing all the oxygen I could deep, deep into her cells.

She spasmed and moaned but I kept breathing for her. Drowning her in air. Fighting with the grim reaper because no way in hell was I giving her to him.

She convulsed.

Pushing her onto her side, I patted her back as another trickle of water came up. But then blood followed. She coughed—a thick river of blackened crimson that torrented over her lips and stained the leaf-littered ground.

Ice flashed in her spilled blood, killing everything.

A tearing sensation ripped through my chest.

I doubled over with it—my heart threatening to burst with despair.

She choked on more blood, the black thickness becoming frothy instead. Pink bubbles painted her lips before rolling down her cheeks. She moaned and flopped onto her back.

My eyes caught on her legs. On the way they stayed crossed and...unnatural.

No...

My stomach hollowed out.

My gaze dragged upward, slow and unwilling, cataloguing the damage I’d refused to see. Her back was kinked, the line of her spine no longer straight but...broken. Deep abrasions sliced into her from where the whirlpool had chewed her up and spat her out. One side of her torso was punctured—ragged and dark, bubbling with blood each time she tried to suck in a painful breath.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” My hands hovered, terrified to touch her in case I made it worse. And I’d thrown her over a goddamn tree! I’d hit her. I’d made things a thousand times worse. Even if I had the best doctor in the world—even if they operated immediately—they wouldn’t be able to save her.

An animalistic sound tore free.

I’d failed her. Left her to suffer and—

Her chest hitched as she choked for breath. Her lungs made a wet, rattling sound as more pink foam appeared on her lips. Every part of her quaked as she entered the death throes...everything twitched apart from her useless legs.

My throat closed as I fought the urge to cry.

I hadn’t cried since I was thirteen, yet now...even sobbing wouldn’t relieve the catastrophic helplessness I felt at watching the girl I’d fallen irreversibly in love with...die.

My cracked hands balled.

No.

I wouldn’t accept this.

I would never accept a world where she didn’t exist.

Grabbing the nearest rock, I dragged it fatally deep along the underside of my charred forearm. I snagged on the stitches that’d stopped me bleeding in the bed and breakfast. I tore open everything. I would happily die here...trading my life for hers.

Blood poured free—thick and luminous, gleaming scarlet-gold as it splashed hot and fast to the ground. Little flames appeared where it landed, igniting the decaying leaves. They shrivelled into ash a moment later, killed by whatever lurked in my veins.

Rolling her over, ignoring how her legs refused to cooperate, I pressed my arm against the hole in her side—the hole popping and wheezing with every fading breath.

She cried out as my blood mingled with hers, dripping inside her—going straight to the source of her death.

She twitched as my blood took over.

She groaned as it started to work—little plumes of smoke rising from the puncture between her ribs. She tried to get away but with a broken back, she didn’t have a choice as I grabbed her soul with both hands and yanked her back from the netherworld.

Only once enough blood had filled her damaged lung did I move to other areas.

I fed golden-red into the slashes on her chest, her arms, her cheek. Shifting closer, I brought my arm to my mouth and sucked.

Hot, scalding copper drowned my tongue, my life-force pumping out far too fast. I turned lightheaded and weak, but I’d give it all to her if it worked.

I folded over her and hesitated.

She coughed again, in the final stages of drowning. Blood sprayed over her chin, painting her lips a glossy red. For a second, I swore it glittered silver—shimmering with a sterling hue as if tiny snowflakes swirled in her life-force.

I shook my woozy head, leaned down, and sealed my lips over hers.

I let go of the mouthful I held.

She coughed and fed me a mouthful of hers.

And—

Fate detonated.

Blood to blood.

Soul to soul.

Power roared through me, through us, fire and ice crashing together in a blinding supernova that tore a scream from my throat.

She tasted like heaven and winter and ruin, flooding every sense at once, shattering me, breaking me, remaking me. Lightning ripped across my tongue, silver and sharp and the best fucking thing I’d ever tasted.

The pain I’d suffered.

The fire I burned with.

The decades of misery and years of torture.

All gone.

Power howled.

No longer restrained or contained, it broke every bone in my body and rebuilt me.

Rebuilt her.

The bond we shared unravelled into full force, and everything prior to this felt so weak and tame and mortal. This new shivery awareness felt elemental and unstoppable as her energy bulldozed through me.

I trembled as my sanity blew apart.

I gasped as my body started to heal.

I itched and ached and throbbed and burned, but it was nothing to the awe of feeling her.

I felt her heartbeat stutter before slamming back into furious rhythm.

Felt her lung knitting together.

Felt her spine—bone grinding against bone, realigning, reforming, restoring everything that’d been broken.

I wasn’t prepared.

Wasn’t equipped.

Desire cleaved me in two. Savage desperation to keep her, make her mine, finish what we’d started.

I needed her.

I needed to be inside her, just like my blood was. I needed her to accept the joining, the binding, the lock.

Because I’d surrendered the second I’d felt it and from this day, to my last day, she was mine.

Rook suddenly flung her newly healed arms around my neck, feeling the same rapture of want. Her hands landed in my hair, yanking me down as her icy power sundered through me, tearing through every blockage, every scar, every limit my body had ever known.