Not in a dream, not in the memory, but real. The mate bond flared up, strong and wild, pouring every flavor of Parker into my veins at once—her scent, her fury, her hunger for me. I started to sob, ugly and loud. Tears ran out of my eyes and down into my ears. It was the most beautiful pain I’d ever felt.
Menace burst into the room, shotgun in one hand, Savannah hot on his heels. I don’t know what I looked like, but the way his face changed, I must have been a vision.
“Wrecker!” Menace shouted, crossing to me in two long strides. “What’s happening? Are you dying? You look like you’re dying.”
I gasped, managed to suck in half a lungful of air. “She’s alive,” I rasped. “She’s alive! I can feel her. She’s close. Fucking, fuck, I can feel her.”
Savannah pressed a hand to my chest, then a cold compress to my temple. “His fever broke,” she said, voice shaky. “But he’snot out of the woods. His pulse is all over the map. Nobody has recovered yet.”
“Wren,” I said, the word a desperate laugh. “I have no fucking idea how, but she’s coming back to me. My little bird is coming home.” I could barely get the words out. I was still barely hanging on to life by a thread.
Menace set down the shotgun and put a hand on my shoulder. He tried to hide it, but his hand was trembling. “Just keep breathing, Eli. Let her come to you.”
I tried. I swear I tried, but every time I blinked, the blue light came back, brighter than before. I focused on it, drew it in, made it my only thought. The pain faded, replaced by the sharp, cold joy of knowing she was alive. I tried to scream her name once, twice, just to make sure the universe understood what it had given back to me.
Footsteps hammered down the hallway. A second later, the door banged open, and she was there, in the flesh. Parker. My mate. My everything.
She looked like hell—hair a mess, face streaked with dirt and blood, one arm bandaged to the elbow—but I swear I saw a blue halo around her head. Her eyes locked on mine, and she ran to the bed, crawling up to straddle my lap.
“Never leaving you again,” she whispered, crushing her lips to mine. I tasted salt, blood, tears, and something electric that made my tongue go numb.
I buried my face in her neck and sobbed. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.
As soon as she saw Menace, she jumped off the bed and grabbed a suitcase. Fumbling with the latches, she opened it. “It’s the cure,” she said. “These are vials of the toxin and vials of the antidote. The sigils tell you which is which. You have to get it to Doc—now. It’s the only way to save the pack.”
Menace took the suitcase from her and looked at the contents. “You sure you can trust this stuff?”
She held her arms out. “Look at me. I’m perfectly fine. He gave me the antidote before I put a bullet between his eyes. Doc needs it first. He’ll know the best method of distribution. The toxin was introduced into the water system. Test it to be sure it’s all been flushed.”
I’d never seen Menace speechless.
“On it,” he said as he ran out, yelling for Doc and Bronc, Savannah at his back.
Parker pressed her forehead to mine. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
I tried to answer, but the words tangled up behind my teeth. Instead, I hugged her tight, breathing in the strange, beautiful scent of lavender and lemons.
She collapsed back onto the bed beside me, clutching my hand. Her fingers were ice cold, but the grip was strong as ever.
“I think the angel came through for me again,” she said, voice raw. “There was no way I was getting out of the room Silas had locked me in. I was literally chained to the bed. There were metal cuffs around my wrists I couldn’t break.”
I reached up, touched the spot behind her right ear. The blue mark was still glowing, faint but steady. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but only one mattered.
“How did you get out of those cuffs?”
She got a faraway look in her eyes and told me what happened. “I asked for help. And this is gonna sound wackadoodle, but I felt a tingling from my angel mark. It ran down my arms, and those cuffs heated up, and just like that…they just opened.”
“Miraculous.”
She nodded, then kissed my knuckles. Then told me how she disarmed Silas and killed him and his bodyguards. My mate was a true badass.
She told me how she remembered her mother had told her ‘to listen’ and she swore she heard a voice guiding her out ofthe compound after she snatched up that suitcase and fled. She’d located one of their cars that had the keys in it, and here she was.
We held each other for a long time. I could feel the mate bond pulsing between us, stronger than before, a living thing. Every throb of her heart echoed in my chest.
I pulled her close and whispered, “I love you, little bird.”
She smiled, just for me. “I know.”
