"GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF ME! IT'S CLAWING AT ME!"
The man spun in circles, smacking into walls, furniture, and two of his teammates. Charlie, still attached by sheer terror, bit down hard.
"STOP MOVING!" someone yelled.
"I'M TRYING!"Charlie yelled inside of his head.
Finally, he lost his grip and was flung sideways into a cabinet full of antique china.
The crash was spectacular—and probably very expensive.
But Charlie’s eyes fixed on Simon.
Who had just separated the gray-suited vampire’s head from his body.
Their gazes met.
Charlie twitched.
Simon blinked.
"CHARLIE, RUN!" Simon roared. "GET OUT OF HERE!"
Charlie's rabbit brain seized the command like gospel.
He skidded, rotated, and launched himself for the door.
"Get the rabbit!" someone yelled.
Charlie heard Simon laugh—laugh—as he squeezed past a hunter’s legs and blasted into the hallway, skittering around the corner as if someone had greased his paws.
He bounded down the retreat’s pristine halls, past a very startled Sage, knocked over a planter, and shot out into the gardens where a rabbit could vanish.
Even if that rabbit was technically a vampire who had just helped kill an elder simply by being incredibly, catastrophically obnoxious.
He had no idea how he'd done that.
Or how he’d survived it.
He only knew one thing:
He wasneverliving this down.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Charlie huddled beneath a topiary shaped like a swan, his rabbit heart hammering so fast he thought it might explode.
The human part of his brain—the part currently losing the battle against rabbit instincts—kept trying to turn back toward the retreat. Simon was in there. Simon needed him.
Except Simon had ordered him to run, and even in rabbit form, the compulsion held. His powerful hind legs had carried him through the gardens on autopilot, past a hedge maze, through the heritage rose collection, until he'd found this hiding spot that smelled safely of earth and leaves.
Then it hit him.
A wrongness through the bond that made his small body go rigid. Like someone had stuffed cotton between him and Simon, muffling their connection.
Something was wrong with Simon.
