I was sobbing, clutching one of the bent doors to stay close to Leo. The entire time my eyes were locked on that window as I watched my lover fight tooth and nail to survive. All alone.
“I’m sorry,” Ricky said, his voice barely understandable through his snaggled and elongated teeth. “But I promised.”
His words were mostly noise, however, and I continued to fight him. It was enraging that a wolf who had so recently been starved could overpower me so easily, but try as I could to resist, Leo slowly got farther and farther away until we were in the elevator.
I threw myself at the doors as they closed, and when that didn’t work, I attacked Ricky. I punched his chest, shoving him into the wall. He made no effort to fight me, and it wasn’t until I saw the tears in his eyes that I stopped.
“Why?” I gasped as sobs tore out of my throat. God, we weren’t really abandoning Leo, were we? “Why did you do that? We could have helped him!”
“Because he made me promise to get you to safety if things went sideways. Our pack has had our time, and while we want it back, Leo said it’s not worth your life. My job now is to protect you, Vanessa. Do you understand that? All of this, everything, didn’t matter to him as much asyou.”
It was too much. It was all too much. I sank down to my knees as more sobs consumed me. I was faintly aware that the elevator stopped and Ricky practically dragged me out. Despite everything Leo and I had been through, we’d come so close to having a storybook happily ever, and now it had all been ripped away.
Leo was trapped intherewhile I was stuck outhere.
I resisted Ricky all the way into the truck and while he drove away. It wasn’t until we got on the highway, and I tried to grab the wheel, that he grabbed my throat and pushed me as far away as he could.
“Listen! I don’t like this anymore than you do. I should be in there fighting and dying beside him. My alpha gave me an order, so I have to make sure that happens. He wants you safe. So, for the love of God, stop trying to fight me.”
“H-heorderedyou?” I barely managed to get out between my sobs.
“Yeah, and I’m not happy about it.”
I forced my sobs to quiet, and when I spoke again, I made sure it was with a steel I didn’t have before. “Did he give you any orders about not going back to rescue him?”
Ricky didn’t answer for at least a minute, and I watched a procession of emotions march across his profile. Eventually, he turned his head and flashed me a wide smile.
“Now that you mention it… no, he did not.”
26
VANESSA
“Help me!”
Leo was calling for me; I would know that voice anywhere. Suddenly, I was thrust into a miasma of technicolor. None of it made much sense, just a mire of shades.
“Ven! Help me!”
It was as if his voice conjured the world. All the vague shapes suddenly solidified, and I was back in the lab again, the lights flashing red around me. Leo was in front of me, faceless lab technicians grabbing at him, trying to pull him away from me.
“Vanessa! Ineedyou!”
“I’m trying!” The words coming out of my mouth felt like mush and were incomprehensible.
I threw myself against the window separating us, clawing at it and slamming my head against it, but I was so goddamn weak.I could only watch as Leo was dragged farther and farther away, still crying out my name, begging me not to abandon him.
“No, no, Leo, please! I’ll get to you! I swear I’ll get to you!” I slammed my palms into the glass, as if somehow I would become strong enough to shatter it.
But the crazy thing was, I could have sworn it was starting to give. The faintest green glow appeared around the edges, with spiderlike cracks growing in the glass.
Wait, no. Not spiderlike. Vine-like. Little hairline slivers of emerald. I had no idea what that could possibly be, but I did it again, and again, and again until the cracks began to spread farther out across the surface.
Suddenly, the ground turned to something like quicksand below my feet, and it was pitch black. I began sinking almost instantly, the floor greedily sucking me down like it was ravenous. My nails scored along the wall as I tried to grab the window ledge, but there was no stopping the insistent drag. Bit by bit, the ground swallowed me until the hungering void reached all the way up to my chin.
I was still calling for Leo as acrid nothingness spilled across my tongue. It was a curse and a plague all wrapped up in one, and I couldn’t even spit it out before my entire head was swallowed and I was plunged into the endless dark.
I screamed—at least I thought I did—but there was no sound. Nothing. For a moment, I thought I would spend the rest of my life trapped in an endless void of nonexistence. But then I was dropped into a room where I hadn’t been in quite a while.
