I circled the perimeter of the yard, torn between the chapel and the clubhouse—the bar and the residence, but I tripped before I reached either.
The compound fence saved me. I steadied myself, then glanced down and found my foot caught in the crook of a man’s arm.
A man wearing jeans and a leather cut that was face down in a pool of blood.
It wasn’t Cam. My heart knew it as I crouched down but pounded all the same as I revealed the man’s face.
Then it sank into the pit of my stomach. The man on the ground, bleeding out from a stab wound to the gut, was the young brother with the kind and wise smile.
The chaplain.
I did not know his name, just that Cam loved him.
Help him.I didn’t want to. And the ghost I’d been before I’d found Cam would’ve stepped over the fallen brother and walked away.
But Cam had changed me.
So had Saint.
Working fast, I stripped a layer of clothing from myself and pressed hard on the seeping belly wound.
The pain brought the brother round.
He groaned and I slapped a hand over his mouth, using the impact to force his eyes to meet mine. “Shh.”
The chaplain slow-blinked. If he was alarmed by a stranger looming over his broken body, it didn’t show in his glassy gaze. He was close to death and my soul ached for Cam and how much this would hurt him.
I laid a hand on the chaplain’s forehead, his skin already cold, and whispered a prayer I did not believe in.
Then I rose and crept towards the yard. Up ahead, I heard boots on the ground and watched as men I didn’t recognise filled the space that belonged to Cam’s brothers.
They were smiling.
Like men who had won.
27
Cam
I woke up in a fucking fridge.
At least, it felt that way. I was the coldest I’d ever been in my life, my limbs and joints frozen as I tried to move.
A groan escaped me and somehow lit a fire inside me, searing flames that spread through my shoulder and into my arm, my fingers vibrating with every pulse of agony.
Jesus. I squeezed my eyes shut. My head hurt too, like I had the hangover from hell without the memories of the wild party that had put it there.
Fuckfuckfuck. Breathing through my nose, I tried again to move, but footsteps close by stilled me. Even my heart seemed to stop beating, though the fire in my limbs remained.
The footsteps drew nearer. A boot kicked out at me, hard enough to let me know they were enemy not friend.
“Is he dead?”
“Not yet, but the smoke will get him if he does not bleed out. Don’t worry, with that much ketamine inside him, he will not get up.”
The voice was eastern European, like Alexei’s, but without the culture and velvet.
My skin crawled and vomit bubbled in my belly, burning its way up my throat.
