“Right. Okay, try not to move too much, Liv, all right?”
I nodded, grimacing at the motion. Lucas began working.
Drake leaned over Lucas’ shoulder, eyes wide with worry. “What can I do?”
“You can step back,” Lucas said. “I can’t work with you hovering over me.”
Drake growled, but one warning look from the pack’s most skilled healer caused him to stop. Grumbling, he took astep back, running his fingers through his hair as he kept his gaze locked on me.
Faces swam in and out of focus as pain and exhaustion began to consume me. It suddenly got hard to breathe. Drake crouched next to me, gripping my hand.
“Stay with me,” he muttered.
At some point, my eyes fluttered shut, and I tilted over into blackness.
Chapter 24 - Drake
I watched as Lucas continued working on Liv. My wolf paced with worry as frustration rippled through me. I couldn’t stand the idea of her being hurt.
At some point, Liv had passed out. I still held onto her hand, unwilling to let her go. It wasn’t until Oz tugged me to my feet and moved me away that I came back to my senses.
“Give Lucas some space. Are you okay?” Oz asked. The cut along the side of his face was likely going to scar.
“What do you think?” I snapped.
Oz nodded, his face uncharacteristically grim. “I was talking about you.” He pointed to the wound that still stung across my arm, blood still trickling from it. “That’s pretty nasty.”
“I’ll worry about it later,” I grunted, glancing back at Liv. “I should have been there,” I snarled, running my fingers through dirt-speckled hair.
“You were getting pinned by two demons,” Oz said. “It’s not your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have let her come in the first place.”
“If you hadn’t, then we probably would be dead, and Azaret would have the entirety of the oasis and the desert, and all its power,” Elias countered, coming to stand next to me. “You saw what she did with the knives. No one else could have done it. Hell, she saved us when she managed to keep Rachel and Emma safe while they did their work on the wraith. If you had made her stay home, she wouldn’t have had a home for very long.”
He was right, and I knew it. That didn’t stop the frustrated growl from reverberating in my throat as I glanced over at Liv, her breathing too shallow.
“You need some rest yourself,” Oz said. “At least sit.”
“Not until I know what’s happening,” I said.
Elias’s hand went to my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized he had approached. Sam stood next to him.
“I know what it’s like to have your mate get injured,” Elias said.
He did. He probably knew better than anyone, considering the wraith had kidnapped Emma at one point as well. At the same time, I didn’t want to listen to reason. All I could think about was the fact that Liv was hurt. She might die, and she would never know how much I cared about her.
“Emma and Rachel are working on getting the spring moving again,” Sam said. “Emma thinks she has a lead on how to go about it.”
I craned my neck to look across the cavern—impossibly bright, the way it had always been. Something about that felt wrong, though, as if the entire cavern should be dark because the brightest thing in the room was in danger of being snuffed out forever. Liv stirred in my arms with a weak groan, one that sounded feebler than the last, even as Lucas continued working as fast as he could.
It’s not going to happen, I told myself, fingers tightening around her. I wasn’t going to let her die. She couldn’t die, because if she did, I didn’t know what I would do.
Lucas sat back on his haunches, pushing his hair away from his forehead as he glanced down at Liv, taking a deep breath. His hands had smears of crimson on them, and the bandage he had wrapped taut around her midriff was already turning red, the stain blooming out.
“I’ve done as much as I can here,” he said, glancing back at the spring. “We could either try and move her out of the tunnel and get her back to town, or we could see what happens with the spring.”
I glanced over. Rachel and Emma were crouching by the edge of the pool, murmuring to one another. Emma’s hands were dipped in the water. I couldn’t see her face from here, but I could see the tension in her shoulders and could tell from the frantic, uneasy mutters that whatever they were trying wasn’t working.
