Liam?He was alive?
Did hearing him mean I was as well?
Or were we both dead?
My lungs seized and thrust a jet of liquid up my throat. I gasped. Vomited. Gasped again. Vomited some more.
Oxygen streaked down my throat like sunlight, puffed up my shriveled lungs. My chest heaved again, but nothing more came out. Everything was now coming in.
Air.
Noise.
Light.
Pain.
Someone wept softly beside me.
I blinked my heavy lids open. Blinked them some more.
The first face I saw was Liam’s, complexion pale, lashes clumped, black V-neck plastered to a rapidly heaving chest. Rivulets of water ran off his hair and dripped against my neck.
“You’re alive,” I murmured. “How are you alive? Camilla shot you.”
“It wasn’t me.” His chin dipped as his gaze raked over my bruised lip, my wet clothes, my wounded wrists and ankles.
“But I saw—”
A muffled sob carried my attention away from my Alpha, who was rising to his feet.
“Oh, Nikki,” my mother croaked, her eyes so red they almost resembled Bea’s.
“Mom . . . you’re here.”
“Where else would I be?” Her lower lip overtook her upper one. “Oh, Nikki. Oh, sweetheart.”
Dad draped his arm around her, his face pressing in close. “How many times are you planning on testing the durability of our hearts, Pinecone?”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” I tried to extend my arm to touch my parents, but my wrists were still bound. As were my ankles.
“What the actual fuck, Nik?” Nash and Nolan said at the very same time.
Niall stabbed a quivering hand through his wet hair, turning it as spiky as the twins’. “Can you quit hanging with people wearing the last name Hollis?”
Adalyn, whose eyes and cheeks were smudged with mascara and tears, shoved between the twins to reach me. Her mouth opened as though she was about to say something. Closed. Opened. Closed again, before settling into a smile-sob combo.
Nash draped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her to him.
I swallowed as my gaze cycled around the circle of familial faces. One was missing.
“Where’s Nate?” My pulse quickened as I remembered Bea’s prone form, the bloodstained ice. “And Bea?”
Niall leaned back, and I caught sight of my eldest brother and Bea.
“We’re right here, Pinecone.” Both Nate’s white shirt and undershirt were plastered to his torso and pinked with blood.
“I’m so sorry, Nikki,” Bea whispered, playing with the hem of her steel-gray tee which bore a hole under her left breast. “I tried to get to you before you went under, but—”
