Oh Beckham.
She hadn’t even gotten one last kiss. She’d barely seen his beautiful face. And what would happen to him if she was gone? Would he ever again risk everything for others? Would he ever open himself up? She didn’t want him to become the beast again. She wanted him to be hers forever.
She wanted to feel him.
One last time.
She reached out for him. Felt his presence adjacent to her. He was getting closer. Then she felt different.
Solid.
Hardened.
Powerful.
Her fragile human body was no more. Instead, it was replaced with the strength of a vampire. Strength to withstand a blast a human never could. Strength to endure. She was as hard and impenetrable as a diamond. Forged of steel rather than muscle and sinew and bone.
Her body collided with the ground a full fifty feet from where she’d last been standing. She skidded, shredding the jacket and shirt she’d been wearing. Her back scraped against the ground with grass and dirt and little stones penetrating her skin. She moaned as she came to a stop.
The connection dropped. And suddenly her muscles remembered every ache and pain and sore in her body. She coughed and hacked and tried to roll over to ease the pain. The back of her head felt like there was a knot the size of a golf ball where she’d banged it against the ground. Cuts and scrapes and soon-to-be-bruises covered her body. Every single part of herwas on fire.
But she was alive.
Miraculously alive.
“Reyna!” Beckham yelled.
She opened her watery brown eyes and stared up at the vision of a man before her. He towered over her, not a cut on him. His dark eyes filled with fear. And God he was beautiful.
“You saved me,” she croaked.
“You’re alive.” He fell to his knees before her, desperate. “You’re alive.”
She choked back her next reply and tried to ease the pain in her skull.
“Don’t speak. I’ll heal you.”
“After,” she gasped. “Save your energy.”
His emotions were rampant and effusive; she could feel them without even reaching out.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned.
She gritted her teeth and tried to keep from screaming when Beckham picked her up. Her back felt like a tattered mess. She could smell her blood mixing with earth. Feel the well of wretched pain intensify.
“The cure?”
Beckham’s eyes darted around. He must have located it, because he grabbed the small cooler, and with it and her tucked beneath him left the scene behind.
…
Reyna blacked out at some point, because when she woke up, the rumble of an engine was beneath her. She reached out for Beckham with her senses and felt him hovering over her.
“Becks,” she whispered.
“Oh Little One, if not for the slow beat of your heart, I wouldhave feared for your death.”
“What happened?”
