Note to self: stop getting kidnapped.
“Where are you taking me?” My gaze darted around the car, trying to map out exits or identify weapons I could use before she put a bullet in my brain. The only thing I had were my stiletto boots with tiny stakes at the tip. I’d been going out on a date night, not a hunting raid. I hadn’t expected to need to be fully armed.
The car rolled onto some gravel and then pulled to a stop as the door flew open.
“Here.” Morgana grinned as a man yanked me out by my armpits. It scared me how fast they were moving, how little she was talking. How much she looked like she wanted to kill me.
“Hey!” I bucked in his arms, cracking my head backward into the face of whoever held me, and then pulled the caps off my stilettos.
“Don’t.” Morgana’s voice came from behind me, and that damn gun was pressed between my shoulder blades.
The dude who held me released his grip and walked over to the car, slipping inside. Did he freaking run alongside the vehicle the entire time? Where the hell had he come from?
This was all happening too fast.
I looked around frantically, and my heart sank into my stomach. We were in a wooded strip of land off the main road. A place you went to kill someone.
She was going to kill me, and therefore starve Luka so they would crown her queen.
“You’re a coward.” I tried to bait her into conversation.
It worked.
“Excuse me?” The gun released from my back and she walked around to face me.
“Killing Luka this way.Coward.”
Morgana grinned. “I’m not killing Luka,thatis against vampire law now that he is King. I’m killing you.”
I didn’t know what I expected to happen. Maybe that she would talk some more, or at least get closer so that I could heel kick her in the face, but when the muzzle of the gun flared with light and pain licked into my stomach, my mouth opened in shock.
Not again.
First Maz shoots me.
Then Cassara cuts out my womb … and now this? I flew backward as she unloaded the entire clip into my stomach. I hit the ground hard, butt first, flying onto my back. Sharp, deep, and pulsating pain burned in my stomach and I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out.
“Goodbye.” Morgana waved playfully before getting into the SUV and driving off, spitting dust and gravel up in my face.
I grasped my stomach, feeling the sticky wet blood pool around me as dizziness washed over me.
‘Aspen!’Luka’s bloodcurdling scream ripped through my head the second the warlock was far enough away from me, seemingly no longer blocking my bond. I couldn’t even think clear enough to respond to him at first.‘I saw your duffle bag in the parking lot and I can’t find you, but I feel you close.’
There were so many holes. I probed them with my fingers as my chest rattled with each breath.
Liv, my mom, Maple, Luka, Sterling, even Vasquez, they all flooded my mind then in a montage of images and memories. Tears streamed down my face.
I’d had a beautiful life. It was hard at times, and I made some questionable choices, but damn it was good.
‘I loved you so much … I need you to know that,’I thought to Luka.
“I’m here!” His voice echoed farther down the road. “Aspen, call to me! I smell you.”
I took in another deep breath to cry out to him, but my chest rattled so hard I just coughed.
“ASPEN!” Luka’s face swam into view then as he skidded to a stop, slipping on the gravel road and falling before me. I would never forget the heartbreak and horror etched in his beautiful features. The way he looked from my abdomen to my face and the resignation that washed over us both.
“It’s … o … kay.” I reached up with wet, sticky fingers and grasped his cheek. “I’m … ready … to…” A cough wracked my chest before I could finish speaking. “…go.” I wheezed and suddenly I felt weightless, like my earthly body could no longer contain my soul. I was flying, lifting up into the air.
