Hands pull me to my feet again, and then I’m suddenly weightless. For one, two seconds I feel nothing but the air whip past me, and then I slam into something hard and unforgiving, crumpling in a heap on the ground.
Blackness dances at the edge of my vision.
I can barely make out Birch walking towards me. He stops and crouches in front of my face. Fully dressed now. When did that happen?
When he strokes a hand down the side of my face, I want to flinch away, but I can’t move. My mind is screaming to get away, but my body won’t fucking cooperate.
He grips my chin and forces me to look at him. “Say hello to Harper for us.”
My head falls onto the ground as he lets go and stands.
They don’t say anything else, just turn and walk away.
Every part of me hurts.
I know I’m bleeding, know I need to get up, to look for my fucking phone or I’m going to die out here. But my eyes are heavy. The lure of sleep is way too enticing to do anything but close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
LYNX
“Get them in the van.”
Two.
Fucking two shifters. That’s all we could get out before they spotted us.
“We could’ve got more,” Beth hisses, like she’s read my mind. “They didn’t have silver bullets. We would’ve beenfine.”
“Beth—”
“Theywouldn’t.” Mal stops her before she can get on her bike. He gestures behind him to the now closed van doors. “If we don’t get them back to Corey, then there’s a good chance we’ll lose them.”
Especially the one with curly brown hair.
Fuck me, he’d looked so broken when we freed him from his cage. Sometimes we get them out too late. The damage caused by too many turns in the ring is too much to repair.
I hope it’s not like that this time.
He reminds me of Bale. A younger version, sure, but they have the same eyes. I wonder if Beth sees it too. If that’s why she’s so on edge.
“What do you mean?” She narrows her eyes at Mal.
Mal looks at me.
We haven’t shared this with the rest of the pack.
“They inject a small amount of aconite into them before they fight.”
Her eyes flare bright. “What the fuck?”
“Not enough to affect them right away, but it works through their system as they fight. By the time they come out of the ring, they have anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour to get the antidote in them. If we’d stayed any longer...”
It took too long to get them out. We couldn’t risk staying without putting them in danger.
Her gaze darts to the van again.
“Jet’s giving them the antidote now. But they’ll need more when we get back to the compound.”
“Fuck.” She runs a hand through her hair. Frustrated. Angry. I don’t blame her.
