A minute later, Kaige and Reid are both rushing into the room, eyes widening. The former looks from the bed to us and demands, “What in the ever-loving hell happened?”
Hunter grunts as I manage to bend my leg back enough to get a weak shot in between his legs, adjusting his stance, but tightening his hold. “D was talking about healing her leg. Best guess, he got carried away and tried to turbo charge her wolf into coming out to play.”
His words begin breaking through my freakout and I take a second look at the bed, or more appropriately, the three unmoving, pale bodies on top of it. Ice floods my veins, all of the fight leaving my body in an instant, and I slump, hanging like a ragdoll in Hunter’s arms.
“How the fuck would that explain this?” Kaige demands, striding to the bed and smacking Damian across his blood-spattered face in a bid to wake him up before slapping his palm into Damian’s hand. “Pull from me, you reckless fucking idiot. You said you’d wait until we were here to chip in.”
Reid stays rooted to the spot in the doorway, wide-eyed beneath his glasses. He finds my gaze, and maybe it’s me projecting my own horror, but I could swear I see fear swimming in his pale blue eyes. “Because he pulled it off.”
Hunter’s grip tightens as he moves us back another step away from the pile of bloodied bodies. My heartbeat is thundering so loudly in my ears that it becomes deafening, everything else fading away into a dull roar, as if we’re underwater. All I can do is stare at where Kaige is shaking Damian’s shoulders, urging him again to pull from him when he doesn’t wake up, and where Slade and Cin aren’t so much as twitching.
I can faintly make out Hunter’s voice as he adds, “And it looks like Damian set free an alpha that she can’t control.”
Chapter 4
Reid
––––––––
With fascinated horror, I watch as Damian not only pulls the volatile energy from Kaige’s wolf into himself to regain his strength, but funnels some of it into my brothers. Sabrina’s boneless against Hunter, the man the only thing keeping her upright. There’s blood streaked across her lips and cheek, along with her fingers, droplets slowly trickling down to her fingertips and dripping onto the carpet. Despite the repentant look on her face, there isn’t so much as a single tear in her eye, nor is she trembling in shock or fear. She’s simply... resigned, and it fucking kills me, because I know there’s more to it than she does.
Sabrina sucked down every bit of unsavory emotion that those three contained within their bodies, two of which were alphas. They absorb everyone’s pain, so their energy is more tainted than most, and she took all of it without any sort of preparation; it’ll be a miracle if her mind hasn’t completely snapped already.
Hunter’s stern face is condemning as he fires a disapproving glare in the direction of the men coming to, but he eventually makes his way around the room to me. Sharing a weighted look, he tips his head slightly in acknowledgment. Kaige may be typically strong enough to manipulate people without touching them, but that’s when people aren’t using the man as a damn battery.
Hunter’s the only one holding Sabrina together right now, but the second he lets go, she’s on her own to cope with the fallout.
“Sabrina.”
Her attention remains fixated on the guys rousing on the bed with various groans, eyes glazing over as she mentally shuts down. Cin escaped with only five puncture marks from her nails, which are already scabbing over. Damian’s forearm is ripped open from inner elbow to wrist, blood smeared across his skin and steadily pooling on the rumpled comforter, but Slade?
The pale blue claiming mark on his neck is highlighted by the red, raw skin around it, like an angry beacon that draws all of our eyes right toward it with an ominous sense of foreboding in the air.
He’s the first one that’s been bitten since her wolf was freed.
“Sabrina!” Startling at the sharp tone I’ve never used with her before, it snaps her out of her dazed state, tearing her gaze from the bed. “We’re late for work. Are you coming, or are Jonathan and I going to have to carry you on this project?”
