Page 96 of Bound

The pain consumed her. Drained her strength until she crumpled to the ground.

“Jayd!”

Brickham’s shout, full of more raw wrath she had ever heard from him, blew up the cavern.

“Fuck. Fuck. Jayd!”

“No, damn it. Stay down!” The second yell had her peering around, struggling to connect logic to confusion again. It was beyond difficult with her body still drowning in this bucket of pain, especially because the order did not belong to either of the formidable Americans behind her. Unless one of them had suddenly switched genders…

Wait. She remembered now.

Power Ranger.

The woman had not run away!

The realization brought new stings to Jayd’s eyes—this time in unbridled joy—even as the air over her head became a whirl of frightening zings and metallic tang. But she was certain, had a gun really been fired, they would all be deaf from the awareness.

She had definitely not gone deaf.

Because she heard, with clarity that made her gut clench, the double thwunks of steel driving into firm flesh.

Into Trystan’s body.

Rahmié Creacu, so close to one of the kidneys she had been after.

As she shoved up onto her elbows, she repeated the oath in a stunned whisper. Trystan did the same, nearly at the same time and with the same inflection, until the cruel interruption from his convulsing throat. His groan was naught but ugly harmony and choking resistance. His face was covered in sheer disbelief.

The look persisted even as his knees gave way and blood seeped from the bases of the two crossbow bolts in his side. Soon, the thick red drops were loud splats against the hard clay.

Trystan saw none of it. He shook his head slowly, as if adjusting it to the proper angle would somehow click everything back into focus. Though it was clearly not helping, he persisted. He kept up the effort even while collapsing onto his side. Not once did he rip his dazed condemnation from the woman who stood a good twelve feet away, an old but functional crossbow still secure in her grip.

Trystan reached a trembling hand toward her. She moved not an inch.

He moaned but decided better of it, as a suffering crocodile wheeze took over his breathing rhythms.

She still moved no muscle in her stance.

He opened his mouth, working his jaw as if to form words, but only one long syllable emerged. “Llllluuuuu…”

“Holy. Shit.”

Brickham’s interjection rode nearly the same decibel level. His rasp delayed Jayd’s double-take by several seconds. Moments that proved how seconds sometimes truly counted. The force of nature had already sprung back to his feet and now advanced their way, his prominent features etched in shock.

A lot of it.

“Holy shit,” he repeated, sounding like he had been socked in the stomach with a cannon ball.

As if forcing sound around the edges of that ordnance, he grated, “Luna? Luna fucking Lawrence?”

This time, the Power Ranger did move.

Chapter Fifteen

“What in the living—”

“The living? You sure about that, man?”

Z’s and Ethan’s mutterings were comforting but disconcerting. Brick admitted the first while pulling in a long breath and then fought to dispel the second while whooshing everything back out.