Page 34 of Bleed with Me

Dorian

By the evening, Eleanor glued enough wires and needles into me to build a small robot. I felt like an exam she couldn’t fail. Heart rhythm, blood work, EEG, MRI, liver panels, kidney function, toxicology screens, reflex tests, neuro checks, pupil reflex, coordination, memory tasks. I touched my nose on command like a trained circus bear. I walked in a straight line down the corridor while she stalked beside me with a tablet and a frown, ready to catch me if I swayed.

Everything came back perfect. My brain and organs were intact, my reflexes sharp, my concentration decent for someone who’d spent three days in chemically induced purgatory. No tremors, no cognitive deficits, no arrhythmia, no lingering toxins. Apparently, I was the healthiest man in the hospital, which was ironic, considering my last clear memory was coming in my wife’s mouth while chained to a bed in a haunted house.

Eleanor insisted on two more days of strict observation, but I’d already observed enough. If I stayed in this room any longer, I would lose my mind. Or worse, Malin would corner me with questions I had zero intention of answering.

I managed to keep him at bay so far, which meant almost the whole day, only because he presumed I was still too weak for interrogation. But he wasn’t stupid. He was a shark in human skin, a predator who smelled the faintest drop of blood in the water. And the moment he deduced I remembered something and didn’t share it with him, he’d start being an annoying pain in my ass.

Sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, I read my chart out of pure boredom when the knock came, three short and one long. Sasha’s signal, meaning my beloved older brother was approaching.

The door opened, and Malin walked in with the same energy as a guillotine blade, silent and lethal. His dark, narrowed eyes swept the room, lingering first on the IV stand, then on my wrists where faint bruises still marked the restraints. A muscle ticked along his jaw. That alone told me he was barely holding the leash on whatever monstrous thought that ran through his mind.

“You look alive,” he grumbled in a low voice that carried a weight that could crush a ribcage.

“You sound disappointed, sunshine.” I grinned, flipping the chart shut. “The whole family is grieving my survival.”

An ordinary person would smile at the joke, but Malin rarely reacted unless something terrible was about to happen. Instead, he stepped closer until his ominous aura almost ate all the brightness of my enlightening personality.

“I have news,” he disclosed, his eyes scanning my face like surveillance cameras. This was one of the few times he said more than ten words in half an hour. With Zyon, we always cherished those moments, but right now, I was concerned. “We found two distinct sets of footprints outside the house.”

I hummed, pretending to be impressed by this revelation while my stomach tightened. The memory of the shooting and suffocating smoke forced unpleasant thoughts about my villainess’s safety to the front of my mind.

“One small,” Malin continued, voice sharp like a sword. “Light. Most probably female. And,” he paused as if weighing the severity of his words, “she was bleeding.”

My fingers twitched against the mattress, but my expression stayed intact.

“Maybe she twisted her ankle while running from your charming personality.” I winked at him, getting no reaction once or ever.

“The second,” he started pacing menacingly before me, “is surely a man, someone who knows how to cover tracks, someone who wiped every camera between Starlight and that forest.” His head snapped toward me, his glare murderous. “They are dangerously clever, professionally equipped, and interested in you. What the fuck do they want, Dorian?”

“How should I know?” I whined, rolling my eyes right into his deadly serious face. “Everything is wiped out.”

“I don’t believe you.” He raised his index finger and bent down so our eyes were on the same level. “You must remember something. Anything.”

His stare was a silent threat carved into the air. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“I remember a headache,” I lied, holding his look.

“And before that?” he rumbled, which made me lift my brows because he rarely raised his voice. His reputation and actions often did the magic, but here, I saw cracks. My villainess didn’t just mess with my head. She messed his, too.

“I already told you,” I sighed, annoyance dripping from every syllable. “I remember everything before the abduction, nothing after the garage. I woke up here with a massive headache, thirsty, and horny.”

The last word slipped out by accident, but I let it sit between us because it distracted him. Malin’s mouth twitched at the corner. It wasn’t a smile, more like a glitch in his programming.

“Horny,” he spat like it was the most disgusting insult. “You almost died, and you think about your dick. Magnificent.”

“My dick almost died, too,” I pouted like a five-year-old, knowing he hated the behavior. “It deserves to be part of the debrief.”

Malin’s jaw flexed. He leaned even closer so our noses almost touched. It was unsettling to look into a face identical to mine and see absolutely nothing of myself in it.

“You’re hiding something, brother,” he whispered in a chilling voice, his eyes like probes that saw right into my soul. I knew I couldn’t lie to him forever, but I had to find a way to keep him from my villainess. However, my pathetic approach only seemed to heighten his interest in the whole matter.

Fuck. Why the hell did he have to act like a throat-slicing robot? It never bothered me that he killed people without hesitation. His hunts and torture sessions were my source of entertainment. I even participated in them. But this time, I feared he would catch his prey. I was scared of what he would do to her for daring to touch me. And that meant something, because I never stopped Malin from delivering punishment.

“I will find them,” he interrupted my thoughts, bringing me back to the terrifying reality. My pulse kicked harder from fear for her, my lunatic wife, my villainess, my brown-eyed unexplainable obsession who drugged me half to death. Still, I forced a casual shrug.

“Good luck,” I said in a detached tone, doing my best to pass his test. But only he knew the fucking results. “I know you love a good hunt.”