Page 185 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

I am moving before Viper can get his hands on me to pull me back. I stumble over a dismembered leg, catch myself, and lunge toward him with my hands already reaching, searching for wounds from the blast.

There is so much blood. He's a Beta, no matter how tough and capable he is, he's not an Alpha and if anyone is going to die on this battlefield, it will be him.

Thankfully the tourniquet on his upper thigh is still in place and his thigh wound is sluggishly bleeding.

There is also a nasty split high on his scalp where he must have hit his head on a stone, and blood is still creeping down from it in heavy lines.

He catches my wrists before I can start tearing at his armor.

"Halley," he says, and the word comes out slurred.

Ice floods my chest.

"What hurts?" My voice sounds thin and wrecked, even to me. "Shade, where?"

His brown eyes, beautiful even now, try to focus on my face, but they swim. He looks dazed, pale, and wrong. The bright spark of his formidable intelligence is dulled.

"Most of it," he says slowly, like it costs him to line the words up, "isn’t mine."

I stare at him, breathing hard and trying to force my brain to work.

Then I see the Human body beside him, blasted nearly apart.

Shade’s gaze drifts toward it, then back to me. "Pulled him in front of me," he mutters thickly. "When Knox yelled."

The words take me a moment to process.

Not his blood.

My clever Beta used a Human as a meat shield. My mate is alive.

He tries to push himself up, and the second he shifts, he sways badly. His free hand slips on the rock beneath him. I catch him under the arm before he can pitch sideways back into the dirt.

"No." I drop beside him properly, one hand braced at his back, the other going to his face. "Don't stand."

He blinks at me with strained concentration, like thinking is taking everything he has.

My pulse is still hammering, but the panic is lessening. He is alive. Viper and Knox are also alive.

I push myself to purr again, letting him feel the rumbling through my hands, and hope that it helps ease his pain.

Except we don't have time for me to hold my mate and purr.

The Humans surge again with a raw, ugly roar, filling the gap Knox carved through them. He accelerates his movements, but there are too many now for him to hold back on his own.

"Knox, to me!" Shade shouts, his hoarse voice cracking to be heard over the din.

Knox tries.

I see him fight for every step, but the road is packed shoulder to shoulder with enemy soldiers pushing to get past him. He drops one, then another, then takes a hit from the side that would have folded a lesser soldier.

Viper limps to Shade and me, his pinkened, tender skin exposed. With his good arm, he hauls Shade out of my arms, and props our Beta up. He's shaking from the effort.

"Baby girl," Shade says, voice rough and slurring with dawning horror. "Think this might be the end."

Between the barricade and us, enemy soldiers are already trying to breach our defensive line.

Then there is us, stranded in the blasted-out section of road where the explosion hit.