Page 1
One Hour
An interquel between Blood Rule (#4)
& Broken Blood (#5)
Tara Godfrey, is held prisoner for being a Dirty Blood (half Werewolf, half Hunter) and undergoing various tortures in order to understand her biology, among other secrets.
Tara
Loneliness was a worse pain than any agony their shiny instruments had inflicted.
It’d been eight weeks since Gordon Steppe had made me his prisoner. Eight weeks since I’d last felt the mental bond I’d shared with my hybrid Werewolf pack. Eight weeks since I’d last saw my friends, George or Victoria or Logan or … Wes. I didn’t know what had happened to them. The last glimpse I caught of them was their bent-over forms, sick from Gordon’s poison, as Gordon’s goons surrounded them in that dirty warehouse.
Since then, I barely knew what had happened to me.
Some days I did, but most days were too blurry to get a clear understanding of what it all meant. I did know one thing without question: Gordon, the leader of CHAS, the Committee for Hunter Affairs and Security, was using me. Some days he used me as a punching bag. But, mostly, he used me as a human (or almost human since I was half Hunter, half Werewolf) pincushion. I’d been stuck with needles, both injecting and retrieving various solutions into and out of my body. I’d been strapped to heart monitors, brain scans, body scans, and all manner of verbal and ocular testing. Something they’d given me made it impossible to shift into my wolf.
I’d fought back for the first week or so but then the reality of my situation hit home. After over a week of being hit and shoved and poked and prodded—and not rescued—I’d had to admit this was my life now.
And I’d sucked it up. But then the loneliness hit.
I hadn’t spoken with anyone besides my doctor and Steppe in six weeks.
My throat hurt from not speaking. My head hurt from not reading others’ thoughts. I’d take another eight weeks of medical torture if it meant an hour alone with someone I cared about. Although I ached for Wes, I’d take Cambria or Grandma or Fee. I might even take my mother at this point.
With that in mind, I curled up into my dirty mattress and drifted off…
The room was hazy with smoke of some kind—fog, maybe? It had no smell, and I didn’t feel the urge to cough as it infiltrated my throat and lungs. Strange. I took a step, the sensation startling me as I realized my bare toes were suddenly buried in thick carpet instead of padding along on cold cement. I looked down.
A rug, thick and rich and the color of bark, stretched out into the foggy cloud hanging over everything. I took another step. My hand brushed something soft and I jerked back, squinting to see through the white haze. A burgundy quilt … a bed. What the heck?
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Was Steppe messing with me somehow? He’d been trying so hard to get into my head, maybe he’d finally succeeded.
“Who’s there?” The voice was gravelly, the words slow. Wary but lazy from sleep. I took another step because, dream or not, terrified or not, I’d know that voice anywhere.
“Wes?” I whispered.
“Tara?” The drowsiness was gone, replaced by hope and underneath it, a sharp fear.
I leaned forward through the clouds hanging in the room, their soft white aura giving off a glow like a nightlight. I could just barely make out where the burgundy quilt arced upward and then fell away against a body.
Shirtless abs, a broad chest, and a stubbled chin. “Wes!” I said at the same time he reached for me and said, “Tara!”
His hand closed around my arm and he pulled me off my feet. I tumbled into his lap, clinging and kissing and careful not to close my eyes in case it all disappeared when I opened them again.
“How are you here?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I frowned. “Where is here?”
“I’m … I’ve rented this studio for a few weeks,” he told me. “In DC. I’m…” Pain twisted his features and his eyes narrowed into something so tortured, it made my eyes water. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. How did you get out?”
“I don’t think I am,” I said slowly. “I think I’m dreaming or … something.”
Wes frowned and his hands rubbed slowly up and down my arms, his touch so real it made me doubt my own words. “You don’t feel like a dream,” he said softly.
“Neither do you,” I admitted. Our eyes met and in his, tiny bronze flecks floated in pools of chocolate brown. The haze still hung in the air but it was welcome now, like a cozy cotton ball hiding us away.
Then I remembered my last wish before I’d fallen asleep. To have one hour. And suddenly I knew I was getting my wish. I refused to waste it.
