The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,196

beautiful hand, with its long tapering fingers and its little wrist.

At first, he didn’t understand why, when he stood up and went to pull, his grip slipped free. “Oh, sorry, sloppy—”

She wasn’t moving.

Selena was exactly in the position of having placed her hand in his, her forearm up, her head tilted so she could meet his eyes, her body on her knees.

The only thing that had changed was the terror in her eyes.

“Oh, no…” he said. “No, no, not now…”

He knelt beside her, but she didn’t turn her head to him. Instead, her body began to list to the side as if it were solid, falling, falling …

“No!” he screamed.

The next thing Trez knew, he was in the clinic.

He had no idea how he’d gotten there with Selena in his arms, but somehow he must have picked her up from the floor in iAm’s bedroom and made it down all the stairs and through the tunnel and out of the supply closet.

He was vaguely aware of people in his wake. Lassiter, who had probably come out of the billiards room. Tohr, who’d been behind the desk in the office. Another Brother who was limping.

But none of that mattered.

Giving his back to the door into the exam room, he barged in without knocking, his heart thundering, his hearing shot, his brain jammed up with that one word he kept repeating over and over again to himself.

Nonononononononononononononononono—

This couldn’t be happening now, after they’d had that transcendent moment. Not now, when they were supposed to go and have her dance naked around Rehv’s kitchen together. Not now, without him having taken her for that boat ride.

It was too soon, too soon …

Suddenly, it dawned on him that Doc Jane was standing in front of him, her forest-green eyes locked on his, her mouth moving.

“Can’t hear you,” he told her. Or at least, he thought that was what he said.

Goddamn it, this ringing in his ears wasn’t helping.

When the physician pointed at the exam table, he thought, Right, okay. He would put Selena there.

Moving across the tile floor, he approached the place he needed to get to and bent down, intending to lay her flat. Except, no—her body didn’t shift to accommodate the repositioning.

It nearly killed him to ease her onto her side.

Crouching down so she could see him, he took her hand, the one that was as yet extended to him, the one with his ring on it. “It’s okay, my queen. It’s all right—you got out of this last time, you’re going to do it again. You’re going to come out of this.”

He never looked away from her panicky eyes. Not when machines were hooked up to her, and IVs started, and X-rays taken. Not while the two doctors and Ehlena worked feverishly, administering drugs and taking her pulse and blood pressure. Not as she began to tear up, the crystal drops forming and dropping off the bridge of her nose and the side of her face.

“I got you, my queen. I’m not going anywhere. Stay with me. You’ve come out of this many times before, and the same thing’s going to happen tonight. Believe with me, come on … you’ve got to believe with me…”

He had to open his mouth, because he was breathing so hard his nose couldn’t keep up with the demands. And he kept having to swallow—it was either that or run the risk of needing to tilt to the side and throw up on the tile.

This can’t be it, he thought.

I’m not ready.

I can’t say good-bye.

I can’t let her go tonight.

This can’t be it …

SIXTY-SEVEN

As Rhage stared up at Assail’s glass house, he knew in his gut something was in all-wrong territory. Ever since he and V had arrived, nothing had changed. The interiors, whether it was the kitchen, that football field–size living room, or the office, were each exactly right—except there was no one moving through them.

“Maybe Assail’s doing his toenails underground,” Rhage muttered. “A lilac, perhaps. Or a cherry red.”

“Sooner or later,” V bitched, “if he’s going to stay in business, he’ll have to leave by car. You can’t transport the kind of money or drugs he deals in while ghosting.”

“Unless they all overdosed together.”

They both had to assume Assail and his boys had been drafting in and out since nightfall, and there was nothing they could do to stop that. V had, however, set up tiny cameras before they’d left the dawn before, and there had been no activity during the daylight hours—no duffels