just as we were finishing up, and my stomach was instantly in knots.
I pushed back my chair and stood. “Let’s get this over with.”
Vi and her doctor friend Missy had me lay on the couch. Missy attached electrode thingies to my chest. I’d had to take Grayson’s shirt off for that, but I was wearing a sports bra, so it felt pretty covered up regardless. They stuck electrode thingies to my temple too, and a machine read my heart rate and brain waves.
We were ready.
It was time for Vi to stop my heart.
A heart that was beating so fast I was afraid I’d pass out.
Uri and Grayson stood at the back of the sofa and Vi sat by my hip, while Missy sat on a chair with a beeping machine by her side. She was a petite human with a perpetually startled look about her and a soft, soothing voice.
“Calm down,” she said. “Your pulse is crazy.”
“I’m about to have my heart stopped…I think it knows.”
Vi rubbed her hands together. Her palms had inked patterns on them, and sparks flew off her fingertips.
“Oh, it’s working.” She sounded surprised.
“You had doubts.”
“I’ve never done this before.”
“You’ve never—” I tried to sit up, but Missy gently pushed me back down.
“Vi?” Grayson’s tone demanded an explanation.
“Look,” Vi said. “I’ve seen it done on several occasions and it’s foolproof. I charge up the emblems with a chant, drawing on my connection to miasma, and then I touch Fee and will her heart to stop. It stops. We wait a minute, and Missy brings her back.”
I looked up at Grayson. This was the part where he said something. Something like we don’t have to do this, or maybe we can find another solution. I saw the doubt play across his face, and then his gaze dropped to my neck, to the spot where I’d cut myself, and the doubt melted.
“Fee, if we don’t do this, that curse will take control,” he said.
He was right. This was the plan. The only loophole. “Where’s Cora, I need her.”
“I’m here.” Cora appeared by the fireplace clutching Hunter’s arm.
“What are you—” His gaze fell on me, flicking to my chest and then to the machine I was attached to. “What the fuck is going on?”
“They’re about to stop her heart,” Cora said. “I thought you might want to be here.”
He looked at me, then up at Grayson. “Are you fucking insane?”
Grayson groaned. “Hunter, this is none of your concern.”
Hunter’s expression smoothed out to something cold and lethal. “Not my concern? Last I checked I was the third wheel in this Tribus. She’s my mate too, and her welfare is the welfare of the Tribus.”
For a moment, I’d thought he go down a different route with that reasoning and say that my welfare meant something to him. I shoved away the errant thought. Since when did I care if I mattered to him anyway?
“I have to do this.” I took a deep breath. “I’m cursed, and this is the only way to end it.”
He looked like he was about to argue, and it hit me that this could be the last time I spoke to him. To any of them.
I couldn’t do this without him knowing the truth. My gaze flicked to Cora, who I wager had brought him here for that very reason.
“Hunter. It wasn’t pity, okay.” I didn’t want to say more. I didn’t need to. “I’m sorry if it felt that way.”
He snapped his mouth closed.
I looked up at Grayson. “I lo—"
“Don’t,” Grayson said. “Tell me when you wake up.”
I looked up at Uri. “When I thought you were dead, I felt like my heart was breaking. I need you to know that I’m falling in love with you. I just need you to know that.”
His throat bobbed, but he didn’t say anything.
“Cora, if I don’t—”
“No.” Cora cut me off. “Enough with the speeches. You’re going to wake up, and if you don’t, I’m fucking coming after you.”
There was no way she could do that, but hearing her say it and seeing the fierce look on her face was enough to give me the strength I needed to do this.
I looked at Vi. “Do it.”
“Stop!”
The electric scent of a storm hit me, followed by a citrus aroma, and my pulse, which was already hammering, shot into my throat. I sat up so fast the electrodes tore from my skin, but I didn’t even feel the sting.
“Azazel! Mal!”
They were here. They’d come.
They strode toward me, grime and blood-streaked, reeking