feel my body twitch, but the pain never fully reached me.
I heard a long, deep grunt, fingers digging into my arms, a snorted, choked breath.
“What the hell?” the first man asked. “Warwick?”
“It’s nothing. Keep going,” he seethed through his teeth, his tone filled with torture.
“It’s not nothing. What is going on? Why are you acting like the one getting a bullet dug out of your kidney while she lays here calmly?”
“I. Said. It’s. Nothing.” He breathed heavily, close to my ear. “Keep going.”
“She probably won’t live. I want you to be prepared. Her system will most likely shut down with shock.”
“Just do it!”
There was a beat…
Flames burst inside me, my spine jackknifing. But it was his deep roar that shook the room, tearing through me and filling me with excruciating agony.
It was too much.
I slipped back into endless blackness.
The murmur of voices, though soothing, tugged me from the blackness. My lashes fluttered, trying to open. Bile clung to the walls of my esophagus, and though I couldn’t pinpoint the pain, nausea rolled through me as though I was on a stormy ocean.
Weakly, my lids cracked open to an old wood ceiling made of tree branches. The room was dark and dim, the only light coming from a fire crackling across the room, but I still flinched at the brightness. Peering at my outstretched body, a soft blanket lay over me, a pillow under my head, and I looked to be lying on a wooden dining table.
“I’ve known you a long time. Fought at your side.” The smooth, seductive voice drifted sensually to me, coming from near the large fireplace. “Janos and I were the ones to find you on the field…”
A chair creaked. My head dropped to look over. In two homemade-looking wood chairs in front of the fire, Warwick and a man I didn’t know sat drinking.
Warwick’s shirt was still caked with dried blood, a bandage on his arm, his pants stained with grease, dirt, and more blood.
The other guy wore dark green, loose cotton pants and a lighter green shirt, his feet bare.
From what I could see of the unknown guy’s profile, he was seriously gorgeous: chiseled jaw, full lips, stubble, and wavy, dark blond hair tumbling to his shoulders. Pretty compared to Warwick. Shorter and less broad. But almost all men were slight compared to the Wolf. Warwick had a way of making everyone else appear small. Insignificant. Though sitting, I could tell this man still was tall and fit, looking to be in his late twenties to humans.
“I’m putting a lot on the line having you here. If Killian or any of his men found you... I’m still tied to him. A debt I have to work through.” The guy frowned.
Warwick rubbed his face, staring back at the fire.
“You really have issues trusting people. Even me… after all we’ve been through.” The pretty man took a drink of whatever was in his wooden cup. “At least tell me what she is to you.”
“She’s nothing.” Warwick’s voice came out low.
“Yeah, that’s why you brought her here, knowing the risk, and threatened my life multiple times if she didn’t live.” The guy snorted, refilling his glass from a bottle on a side table. “You are a lot of things… The one thing you are not, my friend, is a good liar. Nor do you take risks for people who are nothing to you.”
Warwick’s eyebrows furrowed.
“You don’t care enough to lie. You are a tsunami—brutal, overwhelming, devastating, harsh, but never false.”
Warwick slunk back farther in his chair, scouring his face. He dropped his head back for a moment, taking a breath. “I don’t know what she is…”
“In general or to you?” His friend’s question stirred him in his seat.
“Fuck, I don’t miss this.” Warwick motioned to him. “This insightful shit.”
“Comes with my nature.” The guy chuckled. “It’s why I am so good at healing people.”
“If there’s a wound, you want to fix it.”
The guy snorted. “Some wounds are not on the outside.”
Warwick grunted in annoyance, making his friend shake his head.
“She has no aura. I can sense nothing there.” The guy tapped his hand on his knee. “Like you.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? I’m simply stating facts. Seems odd neither of you have auras…”
“What are you getting at, Ash?” Warwick leaned forward on his knees. “The one thing you are not, my friend, is subtle.”
“You’re going to tell me when you held her down earlier… you weren’t taking on her pain?” The man, Ash, tilted his head. “It will be very awkward