Semua Bab Bound by Fangs and Blood: Bab 31 - Bab 40

EVE "Stop pacing," Sheila said from the cot, her voice still weak from the poison. "You're making me dizzy." I didn't stop. "I can't help it." The safe room walls were thick concrete, but I could still hear fighting above us—screams and crashes and the wet sound of things breaking that might be bones. The mate bond screamed in my chest, Adam's rage and fear flooding through until I could barely breathe. "He's hurt," I whispered. "Adam?" Sheila tried to sit up. "How do you know?" "I just know." I pressed my hand against my heart. "He's exhausted. Fighting too many. And he's terrified for me." Sheila's face softened. "This is my fault. I should have testified sooner. Before Mike could—" "None of this is your fault." I said the words, but guilt ate at me too. If I wasn't here, Adam wouldn't be in danger. His pack wouldn't be under attack. "Mike would have found another way. Thornwick would have found another way. They've been planning this for years." Crystal looked up from her t

THIRD POV Eve lay on the altar, her body glowing with unnatural crimson light that pulsed in time with her heartbeat, and she could feel herself being pulled away from her own body like drowning and falling and dying all at once. "This is it," she thought while the ritual tore at her soul, "this is the end." Her memories flashed before her eyes—her mother singing in their small kitchen, her first healing when she was six and the neighbor's dog had been hit by a car, meeting Mike and believing his smiles were real, the pregnancy test with its two pink lines, the betrayal and the pain and the forest floor cold against her back, and Adam finding her in the dark and making her want to live again. "Wait," she realized while the light grew brighter, "if these memories are fake, why do they hurt so much? Why does losing Adam feel like losing my soul?" The ritual pulled harder, a physical yank that made her scream, but she fought back because she was real and she was Eve and she would no

EVE Adam had been unconscious for three days and I hadn't left his side once, not even when the nurses tried to make me rest, not even when Lucian begged me to eat something, not even when my own body screamed for sleep. "Miss DeLacruz," Nurse Maya said gently, touching my shoulder, "you need to eat. At least drink some water." "I'm fine," I said without looking up from Adam's face. "You're not fine. You're shaking." I finally turned to look at her. "He's human now. Completely, utterly human. No wolf, no vampire, no supernatural healing. Just... a man." "He's alive because of you," she said softly. "He's alive because of himself. He gave up everything for me." I laughed bitterly. "I was supposed to be the healer, but I couldn't even heal myself. I couldn't stop any of this." Maya squeezed my shoulder and left me alone with my guilt. --- Lucian visited that evening, and his silver hair was disheveled like he hadn't slept either, and his eyes were red with exhaustion and rage.

ADAM The call came in at six in the morning and I picked it up before the second ring because I hadn't really been sleeping anyway. Marcus said my name first, the way he always did when the news was bad, like saying it carefully might soften whatever came after it. "The council called an emergency session. You're required to appear in twenty-four hours." I sat up against the hospital pillow and looked at the pale light coming through the blinds. Two days since I had woken up. Two days of Eve beside me, her voice the first thing I heard every time I surfaced from sleep, and now this. "Sebastian's been rallying support all week," Marcus continued. "He's going to push a vote to officially strip your title. His argument is that a human can't lead werewolves, that you're compromised, that Eve bewitched you and cursed you and—" "Marcus." I said it quietly and he stopped. I had known this was coming. From the moment I made my choice on that altar and felt the power leave me, I had

ADAM Eve passed out somewhere around the first hour of driving and I kept my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel and I did not let myself think too hard about the blood she had coughed up or the way her eyes had looked when she said we might only have days. Thinking about it would not help her. Finding the safe house would. Lucian called when I was about forty minutes outside the city. "Where are you?" he said the moment I picked up. "Are you safe?" "Heading north," I said. "I don't know where yet. Eve collapsed after we left the building. She's unconscious." He was quiet for a second. "How bad?" "Bad enough." I glanced over at her in the passenger seat. The dark veins had been on her hands and fingers when we left the house that morning and now they were spreading up toward her wrists, visible even in the gray light coming through the windshield. "Circe surfaced at the council. Spoke through her in front of everyone. When she came back to herself she coughed up blood. Dar