All Chapters of Marked by the Alpha: Chapter 81 - Chapter 88

ZaraThe flashlight beam shook in my hand, throwing Jude's gray face into strange light and shadow, and I couldn't stop staring at the empty doorway even after Ryan disappeared through it into the dark."Ryan, wait..."He didn't wait, of course he didn't wait."Zara." Petra's voice cut through the ringing in my ears. "I need that light down here, not out there. He's not out there. He's here, and he's dying."I brought the beam back down, hands still shaking, and made myself look at Jude instead of the door. His lips had gone the color of ash. His chest rose and fell in these small, stingy movements like his body had started rationing itself."Talk to me," I said. "Tell me what to do.""Pressure. Both hands, right here, and don't let up no matter what you hear." She guided my free hand to the wound, wrapped my fingers over hers for a second so I'd know how hard, and then she was up and moving toward the ratty curtains hanging half off their rod, tearing strips free with a violence that

ZaraRyan's weight came down on me hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, and for one endless second all I could feel was the heat of him and the wet warmth spreading across his shoulder where the thing had caught him, and I thought, stupidly, clearly, he's bleeding, he's bleeding and I can't get to it from under him.Then I heard the footsteps which was slow and even. Coming down the hallway from somewhere past the creature, past the reach of our lights, and the thing above us went still in a way that scared me more than the lunging had, more than the claws, because whatever it was afraid of, whatever made it stop and turn its ruined face toward the dark like that, I did not want to meet."Ryan." My mouth was right against his ear, barely any air behind the word. "Ryan, move, we have to move.""I know." His voice came out ragged. "On three.""There's no time for three..."The creature let out a sound that wasn't the laugh anymore, something lower, something almost like a whine

RyanThe sound Petra made hitting the floor with Zara still rings in my ears louder than anything else in that hallway, louder than Marcus's voice, louder than my own heartbeat slamming against my ribs like it wanted out.I moved before I decided to move. That's the only way I can explain it. One second I was watching my dead brother wear a stranger's face and tell the truth I'd spent eight months burying, and the next I was airborne, shoulder first, meeting whatever had come through that wall before it could finish landing on the two women tangled together on the floorboards.We hit hard enough that something in the wall behind us cracked. I felt claws, or what passed for claws on a thing with too many joints in its fingers, rake down my forearm, and the pain was distant and unimportant, a problem for later. What mattered was the weight of it on top of me, jaws snapping an inch from my throat, breath that smelled like the inside of a grave."Ryan!" Zara's voice, raw, terrified, not f

RyanJude's blood was everywhere, dark and spreading faster than Petra's hands could stop it, and every second I spent in that room was a second I'd left Zara alone with Marcus and the thing wearing her mother's face, and both of those facts were tearing through me at the same time like two different kinds of drowning."Pressure, here, now." Petra grabbed my hand and slapped it down against Jude's side before I'd fully processed the order, and I pressed until my knuckles went white, until I could feel his heartbeat stuttering weak and fast under my palm."He's not going to make it if we don't get the bleeding closed," Petra said, low, clinical, the kind of calm that only comes from having done this before. "I need the kit from the cabinet...second shelf.""I can't leave him.""Then I'll go, and you keep that pressure exactly where it is, don't you dare let up." She was already moving, already gone, and I was alone with a man who'd betrayed every one of us and was dying anyway, dying l