Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
“What?”
“I’ll explain when you get here after you feed her. Please hurry!”
“I can be there in a little over three hours. Do we have three hours?”
“Maybe. She’s on life support, Tristan. She crashed. But I used a defibrillator, got her heart beating, and I’ve got her breathing on her own but she’s really close to shutting down. Hurry.”
~~~
Twenty minutes later, he and a daggered Adrian on that helicopter, which had been on standby, were en route. He had Adrian’s computer, Liam’s computer, a pile of blood sample vials in a cooler, a suitcase filled with supplies to make more medical patches, and Adrian was daggered and unconscious.”
~~~
Two hours, 56 minutes later
A sea plane was slowing on its pontoons in front of the dock at Sasha’s place.
~~~
Two minutes after that
Tristan was in front of Kyla’s hospital bed opening his palm with his fangs and putting his blood into her mouth and he was praying. He was praying harder than he’d ever prayed, praying that it wasn’t too late. The instant his feet touched ground he’d sped in, right to her.
All Sasha said was, “Hurry!”
For a split second, she wasn’t moving. Wasn’t swallowing. The blood from his palm was in her mouth, on her tongue, on her lower lip.
After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, Kyla swallowed and licked her lips and almost instantaneously Kyla’s skin tone brightened from nearly grey to rosy and pink and her eyes opened.
They were lucid.
Lucid.
“Hey,” she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse, “Holy crap; I had the weirdest dream…”
“Princess…” he choked out. Tears blurred his vision when it registered, when he saw her gorgeous green eyes and it penetrated that she was 100% there.
Part
2
~Kyla~
-8-
She heard Tristan’s heartbeat. She knew instinctually that it was his. It got louder and then louder still, like it was closing in on her. Her own heartbeat went stuttered, like it tripped over itself, and then it was righted --- it started to march to the tempo of his.
Everything went from hazy and weird to zooming 100% into focus. Her mouth tasted like grape Fanta. He was leaning over her, one of his eyes black as night, the other icy blue, his fangs showing and his face wasn’t grey but it was hard, angry, tortured? Orange Dreamsicles, brownies, cookies, a myriad of desserty aromas all at assaulted her at once.
“Hey,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, “Holy crap; I had the weirdest dream…”
His body locked, he blinked, and then tears spilled out of his eyes and one landed on her lip. She caught it with the tip of her tongue.
“Oh God,” he crumpled onto the bed and let out a big stuttered breath into her chest.
She felt him. She felt his love, his relief, this immense and overpowering relief. It was gushing.
He was shaking, trembling hard.
Tears sprang to her own eyes at the sheer amount of raw emotion coming at her. It was in the air; it was on her. It was in her. There was just so much of it; more than had ever come at her before.
A pretty woman with wavy shoulder-length light brown hair, bright near-amber eyes, and glasses was in a doctor’s coat and she was standing behind Tristan and she was crying and smiling: happy-crying. She smiled at Kyla and waved. Kyla gave her a little wave back. She looked familiar.
Sam was there, too, his hand on the doctor’s shoulder, and he was smiling at Kyla, huge, smiling bigger than she had seen him smile so far. They moved out of the room and shut the door, leaving them alone.
Kyla put her arms around Tristan and squeezed. She saw tubes coming from her hand; she was hooked up to machines. There was a tube in her nose. It felt so invasive all of a sudden.
She looked off to the side, trying to take in her surroundings. No, they weren’t alone after all. And she didn’t know where they were.
She saw a bed with someone in it beside the bed she was in. Her eyes didn’t linger; her attention turned back to the dark head of hair that was resting on her chest, the shoulders that were trembling.
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, “Baby.”
He was an emotional mess. She kissed his forehead, put her hands on his trembling shoulders, and rubbed her hands up and down his arms.
He started to pull tubes out of her hand, out of her arm, out of her nose and then he lifted her up out of bed, “Are you okay? Are you really you?” He started touching her face, feeling her hair, sniffing at her throat, kissing her lips.
“I’m fine,” she chuckled, “What do you mean am I me? Are you you?”
She felt fine. In fact, she felt fantastic.
“You’re you…”
He pinched her upper lip and lifted and then used his other thumb to press on her gums.