Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 65310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
Skylar snorted. “Welcome to our show. We’re clan fucked up. Keifer’s our leader.”
I laughed out loud.
“Awesome,” I muttered.
***
Two hours later found Skylar, Bella and I playing Go Fish.
“Do you have any twos?” I asked Skylar.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You know I do, you horrid woman.”
I snickered.
I liked Skylar. She was spunky, sassy, and was really good at keeping my mind off of the things that wouldn’t help us out.
Mainly whether Keifer was dead in a field somewhere, while I was laying on pillows in a climate controlled room that smelled like apples and had an unlimited supply of snacks and drinks.
Taking the twos, I placed all four of them down on the pillow in front of me and turned to Bella. “Do you have any Kings?”
She narrowed her eyes at me and handed her three over as well.
“You’re such a cheater,” Skylar whispered under her breath.
I’d also learned that the Vassago women were sore losers.
We’d played Clue, Monopoly, and Go Fish in the time we’d been cooped up in here, and I’d won every time.
I was about to reply to her comment when a shiver tore through me and suddenly a burning pain was tearing through my arm.
I cried out, dropping my hand of cards, and yanked my shirt from my body.
I looked down at my arm as a line appeared, hideous and red, starting at the top of my shoulder and running down to the base of my elbow.
The line was four inches thick, and its edges were jagged, almost as if a wound had appeared and then healed before I even had the chance to look at it.
Your hurts are your mate’s hurts. When you are hurt, your mate will display the same wounds, albeit healed. You will be one, and she will forever know when you are hurting.
The paragraph slid through my head, reminding me, instantly, of what I’d read, and I knew that something had happened to Keifer.
Something that hurt so bad that he could barely breathe.
“Blythe,” Skylar gasped, scooting forward on her knees to get a better look at my arm. “What the hell’s going on? What is that? That wasn’t there earlier.”
I looked into Skylar’s scared eyes and started to explain.
“In the book I read,” I met Bella’s eyes for encouragement. “It said that when one of the mated pair gets hurt, the other will feel it. The wound will display on his or her body in exactly the same place as the mate who actually got wounded.”
Skylar drew in a breath, and Bella’s eyes filled with tears as she ran her hand down my arm.
It wasn’t tender at all.
Not even a little bit.
“He’s hurt,” she breathed. “We have to get out of here. I can help him.”
I nodded, in complete agreement with her.
Concentrating on opening the door, I was pulled up short by Bella’s cool hands on my cheek.
When I drew my eyes to hers, she shook her head slowly.
“Don’t,” she mouthed.
And, although it hurt me, practically gutted me to know that Keifer was out there hurting, I closed my eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
“Mom!” Skylar cried. “We can’t. I have to go. I can help!”
I shrugged my shirt back over my head, and looked down at my hands, keeping an eye on the other two in my peripheral vision.
Bella shook her head and Skylar slumped into her recently vacated seat, crossing her arms over her knees and resting her head on top of them.
“I have four more weeks until I graduate with my BSN in nursing,” I told them both. “Will I be able to finish?”
Maybe if I talked, I’d forget about how my heart hurt. How worried I was. How scared I was that there’d be nothing left to go back to when I finally left this room.
He’s fine, slithered through my brain, and I gasped, tears starting to fill my eyes.
Thank you, Declan, I replied.
“What was that?” Skylar questioned.
“What was what?” I asked in confusion.
“You made a face. The same one Keifer makes when he’s communicating with Declan.”
My brows rose.
“Really?” I asked, and then waved my hand in front of my face. “That was Declan. He was telling me that Keifer’s alright.”
They both slumped.
“Okay and okay are two different things. Freakin’ men. They’re all the same,” Skylar mumbled.
“We…” I stopped when a roll of magic poured through me, and the sealed door opened revealing Nikolai.
“Get up, we need you,” Nikolai pointed at Skylar.
When I went to stand, too, Nikolai shook his head. “Not you.”
I laughed. “Why don’t you try to stop me?”
He glared, but I noticed he got out of my way without trying to stop me. I followed the fleeing form of Skylar as she raced towards the back of Keifer’s ornate house.
I hadn’t seen that much of it, only a few of the rooms, but the ones I had seen weren’t these, so I had to stop and wait for Nikolai, who I could hear stomping along behind me when I lost sight of Skylar.