-Nikolai’s secret thoughts
Nikolai
“And you said the mother gave birth at home?” the nurse asked Keifer for the fifteenth time.
“Listen, lady,” I said none too gently. “She’s on her way, trust me. But my brother has a helicopter that he used to get her here, and there’s only so many we can fit into the belly of it.”
The nurse looked at me with anger, upset that I’d been so rude to her, but I couldn’t find it in me to care at that moment in time.
I was pissed off, scared, and nauseous.
Not to mention we’d been away from the twins for well over thirty minutes now while we were peppered with question after question regarding our involvement.
“Something’s wrong,” Keifer said to me when the nurse finally left.
I turned to him.
“What?” I asked, sitting forward in my chair. “Is it the babies?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s Blythe.”
“What about her?” I asked, somewhat confused.
When we’d left, she’d been fine. She’d actually been a rock, in fact.
Keifer shook his head. “I don’t know. I just feel it…here.”
He pointed to his chest, right where his heart beat below his hand, and I suddenly had the same odd feeling.
Except I knew Brooklyn wasn’t hurt.
I could feel that she was upset, though.
Could practically hear her breathing as it accelerated.
“Call her,” I said, handing him my phone.
He was about to take it when the nurse who’d taken the babies earlier called his name.
“Keifer Vassago?”
Keifer turned to me. “Call her and figure it out.”
Then he was gone, following after the woman who had taken his children away from him.
I could see the indecision in his eyes, the desire to be in two places at once.
However, Blythe had Skylar and Brooklyn. The babies didn’t have anyone.
He had to be here.
I didn’t, though.
I stood and started running down toward the stairs with my phone to my ear.
Ian caught me at one point, his heavy boot steps following closely behind me as we took the steps two and three at a time.
The phone rang and rang, and my bad feeling went from bad to terrible.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asked as we met at the top of the steps.
I pushed through the roof entrance door, tossing a veil around the both of us to fool the video cameras when they heard the roof alarm signal, and slammed it shut behind us.
“Something’s wrong with Blythe,” I said, hurrying to the roof.
Perdita met me even before I called her, and Mace, Ian’s dragon, did the same.
We both mounted and were flying away without another word.
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” I asked Perdita.
Blythe’s bleeding, from what I can tell, she said.
Bleeding didn’t sound good. Not at all.
And when I saw the state she was in when I landed at the heart, for the second time in less than a day, I wanted to cry.
She wasn’t good.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the moment my feet met the cold earth.
“She won’t stop bleeding,” Skylar said. “I’ve given her everything that I can, but she won’t stop. Not even the heart is helping.”
We watched in horror as Blythe’s laboring breath stopped.
Nothing. Not even a breath, left any of us as we watched Blythe’s body turn cold.
Then everything around us exploded.***Keifer
I was standing next to my baby girl’s incubator when I felt Blythe’s life slip away from me.
One second she was a soft hum around my heart, and the next thing she was just…gone.
I didn’t really know what happened next, but power burst out of me, and every single living soul within a five-hundred-foot radius was affected.
I sent that power down my bond, straight to my mate’s heart, and forced it upon her.
She didn’t protest.
She couldn’t.
Because she was dead.Chapter 20Things I will not judge you on: Sexuality, religion, or race. Things I will judge you for: Not signaling while driving, how you treat others, and what direction you place the toilet paper.
-Fact of Life
Brooklyn
The room we were in was white.
White walls. White ceiling. White bed. White linens.
Where in the hell was I?
A moan from my side had me turning, painfully, to face the other occupant of my bed.
“I fan’t feel my fongue,” Nikolai said.
I giggled, then my head exploded with pain.
“Owww,” I whined. “What happened?”
The bed shifted on my other side, and I gasped, turning to see who else was in my bed.
“Blythe?” I asked. “Why are you in bed with us?”
A moan from her, and from someone across the room, had me sitting up in confusion.
Then the door opened, dragging my attention from the other bed in the room housing Skylar.
“Glad to see y’all are all awake,” Ian said with annoyance. “I can’t keep fucking doing this.”
“Doing what?” Nikolai and I asked at the same time.
“Jinx,” I whispered roughly. “You owe me a Coke.”
My mouth felt like I hadn’t partaken of a liquid in about a week.
He snorted.
“Taking care of y’all. It goes against the grain,” he grumbled. “And I’ve had to do it for everyone that’s a fucking dragon rider or somehow bonded to a dragon rider.”