There’s no fucking time. Who the fuck knows where Marcus has taken Wren and if I don’t get on it right the fuck now it could be weeks before he decides to resurface. I don’t have weeks. Wren doesn’t have weeks.
This ends now.
And if he so much as hurts a single hair on her head I’ll be sure to make his death long and painful. They’ll be no mercy, I will flay him alive and make him eat his own flesh.
My head pounds, a steady thump, thump, thump that mimics my own heart pumping in my chest. I should have been checked out, I’m no fucking use right now but Wren… She needs me. A King will always protect his Queen, and I may have failed this time, but this motherfucking God is vengeful.
The drive back to the compound is rough, my consciousness slipping in and out the entire time and by the time we pull into the driveway, Ryker parking as close to the door as he can get, my lids are hooded and heavy and my body has all but given up. Numbness has started to creep in, through my fingers and my toes, blood dripping like a crimson river over my skin, staining the seat beneath me.
“Shit, Lex,” Ryker hisses, pulling me from the passenger seat. I can’t make anything out, the house ahead of me blurs in and out of focus, the gravel beneath my shoes crunches but it sounds as if I’m under water, drowning in the dark waters of the ports that surround this city, unable to break the surface. My legs barely carry me, limbs too heavy and sluggish. My feet scuff on the floor, tripping over the gravel as we slowly make it up the stairs and into the compound.
I can’t die. Not yet.
Wren.
Get to fucking Wren.
Ryker drags me through the foyer, my blood dripping onto the floor, before he drops me unceremoniously onto the couch.
What the fuck happened!?
It was safe.Safe.
I flinch as the memory of Wren’s shooting slams into my brain, the blood, so much blood, stemming from that whole in her abdomen, leaking out over her dress, seeping through her fingers. And then her crumbled and broken body, laying in the rubble of her own fathers making, staring at me, eyes wet with tears.
This shit, these fucking damn feelings are going to kill me quicker than the injuries currently sucking life from my body. Wren fucking Valentine was my undoing.
But she was also the damn thing that was going to get me off this fucking couch because she needs me.
I washermonster.
Herdemon.
Herdevil.
Regardless of whether I liked it or not, there was no way I’d be able to just let her go. No way I wouldn’t tear this city apart just to find her.
Ryker begins to tug at my clothes, grabbing the lapels of my torn jacket to shuck it from my shoulders.
“Easy,” I growl when his frantic movements jar the injuries littering my abdomen.
“Doc is coming,” is all he replies, “I need to stop this bleeding, just until he gets here.”
“I’m getting her back,” I say to him once I’m stripped from the waist up, the air of the house cool against my skin. The blood seeping from my wounds chills as soon as the air hits it, droplets of crimson that feel like ice rolling over my skin. This wasn’t only my blood though, this was her blood, on my hands, my face, my body. It was hers.
I’ve never cared much for human life, I’ve only experienced one death that gutted me and that was my mothers, but the idea of Wren never seeing the light of day again, never giving me shit or fighting me, it cripples me. It guts me from the inside out. The organ inside my chest no longer beats for me or this city, it beats for her. It thrums for her touch, her body and without it, the thing is useless.
She told me she loved me.
I didn’t deserve that, not from her.
I didn’t deserve that full stop.
Loving me would damn her to hell.
I would never let her go, she belonged to me, and now I know she has given me her heart, I’ll do anything to get her back, damned or not.
This city has been my all forever, until she crashed into my life, kicking and screaming. This city was my only until she stole that away from me and replaced it with herself.