“No!” I had to choose.
Save myself or save them.
There was no hesitation in my split-second decision.
I’d save them every single time.
Despite it feeling like an eternity, the icicles moved so fast that I could barely make them out, and that meant I had little time to react. I turned, raised my barrier, and waited for it to be all over. I was going to die.
The barrier went up around my guys, the icicles were deflected quickly before dissolving into water that splashed against the marble floors. And the pain in my chest was so painful that I gasped, trying to draw in air. This was it.
But then I realized how it felt different, like it was a distant pain. Not my pain though.
I whirled around and stared into the familiar broad back with an icicle through it. I looked up to the back of his head, taking in the familiar scruffy hair, all while knowing it was as soft and silky as it looked.
“Landers…”
He crumpled back to the ground, the icicle turning into water, as it puddled around his unmoving body.
“Landers!”
The pain in me was so intense that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. And as the world around me turned into a blurry haze, I screamed.
And never wanted to shut up.
32
Icrumpled to the ground, grabbing onto Landers, turning his body, and needing to see his face. It was beginning to feel like my body was pulsing with a chasm of emptiness and at the brink of consuming me whole. Earlier, I thought I was going to die as Landers was dying, but this…this was so much worse. This was what it felt like as my mate died in my arms.
Landers opened his haze-clouded eyes, barely focusing on me.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped out, wheezing slightly as he barely managed to talk. I thanked the goddess that I had excellent hearing and didn’t need to strain to listen to him. “I just wanted to get away from all this. To be able to take care of you. This…it’s not what I wanted.”
“Shut up,” I said, blinking through my blurred vision. “Just shut up. I’m not mad at you. I get it.I get you.”
I touched his pallid cheek, noting how cold he was growing. Since the first day I’d met him, I’d always noticed how hot Landers’s body temperature ran. He was always like a furnace. But now he was cold, and that scared me even more.
“Landers.” I leaned forward, burying my face in his neck, taking in his scent and the feel of his body. “Stay with me. I’ll fix this. I can fix this.”
“I’m sorry.”
I gripped him tighter. “I know.”
“I didn’t mean this.”
I clenched my teeth as I squeezed my eyes closed. Maybe if I couldn’t see him dying, then he wouldn’t be dying. The five-year-old me inside was sending ridiculous thoughts forward. And even with darkness wrapped around me, I could still feel him and the way our bond wavered. The way he was weakening.
No.
No way.
“Well, one dead is a good starting point,” Neyil said.
I snapped my head up and glared hard at him, even if my sight was too blurred to actually make him out. Something in me broke as reality tried to nestle into my mind. I really was going to lose my mate. This really was happening.
No.
I couldn’t.