“What the fuck is she wearing?” he sneered as he took in the ripped, muddied dress. “Looks like fucking lingerie.”
Who the hell wears lingerie in the middle of the forest?
“We need to get her back to Doc,” I pressed urgently. I holstered my gun and moved to pick her up. She groaned as I lifted her lithe frame into my arms.
“Fuck,” Wolf hissed as he quickly cataloged her injuries. “She’s in bad shape. I doubt she’ll make it to Doc.”
I snarled at him. Wolf held up his hands. “I’m not saying we’re not taking her to him, brother. I’m just saying the outcome looks fucking grim.”
What the fuck was that? The sudden possessiveness that had washed over me when he’d declared that she might be a lost cause was foreign. How the hell did that happen? I’d barely laid eyes on her.
“Let’s just go.” Shaking my head, I cleared out all thoughts of whatever had taken over me. I was tired. That was it. It was nothing more than a momentary lapse due to extreme exhaustion. “The local ER is closer. Doc should be able to take care of her there.”
Wolf eyed me closely.
“You sure, man?” he asked.
I nodded. “We have enough to deal with without the suicidal human.”
My brother didn’t put up a fight as he hopped into the driver’s seat of the truck. “If you say so,” he muttered under his breath as he peeled onto the road and back toward Haven.
“I do.”
Whoever this chick was, she wasn’t our problem. We had bigger things to worry about.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Open your eyes.”
My body shifted, pain sparking up my spine as I struggled to lift the heavy cement blocks that had become my eyelids. Still, I managed. My vision fixed on the gray-tiled ceiling above me. Was I back in the med ward with the doctor?
What happened? Where was I?
Anxiety welled up, a pit forming in my stomach as my memory came rushing back. Had they found me already? I attempted to swallow back the anxiety, but I gagged on something instead. Shit, I couldn’t raise my hand. I jerked against the restraint around my wrist, tears streaming down my face as panic seized me. I couldn’t breathe. Something was doing it for me, pushing air into my lungs at a steady pace.
No. Please, Moon Goddess, no.
“She’s awake,” someone’s voice called in the distance, sweet and melodic. My view of the tiled ceiling was interrupted by the face of a young cherub-cheeked woman flashing a light in my eyes. I winced at the sudden brightness.
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “We’re going to get you all fixed up. Don’t worry.”
Footsteps and then, “Let’s get her back under so we can take the tube out.”
“Yes, doctor.”
Doctor?It didn’t sound like Doc Monroe. Was there someone else at the compound?
A nurse rushed in with a syringe in her hand.
I tried to speak. Tried to tell her no. But I couldn’t. Ice spread through my veins before a warmth surged through. My muscles relaxed, and before I knew it, I was slipping back into the sea of unconsciousness.
Blood dripped from the knife in his hand. My blood. He’d taken it once before, by force, just like he was trying to do now. The screams of the women who’d been chosen were now silent, their bruised and battered bodies lay prone in a puddle of their own blood. Slit throats tended to bleed profusely.
“Come now, little deer,” Damien sneered. “It’s time to pay your dues.”
My dues? I’d paid my dues over and over since I was sixteen years old. There was no way in hell I was going to be paying anymore.
“Fuck you,” I snarled, teeth bared.