Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
As they waited for news about how the treatment was going, Kane got up and paced around, and Mayhem propped himself in the corner and went to sleep.
Apex, meanwhile, stayed perfectly still by the exit. Like he’d been flash frozen in a harsh winter.
Only his eyes moved, and they just went from between two fixed points: The concrete floor at his feet and the toolbox in the corner. Back and forth.
At first, Kane didn’t catch on. But then he realized… that wolven, Callum, still hadn’t shown up.
Glancing at Mayhem, and finding the guy twitching like a retriever curled up in front of a fire, Kane went over to Apex.
“None of the wolven have come back,” he murmured to the male. “He’s probably wherever his people are.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Uh-huh. Yup.”
The former prisoner clearly had no idea what he was saying.
“Why don’t you go out there,” Kane offered. “Look around. Maybe you’ll find where they’re hiding—or, hell, go to that hunting cabin. He’s probably there hiding out.”
An abrupt relief came into Apex’s eyes. “Are you okay here?”
“This is as good a shelter as we can have—also, not only did I not see any guards moving around when we were up on the mountain, the bodies were where we left them, so they haven’t come and collected their dead. I think we made a dent in their numbers.” He squeezed the male’s shoulder. “Go. You’re too distracted. Settle your mind and come back after you find him.”
Apex glanced at the ambulance. Then looked back. “Okay, thanks.”
After a moment where they just stared at each other, Kane got the shock of his life as Apex drew him in for a quick, hard embrace. And then the other male was off, slipping out of the side door.
In his absence, Kane checked the gun he had in his hand. Yes, the bullets were still in it. And even though Mayhem was asleep, he knew that male could go into a defensive position in a moment’s notice.
As there continued to be no sounds that were suspicious, no scents, either, he let the male sleep. They were all overtired, and undernourished, and running on nervous energy. But they were alive.
They were alive.
Focusing on the back of the ambulance—which had the word “AMBULANCE” spelled out across the rear doors in bold red letters—he wished he could affect the outcome that was evolving inside the vehicle. He’d gotten a glimpse of what kind of treatment bay it offered, and there was equipment in there that he had never seen before—a reminder of how far things had progressed while he had been incarcerated.
In a surge of optimism, he envisioned himself and Nadya living in a small place, which happened to be kitted out as the quarters under the hunting cabin were. Together, they could explore the world around them and get up to date. They could be properly mated and find a collective purpose. They could live out what days and nights they were given, side by side.
Perhaps even with young.
The fantasy instantly became so real and detailed that he began to smile to himself, the future nothing he had dared to dwell on before because it had only promised suffering and sadness.
Now things were different, and not just because he was whole.
Not just because… Nadya seemed to be healing as well.
“Old female,” he murmured. “I think I made the right choice—”
The rear doors of the ambulance swung open and Nadya leaned out. She had pale blue skintight gloves on her hands that were covered with fresh blood and there were specks of it on her clothes.
“I think we’ve done it,” she said with an exhausted grin. “I can’t believe it, but I think we’ve saved him.”
Kane was out of his lean and going to her before he had a conscious thought, and as he captured her face in his palms and brought her mouth to his, he had the sense that her news validated his version of what was ahead for them.
All good things.
Only good things.
As he pulled back from her, he stared up into her face. “I am so proud of you. So damned proud of you.”
When she flushed, and turned to the blond human woman and the gray-haired human man behind her in their blue uniforms, he let her tell him that it was really the experts. But the respect that the medics showed her as they discussed their collective patient told him so much more than her self-effacement allowed.
Then again, he already knew how good his female was at what she did.
“Listen,” she said, dropping her voice. Then she glanced back and urged him a little closer. “They actually opened his wound up—and repaired the damage. The artery had begun to regenerate by the time we got in there, so Lucan played his part, too, likely because he fed from Rio. But he’s not totally out of the woods. I want these two to stay overnight here. They have monitoring equipment that will help ensure we know what’s going on, and their skills are materially better than mine.”