Chapter 39: Chapter Thirty-Nine--They Can't Save Me From What Lives Inside

So cold. So sterile. Threads that kept me tethered to the world snapped. That inky darkness returned for me, a howling presence, always waiting at the edge of my consciousness. The Grim Reaper. Never too far away. I was an easy bet. Look how many times I’d almost died. The monster merely had to wait me out.

Chaos erupted in the forest. Unnervingly high-pitched war cries had the jaguar jackknifing from my body. What little warmth she provided was stolen with her absence. My attackers fled, raining sprays of dirt and leaves sprinkling over my legs.

Down the incline, so many cats appeared. They’d tear me apart. I would be nothing but bone and gristle for the search party to find.

Thundering paws shook the ground underneath my body, furthering the surrealism my existence had narrowed down to. Two words cleaved from my mouth, over and over again.

Jaguar.

Bianca.

They landed in a circle surrounding me. Warm, human, familiar hands smoothed my hair. I choked on blood, still able to scream around the metallic liquid.

“Baby, what did she do to you?” Kalvyn croaked. He touched my neck, my side, back.

Had the cat bit into my side? Perhaps clawed? I kept screaming two words.

“No, beautiful, listen to me, please. Bianca is a leopard. She isn’t a jaguar. Tell me what happened.”

Mindless, I changed my chant, though it became weaker, the words farther apart. “Two, two, two.”

Frantic, he glared around him at the feline eyes, counting under his breath. “Fuck!”

Syber shifted into pissed off god, perfectly capable of murder. I whimpered. “I can smell Sadie everywhere, as well as Bianca.”

“So can I.”

Quinn and Carmen bound off.

Kalvyn turned me onto my back and pulled me into his lap. “Carmen?”

“Carmen won’t be able to fix that before she dies,” Syber said calmingly. “Look at her, Alpha. She's missing parts.”

Tears burned my eyes. How is it that I always manage to stay conscious for this part? Don’t people pass out from shock? At least I couldn’t process the pain. I was just cold. So cold.

“Find them,” Kalvyn snarled at a jaguar and leopard. “I don’t care if you have to slaughter them. I want them, dead or alive. No holds barred.”

I managed to grab Kalvyn’s hand, held on tight. “No die. Out. Forest.”

His ice-chip gaze softened. “No, my love. You will not die. Not today. Or any other day.” Kalvyn’s blinked his eyes glassy, wet. “Syber?”

“You have to change her, Alpha.”

“Fuck. This is my fault.”

Syber raked a hand through his hair. “You couldn’t have predicted this.”

“Of course I could’ve! I never thought he two of them would team up. I forbade Bianca from hurting her. I never guessed to do the same with Sadie. I thought she was smarter than this.” He kissed my blood slick fingers. The other cats pressed in, circling us. “I’m running out of time. I can feel her dying. What do I do?”

“Mark her, change her.”

“How do I change her?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never done it. Maybe marking her will change her? Give her your blood to be safe.”

“Will it work, or harm her?”

“If you try nothing, she dies. Can you live with that?” Syber hissed. “Fuck the consequences. She is yours. Take her. As you should’ve done already.”

“She wasn’t ready.”

“Now she will never be.” Syber’s breath hitched. “She belongs with you, Kalvyn. She wants you. She could’ve rejected you and she didn’t. Accept the gift she gave you. That’s all either of you have now.”

Kalvyn bared his sharp teeth and struck. He bit into my good shoulder. I convulsed in his arms. Something soul deep yanked, one of those withering, breaking threads inside of me latched onto one that bright green and held. Followed by another. And another. My panic subsided. Lethargy kicked in.

He tore into his wrist. Blood ran in rivets over his arm. He pressed the wound to my mouth. Oh, God. Am I going turn into a vampire?

Searing heat ran down my throat, past my shredded flesh, into my belly, exploding through my torso, branding to my extremities. Strength. Bonding. It had only just begun. A different sort of shadow came. Not fear of this one. Green eyes blinked in my mind. An ancient power calmed me, stroked my soul, studied me. She, actually.

Distantly, Kalvyn spoke, “She isn’t weakening anymore.”

“That’s good.”

“Perhaps. The real question is, what have I done? I marked her. I feel the bond forming, but what will she become when she wakes up?”

“No telling, until she wakes.”

Kalvyn held me tighter. “Go find Lola. I feel your need to see to her safety. Make sure everybody, including her packs up camp. We’re done here. It’s time to go home.”

“But we haven’t dealt with the hunters,” Syber said softly. “We came out here, to draw them away.”

“I find, at the moment, I do not care. Shoot them on sight, rip their throats out, all of them. I’ll deal with my woman’s backlash later. Her life means everything.”