Chapter 144 Double Trouble
❀ Maeve ❀
A curtain of winking stars glimmered through my teary vision.
I peered up at the sky, unable to look at my mates, who stood on either side of me.
All three of us were silent, still. In disbelief.
When the lab had exploded into flames, I’d hastily yelled a confession to Bastian through the mind link. I’d told him I loved him.
My gaze had strained desperately to reach Nikolai so I could communicate the same, since I still couldn’t use my lips.
But then Nikolai had rescued Bastian and me, throwing an engulfed Bastian into the lake as soon as he’d traced us here.
Where was here?
The wind blew chill and calm, the night beautiful after the horrors of the past few minutes.
But I couldn’t tell. I was still chained to the metal table, my body limp and unresponsive.
Nikolai’s touch grazed over my wrist lightly, underneath the chain.
In my mind, Bastian’s voice sounded thick. ‘I’m going to get these chains off you.’
But even I could feel the doubt in his mind.
Without a designated key, no mystically enforced chain could be broken by supernatural strength… except… wait…
My breath stuttered as I recalled Drusilla in that glass mountain.
‘Bastian,’ I said in the mind link, ‘there’s a way. Please tell Nikolai—’
Bastian’s expression immediately darkened. My chest clenched.
The tension was palpable.
My vampire mate and wolf mate, who’d sworn to take each other’s heads, had rescued me together. That didn’t mean they were now dandy friends.
I dragged a deep breath. We’d handle that after I was free.
I pushed through. ‘Tell Nikolai that Drusilla cut through her chains in the glass mountain with a blood dagger. Ask him if he can forge one too.’
Bastian repeated that to Nikolai.
Nikolai’s brows furrowed as he looked down at me. “You can’t speak,” he realized.
My eyes stung with fresh tears.
Weak. Useless. Always putting my mates in danger.
Yet they’d never given up on me.
Then Nikolai raised his hand. With the claw of his other hand, he slit his wrist.
We all watched the blood drip to the ground, Nikolai’s gaze hard with concentration.
Nothing.
Then his jaw clenched, and he closed his eyes.
Beside me, Bastian’s expression remained blank. His body was tight and coiled, like he could snap at any moment.
I shrank within myself.
Right before Nikolai had traced us, I’d felt the lick of fire at my regenerating feet. It had been excruciating. And yet, Bastian had been tortured, burned, by Nikolai.
Then tonight, he’d relived that torture. All because of me.
Nikolai’s hand began to glow red.
Then something dark and solid formed between his fingers.
A crude-looking object. Meant to be a blade, but it looked more like a broken piece of glass.
But I couldn’t complain. It looked sharp enough.
Carefully, gaze hopeful, Nikolai slid the blood dagger between the chain and my skin. The chain link broke off as easily as a shell.
I laid there in wonder as he cut the rest of it.
I was free.
Pressure choked my throat, but I held back the tears.
I still couldn’t move. My chest was marred with ugly wires rooted deep in my flesh, my bones.
Fury heated my face, but I hurriedly tempered it down. The wrath lurked in my subconscious, waiting for me to lose control and afford it freedom to possess me.
I suspected my catatonic state prevented it from manifesting.
But I still needed this damned metal out of my body. Graves’s signature must have no dominion over me. Or else I would go insane.
I spoke before I lost my nerve. ‘Bastian. Tell him to cut the wires in my chest.’
Bastian glanced at my face, as if to gauge my seriousness. Then he studied the wires.
Graves had used the wires to close my chest, allowing my flesh to heal over them like a crude stitch.
‘It’s going to hurt,’ Bastian said, voice hard as though it pained him.
‘I don’t care,’ I insisted, even though I was terrified.
It seemed my torture wasn’t quite over yet.
“Cut the wires at the loops,” Bastian told Nikolai.
Nikolai’s fist tightened around the dagger until it bled. Then he gave a sharp nod.
All at once, my bravado disappeared.
This would hurt like hell. Maybe we should wait…
But Nikolai was already slicing the loops of the wire above my skin. His hand was steady, but his heart thumped wildly.
My own heart softened.
I never once thought of how this affected them. To see their mate in this condition. Tortured and trussed up.
When all the wires had been cut, they both stood over me with an uncanny expression on their faces. The kind that dreaded what they were about to do, but knew it was necessary.
If we didn’t take it out now, my flesh, muscles, and bones would heal completely around the wires, making it ten times more excruciating.
Even now as my lungs expanded with breath, the metal scraped and pricked me painfully.
Nikolai’s fingers found my hair, combing it out reverently.
“You’re safe. You’re brave,” his voice shook. “I will never allow you to come to any pain after this, milaya.”
I wished I could respond. But with a paralyzed body and no mind link, all I could do was give him a loving look filled with pleas.
Nikolai held my hand.
‘Do it,’ I hissed through the mind link.
Bastian grabbed the end of a wire and ripped it out.
My brain exploded with pain. My lungs expelled a gust of blood-tinged air.
Why would the gods permit such pain to exist?
My eyes widened as a soul-wrenching sting ripped through my spasming body.
I groaned, my vision blinking in and out.
Would it be so bad to live with a couple of wires in my chest? I couldn’t possibly survive this extraction.
I should tell Bastian—
His hands wrapped around another wire end. This time, a shrill scream tore from my throat as he jerked the length out.
“Stop!” Nikolai barked, his hand shaking as he cupped my face.
His eyes were like a dream. Glowing, blazing, churning like an ocean of liquid fire…
Another tug. Another rip. Nikolai’s bellowing in the background of the pain.
Another slice of metal through my wet flesh and bone.
And another.
Another.
I should just die.
My mind blanked. Dark spots danced in my vision.
Then all went still.
Death?
How peaceful.
But the world was too cruel for even that.
My body started to mend again. Flesh closing over the gashes in my chest. Bones growing to meet and meld where the wire had sawed them open.
Something was pushed against my mouth. As soon as the blood touched my tongue, my fangs sharpened and pierced the hand in my mouth.
But I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t gulp. Blood ran down my throat and lungs indiscriminately.
“What the hell are you doing, feeding her your cursed blood?” someone raged.
“We’ve fed each other so often our blood is one and the same, wolf,” a seething voice replied.
Then the hand was wrenched from my mouth.
I whimpered at the loss, willing my arms to work so I could clutch the thumping flesh back between my jaws.
“She needs blood to heal!”
“Then she will take my own! Never yours, leech!”
‘Bastian,’ I groaned through the mind link.
My body stung like I’d been doused with hot water. Licked by searing flames. Pain in every flavor lashed at me.
Then the voices quieted.
The wind whispered and flowed gaily, the scent of earth and pine soothing my afflicted mind.
My senses shut down.
……..
I woke up.
Where was I?
My face was sticky with tears and blood, my chest aching but otherwise fine—
A loud explosion shook the earth. The boom sounded muffled, as if from a great distance.
The lab.
“That was the lab. I need to check the scale of the damage. With any luck, all the blood caches and Graves himself should be destroyed.”
Before I could react, the air warped where Nikolai vanished.
Even a child could guess that the entire facility and more had been razed to ash by the force of that explosion.
Was Nikolai trying to give me some space?
Was he uncomfortable seeing Bastian beside me? There was so much we had to discuss.
Bastian’s strong arms scooped my body from the table, holding me close to his chest.
In silence, he walked into the lake.
As soon as the water engulfed me, I released a deep sigh, aching to be closer to him.
His scent wrapped around me, muscles hard but soft against my head.
My eyes burned.
I didn’t even know where to begin. What did he already know?
‘Bastian…’ I began.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Just rest, kitten. You’ve been through hell. Don’t think about anything.”
How could I not? He must have sensed that I was changed.
A vampire. Did he hate me now?
The voices in my head receded as Bastian’s fingers began to scrub me clean in the water.
Even the dark fog of wrath retreated low in my gut.
The cold water. His gentle fingers. His warmth.
If I could just raise my head to look in his eyes. Pressure foiled in my chest. I’d missed them so much.
Something about the environment seemed familiar. I relaxed in Bastian’s hold, trying to remember.
Then it hit me.
This was one of Nikolai’s lairs.
My mind went back to the day I’d witnessed a vampire lynching and sought to warn Nikolai. I’d been arrested in District 3 by IronWolf soldiers and transported halfway to IronWolf pack.
Nikolai had rescued me. Bathed me. Oiled my skin and fed me.
Now, Bastian did the same.
Time turned fluid in the comfort of his arms.
One moment we were in the water, the next, in the cave lit with a single large candle.
Nikolai’s cloak hung from a tag on one wall, the feathered bed and crimson rug I remembered tucked in one corner.
Bastian laid my naked form on the bed, sitting beside me.
My lids grew heavier with each pass of his palms on my skin as he oiled me, my head flooding with sweet sensations from his fingers in my scalp.
Pure heaven.
I grasped for what to tell him, how to thank him. But my body softened faster than I could control, the bed cocooning me with warmth and softness.
My lids closed.
The sense of a weight leaving the bed made me open my eyes again into thin slits.
Bastian was walking away from me.
No. I need you here, with me.
Then I noticed a figure by the door of the lair.
Dark and tall, alabaster skin pale as candlelight wavered over him. His eyes glowed like two crimson lamps as he watched me.
Then the other figure—Bastian—reached Nikolai.
They stood tersely like that for a moment, then they both glanced back at me.
I wanted to call for them, to enjoy their warmth now that we were safe.
But they both turned and left, together, out of the lair.
How curious.
Both my mates going for a walk.
A wide yawn stretched my jaws, and I burrowed deeper into the bed.
Sweet slumber swept me up faster than a vampire could trace.