And now we had lost her.
“She’s with the claw.” Gray’s crisp voice snapped me out of my daze. He flipped his phone over in his hand, a black rage suffusing his face.
“She ... why? What’s she doing with them? Lottie isn’t a shifter, is she?” I stared at him, rubbing a hand over my face as his blurred.Wake the fuck up.But I could barely stand. We’d run all day and my energy reserves were empty.
“Lionel took her. She was a test subject for the fucking drug of his.Vapor.” Gray sneered. The phone creaked in his hand. “Fuck. I should have asked more when I was there. Iknewsomething wasn’t right with him. That little weasel—no offense to weasel shifters—thought this was a good way to get one of us to breed with their females. They needed to find mates. Willing or unwilling, apparently it doesn’t matter. He was worried about the breeding potential of the claw. Instead of building small family units like regular shifters, he intends to build a breedingcell.”
“Starting with Lottie.” I pushed up off the wall, swaying where I stood.
“And us.” Gray surveyed me with a closed expression I hated.
“Okay. Let’s go.” The world moved with me. My stomach rose to my throat.
Gray's hard expression softened. “Go to sleep, Blake. I pushed you too hard.”
“Shut up. She’s my fucking mate too.” I put a hand on the wall, missed the judgment of depth by a mile, and stumbled. “Fuck.”
Gray caught me, his shoulder lodged beneath mine. “Stop, Blake,” he murmured. “I’ll get her, bring her home to you. You can give her your mark. Then we can all be together.”
“Only if she wants it,” I slurred as he guided me to the bed we had shared last night. “I won’t force her.”
His crooked smile left me warm as well as drowsy. “Sure thing. I’ll just go get her, okay?” His mouth settled over mine in a gentle kiss, though after a moment his tongue swept along my bottom lip. I sighed and let him in, stroking his tongue with mine for a moment before he withdrew all too soon, though from the promise in his eyes I knew he wouldn’t forget me.
“Come back, all right?” I whispered, exhaustion slamming into me as I dropped back onto the bed. My fingers flexed, needing to pull him closer, but I couldn't.
“Hell, no, I won’t forget you.” His hand squeezed my shoulder.
My eyes dropped shut, though not before I registered in some dim corner of my mind the concern etched across his carved face, and the determination there. I wondered if I would survive should Lottie refuse my mark again.
It will be worth it to see her face again.
I wondered if tonight I might lose them both when I couldn’t be there to protect those I loved most.Please, let them be safe.My chest ached with love though as the world faded, so did the pain, and my fear.
And as I drifted into a sleep I wasn’t sure I’d wake from, I wondered if any of it mattered at all.
Chapter Ten
