There was something I should be asking. Something so very important that I couldn’t let slip my mind right now...
Gray lifted his head, his lips garnet and glossed with my blood. “Because you’re my mate,” he muttered. “And if I didn’t claim you then I could have fucking well killed you.”
“That’s nice,” I murmured as my eyes shut.
I tumbled into a world where the two men fought over my head from a distance and I didn’t care anymore. Where my memories floated away, just beyond my ability to grasp them, but then they didn’t matter either. All I wanted was to sink and drift and never wake up again.
Even when Blake called my name urgently, his hands cupping my face, moss green eyes staring deep into mine. I tried to reach him too but just like everything else, I couldn’t.
And so, I drifted.
Chapter Three
Blake
Ithought we lost herwhen Gray pulled that stupid fucking stunt and marked her.
“All because you couldn’t wait,” I groused. Thick shadows roiled beneath my skin, and my beast agreed, ready to tear free of my chest and rip into him.
It had been years since Gray and I fought,reallyfought. He was stronger than me, and faster too, if only by the slightest margin. But in his distracted state, I could take him.
We were both distracted withher. She would be the thing that ruined us.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” I paced at the foot of the bed, unwilling to settle beside Lottie for fear of tearing her newly healed wound open.
Gray marked her, so it was also his right to heal her. Panthers usually traveled and mated alone but we were a special package deal. We had never expected to find ourone, either of us, yet here she was.
“It’s stopped.” Gray slid a hand behind Lottie’s head where I placed a towel so she wasn’t lying in the pool of blood that nearly ended her life. “She’s all right.”
“You don’t know that until she’s awake.” I was as close to ripping out the hair I had left as I’d ever come. “How could you be so stupid? Careless?” I shouted the words, uncaring if our neighbors heard us.
Hell, if—when—she got better, they’d all hear worse things than our fighting.
“I didn't hit an artery if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said tersely. “Whatever was in her system acted like an anticoagulant. Blood thinner.” He glanced up at me. “Though that’s not the correct term, but it will do for these purposes.”
I ignored the rest of his explanation. I was out for blood and he was who I needed. “She said she hadn’t taken anything.”
