Page 68 of Born Free

And all three of us are going to walk out of this vampire nightclub.

And then there’s going to be hell to pay for putting me through an experience I will never recover from, watching two men I have loved die right before my eyes.

Choose Roman.

The words haunt me.

And fueled by terror, I take one step toward Roman.

Time. How much of it do I have?

How many times? Will this even work?

What if it doesn’t work?

I’ve only just found my way to Roman. I’ve only just filled my soul after being broken my entire life.

What if he is dead? What if he stays dead? What if I can only die for him once?

The sob wracks my shoulders. The air is painful, searing my lungs as I gasp for it.

My tears fall onto his face as I fall to my knees beside Roman.

My hand is shaking violently as I hover it over him.

“Come back to me,” I beg. “Please, come back to me.”

And I lay my hand on his cheek.

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

It’s dark.A different kind of dark than the usual after dusk sort that I’m used to.

This dark is cold. It sticks to my skin, wet and penetrating. I breathe it in, it seeps into my lungs and into my bloodstream. It lays on everything as a physical weight.

Something brushes my arms, dozens of tiny little touches. I rip around, my eyes struggling to make the world around me come into any kind of focus. Nothing is solid. The entire world around me shifts in the most surreal and terrifying way.

I’m standing in the middle of a cornfield.

Goosebumps flash across my arms. A sense of dread creeps up the back of my neck, rounding over my scalp.

I turn, my eyes frantically scanning the space.

Stalks of corn, for as far and wide as I can see.

The breath catches in my throat. It feels as if the darkness is wrapping itself around my neck, squeezing fractionally tighter by the second.

Where am I? What the hell is this place?

How did I get here?

I spin in a circle again, desperate to get my bearings in this dark shadowscape. I try to retrace my steps mentally to figure out how the hell I ended up here.

Screams.

Tears.

Silence.

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