Page 102 of Dark Embers

The pain intensified, causing a groan to escape my cracky throat without permission. It was everywhere, burning, aching,stinging and raw. Agony was scattered in pockets the size of small marbles all over my body. What had those fucking vampires done to me?

I attempted to calm my hitched breaths, willing my enhanced senses to dull to human-like and force my overactive nerve endings to quiet. As I did so, I no longer felt the edges of the wounds—they lost their roundness and coalesced into spilled blood, collecting in rivulets as it spread. And the pain spread with it but faded just enough to keep me conscious. Fortunately, my pain threshold was high, and adrenaline was still coursing through my veins.

Arya and Ashlyn hovered over me, tears streaming from Arya’s clear blue eyes, and Ashlyn had a frown on her face as she looked back and forth between me and Niko, who was standing a few feet away.

Niko.

He was okay. From where I lay, it looked like he hadn’t been hurt. Niko shot me a guilty but furious expression. I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to deal with Niko’s anger, so I quickly looked away as Ashlyn jumped up to join her boyfriend.

It felt like something was stuck in my side, like I was being jabbed in the ribs, so I turned on my side to feel for it…and felt the wound there. Refusing to allow the panic to set in, I reached in with my finger—my vision flashing with bright lights and color as the sharpness of the pain intensified—to remove the pellet-sized ball of lead.

I knew it was lead because it scorched my fingers, and I dropped the shrapnel like it was on fire.

Any attempts to calm my breathing became futile as I realized that my body was probably riddled with small lead pellets justlike it—the wounds I’d felt before I dulled my senses were the correct shape and size. But there were too many to count in my current state. It was all I could do to keep from hyperventilating as my breathing became heavier and shorter.

There would be no shifting now. And if I didn’t get help soon, I was going to die.

But I couldn’t think about that just yet. I needed to save the others. I needed to get Arya out of here. I attempted to sit up, but Arya pushed me back down.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking confused, panicked and angry all at once. Then she began to cry again, a bit hysterically. “You nearlydied,Tobias. You need to… Don’t move. You need help.”

Her words were frantic and interrupted by hiccups. I could barely understand her.

I frowned, furrowing my eyebrows.

“Arya,”I said softly. If she wasn’t such a mess—and if I had the strength—I might’ve shouted at her for being so naïve about the shifter world and its dangers. “We’re being attacked by vampires. I need to get up.”

“Wewereattacked,” she said a little more clearly, sounding weirdly annoyed with me.

She swept a piece of her hair away from her face. Even wild and tangled from being hauled off by that vampire, her hair still looked soft. I felt the sudden, strong urge to touch it.

“But they’re gone.”

I blinked at her. Surely she was mistaken. We were just trapped in a single, small glimpse of a moment that would pop any second now when the vampires decided to finish us off.

She had to be wrong.

But that seemed absurd. There was no way that any of us would be left alone for even a few seconds the way those vampires had fought. They had been relentless, but I hadn’t seen a single one since I’d opened my eyes.

She had to be telling the truth. Otherwise we would all be dead now.

The relief of that fact sank into my muscles. The danger was over.

We were close to the subway station. If I could just rest a few moments, we could get safely back to the Dome. Certainly Caesar would insist on retaliation, and I would be the first to march up and volunteer. A quick fix by Miss Heather and I’d be as good as new.

Yes, just a moment to rest.

My eyelids grew heavy again, but then the pain set in with force.

“Oh Tobias! Y—you could’ve… please be okay!”

Arya surprised me by reaching for my right hand and pressing the back of it against her jaw. I could feel the wetness on her skin as she began to sob again. A tear fell and splashed on my knuckles, still pressed against her face. She closed her eyes for a moment, her eyelashes stuck together in places from their wetness.

I looked up at her, a little bit confused. I glanced over at Niko who was holding Ashlyn, both wearing only their smart clothing,with their heads turned away from the two of us. Clearly Niko was too distracted to help me decipher this situation. But when I looked back at Arya, an overwhelming feeling barreled over me, too. The words Arya just spoke were the anthem of exactly how I felt for her.

Wincing against the pain, I moved to prop myself on my free elbow. I hardly noticed the roughness of the pavement or the tiny pricks of the gravel as they embedded into my skin—I was too preoccupied by the intense, radiating pain that spread out like wildfire from every single point of injury.

I nearly collapsed again, I felt so weak. But Arya looked so small, so vulnerable as she clutched my hand. My hand that could easily swallow hers. So I fought through it and remained upright, wholly unwilling to let her go.

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