Page 152 of Inside the Wicked

I don’t have anything else, so I hug her tight. If I could give her the flesh off my back, I would. I’m praying to anything that will listen as I try to walk more than a shuffle, but it feels impossible.

“Rhett!” Rix calls in the distance.

Thank fuck. Thank fuck. Thank fuck.

“You’re going to be okay,” I say, but I’m tormented with the fear it’s a lie.

She doesn’t respond, and I look down at her beautiful face, needing to pause.

“Ana,” I plead. She’s so deceptively peaceful, and I turn hauntingly desperate.“Ana!”I shake her, and my heart tumbles from my fucking chest when her eyes flutter open.

“Rhett?” she whispers, not fully conscious.

Her face blurs, but I can’t miss a flicker of her. “I’ve got you. Always.”

Rix and the others find us.

“Shit, I hoped you’d made it far enough away,” Rix says, examining us.

“She’s been shot,” I rasp.

Liam comes up to me. “Let me take her. We need to move fast, and you don’t look like you can.”

I have to concede, but I lean my forehead to Ana’s. “You stay awake for me, okay? I still have the world to give you.”

“Okay,” she says weakly.

I let go, having no choice but to let the buzz of people take her from me. I follow like a ghost as Rix hooks my arm around his shoulders to try to keep up with Liam and Ana. Allie is here too, keeping Ana awake by talking to her and trying to find out where the shot hit.

The journey to the front of the house feels too helplessly long, but a car comes speeding down the wrecked driveway. Adam is in the driver’s seat.

I get in the back. Liam passes Ana to me, and though her sounds of pain tear through me, her silence would end me, so I’m grateful she’s keeping awake at least. Allie slips in on the other side, scooting into the middle with Ana’s legs over her and leaning over to put pressure on Ana’s collar. Liam gets in beside her, and Rix gets in the passenger seat. Adam speeds off.

“The best we can hope for is it that it didn’t puncture a lung. How’s her breathing?” Allie asks.

I try to listen. “A bit fast.”

“Shit, I don’t know. I don’t?—”

“You’re not a doctor, love,” Liam says gently at Allie’s helplessness. He comforts her with a hand stroking her thigh. “We’ll be at the hospital soon.”

There’s so much to find out about what happened after my phone call with Allie when she was taken months ago. Later. I’ll find out later.

“I’m still awake,” Ana says tiredly. “And I still really, really hurt.”

I kiss her head. They’re good signs, and she’s so damn brave.

“Good girl. Keep telling me that, please?”

She nods against me weakly.

“Rhett?”

“Yes, baby?”

“It’s over.”

I’m overwhelmed by those two words, wanting to believe them so badly, but I can’t. Not until Ana is in full health and Alistair is in ashes will I believe it.

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