Page 115 of Wrath

“I’m here,” I whispered, reaching for the mate bond with Devlin, who was the closest, and giving it a pull.

Hopefully, he’d be able to come and then get help. Ryland just had to hang on. Just a few more seconds.

“I’m here, and I love you.”

“Z,” he whispered, his icy-blue eyes dulling, turning a subdued shade of gray.

“No. No. No.” My tears fell faster, splattering across his face. Grief tore me open. I couldn’t breathe past the ball of it in my throat. “Please, no.”

“Z?” Devlin raced through the forest, a gun in one hand and a dagger in the other. He was bloody and bruised but didn’t seem to have any permanent injuries. His violet eyes landed on Ryland, and the blood drained from his face. “Ryland?”

“Get a healer!” I screamed. “Now!”

Ryland’s pulse became weaker. I barely felt it beneath my fingertips as I placed my hand to his throat.

“You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay,” I repeated.

I didn’t know if I was talking to him…or myself.

Ryland’s chest gave a long rattle, then it went still.

His eyes stared up at the sky above us, vacant and unseeing, and I felt the last shreds of who I was dissipate. I didn’t know anything anymore—not the sky from the grass, not the moon from the sun. Everything looked upside down. My heart felt like it had fallen into a rapidly spinning belnder and was being sliced into a thousand ribbons.

No. No. No.

I began to scream.

Then the world around me brightened until I had to close my eyes or risk going blind. The ground fell out from underneath me. I was falling, falling, falling, falling, falling…

Straight into the next trial.

THIRTY-EIGHT

RYLAND

One question rattled around in my head as I took stock of my surroundings—how the fuck was I not dead?

I’d felt the life drain from me like water in a filter. I clung to it desperately, determinedly, but there was nothing I could do. Every second that passed, I felt myself traveling farther and farther away from Z. Then there was a bright light, and when I opened my eyes, I was here, feeling perfectly healthy.

Was this hell?

Heaven?

I appeared to be in a spacious cavern deep underground, though it looked unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A red light emanated from cracks in the cave, illuminating our surroundings in an eerie ruby glow. Stalactites hung from the cave ceiling, all of them a deep onyx color with garnet veins snaking up their sides. There was no entrance or exit that I could see.

Hell.

This must’ve been hell.

But if it was hell, then why was Z here?

My heart crashed against my rib cage as I took in my mate sitting across from me on a rickety wooden chair that looked out of place in the cave. Thick black bands coiled around her waist, and another dug into her throat. Iron cuffs secured her wrists to the armrests.

I, too, was tied to a chair in a similar manner to Z, but I didn’t give a shit about myself.

“Z, are you hurt? Are you okay?” I demanded, my shadows pulsating around me.

But the strands seemed…weak. That was the only word I could think to use. Usually, they crowded me as soon as I came near, but today, they remained on the ground at my feet, writhing like dying, scared snakes.

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