Page 2 of Kings & Carnage

The pain was enough to make my eyes water, but now that I remembered what had happened, nothing mattered but them.

The Kings.

My Kings.

“My… friends… Rock…" I remembered seeing Oscar and Neo being rolled past me in the hospital hallway right after the accident.

But I didn’t remember seeing Rock.

"Your friends— " It was as far as she got before the door to the hospital room flew open.

I lifted my head from the pillow and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Neo, his massive frame somehow looking vulnerable in a hospital gown, looming in the doorway like a raging bull, his amber eyes lit with chaotic fury.

His gaze landed on me and relief washed over his eyes.

"Willa… thank god." He started through the door and headed for the bed but he only got a few steps in before two security guards grabbed his arms and started pulling him back.

I started to protest but didn't get very far before Neo's roar tore through the room.

"Get the fuck off me!” he bellowed, shrugging one of them off like he was nothing but a fly. The guard stumbled backward. "You can't keep me from her! No one's going to keep me from her!"

"It's okay!" My shout was feeble but desperate. I needed to see him. Needed to know he was okay. Needed to know what had happened to Oscar and Rock. "Let him in! I want to see him! Let him in!"

The security guards looked at the woman still standing by my bedside and she nodded her approval.

They let go of Neo with a scowl and he lurched toward my bed, unsteady on his feet, as if he were drugged, a vicious gash above his left eye.

He seemed to reach me all at once, pulling me into his arms gently but ferociously.

He lowered his head to my hair. "Thank god," he breathed. “Thank fucking god.”

I wrapped my arms around him and sank into the solid feel of his body.

He pulled back and held my head in his hands, studying my face. “Are you okay?” He ran his hands carefully down my shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

“My chest hurts.” The pain had disappeared into the background in the wake of my relief at seeing Neo, but it was still there, a throbbing ache that started on the left side of my chest and radiated through my upper body. “But I think I’m okay. What about you?”

I studied him for signs of an injury other than the cut that had been stitched above his left eye.

“I’m good,” Neo said.

The nurse bustling around us snorted and I narrowed my eyes at Neo.

“Why don’t I believe that? And where are Rock and Oscar?”

“Drago took a bullet to this thigh and— ”

“A bullet?!”

“He’s okay,” Neo said. “But…”

“But?” My heart was hammering in my chest and my brain beat out a rhythmic plea.

Please let them be okay, please let them be okay, please let them be okay…

And then, just one word.

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