Page 17 of Warrior

He flushes, then shakes his head. Guilt flashes in his expression for a moment, then is swiftly overtaken by anger. Heturns and leaves me standing there. He limps out of the room. A minute later, he reappears with a nurse.

A different one, luckily.

If I see the original one, I’m going to kill her.

She has something in her hand, and she looks from me to him questioningly. Obviously she’s confused. There’s been little to no explanation. Artemis was admitted unconscious. It’s not like she walked in off the street having an overdose.

“Give it to her,” Reese demands. “Or give it to me and I’ll do it.”

I step away from the bed to give her room, but the urge to flatten myself on top of Artemis and protect her from this shit is hard to ignore. My instinct roars at me that this is my fault.

I should’ve let Antonio’s family watch him—I should’ve been here to question what they were giving her sooner.

The nurse presses a tube to Tem’s nose and pushes a plunger. She steps back, eyeing us like we’re about to pounce on her.

“What was that?” I demand.

Reese sighs. “It’s Naloxone. It reverses narcotic overdoses.”

It’s easy to connect the dots—he thinks Tem has been given enough heroin to keep her unconscious? That that is why?—

“It didn’t show up on the bloodwork,” I argue. “And you tasted a drop of it, but are you an expert on opioids?”

He scowls. “Just trust me.”

Right.

“As for the bloodwork—I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t what they originally gave her.” He throws his hands up. “If it works, we’ll find out in a minute.”

“And if it didn’t work, we’ll have gotten our hopes up and berated a nurse for no fucking reason.”

“Well—”

A low groan from the bed stops our bickering.

Holy shit.

It worked.

6ARTEMIS

My brain aches and crawls.I was unconscious for a week—an extraordinary amount of time for me to process. In fact, I’m not processing. I just sit in bed and focus on the ceiling, while people mill around me. Nurses taking my vitals, Saint and Reese hovering.

No Kade.

My thoughts are jumbled, and my mouth doesn’t work. I haven’t tried to speak, plagued by thoughts of Terror. It felt like I was living there again, stuck in a cycle of vicious torture and long periods of isolation.

Then a rush of heat and pleasure, too quick to grasp before I’m dropped back into darkness.

Saint keeps talking at me.

Reese held my hand for a few minutes, but I didn’t squeeze back.

It was real. Him, then. The slow way he tried to creep into my heart, only to leave. And I got in trouble for it. For his insolence. The fear I experienced later wasn’t for him—it was because of him.

Because he put me in danger simply by preferring me and breaking Terror’s rules.

Eventually, the nurses and doctors leave. Saint mutters something about going down the hall.

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