Page 53 of Captive Prize

I didn’t consider the risks.

There wasn’t any time.

I grabbed her before she collapsed onto the floor, my fingers tight on her shoulders, steadying her.

Then her knees buckled.

Fuck.

I swooped her up in my arms, more and more blood gushing from the wound, the blonde hair at her temple now dark red and sticky.

Her pulse was rapid, but faint.

She was going to bleed out in my fucking hands.

I’d seen gut shots, slashed throats, men crying out for their mothers as their lifeblood pooled around them—but none of that had ever made me feel this fucking helpless.

What the hell?

She needed a doctor, but I couldn’t take her to a hospital. There were too many ways for her to get away, too many innocent people that would ask questions I couldn’t answer. Too many eyes, too many risks.

I couldn’t take her back to the compound, either.

Artem and Gregor would kill her before the blood loss had a chance to do it for them.

That wasn’t even an assumption—it was a fact.

Hell, there was a good chance that Alina would kill her before Gregor or Artem got near her. That girl was sweet and quiet, but her love for Pavel was fierce, and she was already in the medical suites.

As Zoya slumped in my arms, I held her to my chest, her hot blood soaking the front of my shirt, and I knew I had minutes before she went into shock.

“Get the doctor, now,” I demanded, my voice sharp, slicing through the air as I carried her to my bedroom.

Not the guest room, or even the office where I could lay her out on the desk.

I took her to my bed.

She felt so small in my arms, too small.

Too frail, too delicate for the fierce beast of a woman I knew she was.

The second I got her down on the bed, I grabbed towels and pressed them to her wound, trying at the very least to slow down the bleeding. There was just so much of it, and she was so pale.

Even her fingers as I held them in my hand were icy cold.

She looked ghostly white against my dark sheets. Like something already buried. Her skin had a waxy, bluish tint—the kind I’d only seen in morgues.

She couldn’t be dead.

Not now. Not ever.

Not like this. Not by accident. If I was going to break her, it was going to be with purpose, not because I let her die like a careless fucking amateur.

Where the fuck was that doctor?

It felt like hours passed before he finally showed up.

With Kostya on his heels.

---