Page 42 of Bite of Passage
“I’d give my left arm for a rest stop and a flush toilet.”She eyed the wet, prickly bushes.This wasn’t going to be enjoyable.
Once done, as she closed the distance back to Cade, she noticed he stood with all his weight on his right leg.The rain wasn’t as pelting as it’d been moments ago.Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“You’re hurt,” she stated.
“Says who?”
“Show me your leg.”
He scowled and waved for her to walk faster.
She cast her eyes heavenward.“I’m trained to take care of people when they’re hurt.Just show me.”
“How do you know I have something wrong?Even if I did, why in hell would I trust you to help me?”
“You’re not bearing much weight on your left leg.I swear I only want to help.We can resume our kidnapper-kidnapee relationship in a few minutes.”
He waved at his left calf.She knelt in the mud because her entire body was covered in rain, so what was a little mud on top of that?Pulling aside the cleanly cut fabric, she found a deep laceration.“Ouch.Who did that to you?”
“I’ll heal.”
“You left my backpack back there, which means I don’t have my medical kit.Do you have anything I can use to wrap it and slow the bleeding until morning?Skarde said you guys heal during daytime sleep, right?”
With a snort of frustration, he reached into the leather pouch attached to his saddle and removed a shirt, which he tied around his calf.“There.Happy now?”
“Yep.Thrilled.”
“Let’s go.”He checked the girth on the saddle for tightness.
She had little trouble guessing what would happen to her once she arrived at the Directorate.
“Cade,” she said softly.He didn’t acknowledge she’d spoken.“Cade?”
He turned, eyes narrowed and body tense.
Quietly, she said, “You need to let me go.”
He crossed his arms.“You’re getting on the horse.”
“If you take me to the Directorate, Skarde will follow.We can both guess what will happen when Skarde arrives there.There will be an epic fight.You and he pitted against each other.Him and the Directorate super shits pitted against each other.You’ll have to choose who holds your loyalty.Will you side against him and watch them kill Skarde?Will you watch one of them force me to become a vampire—which I don’t want, by the way?Your boss vampires are wrong to think it’ll make some random vamp more powerful.”
“Maybe I should bite you.”With an all-consuming intent he fixated on her neck.
As intense and somewhat erotic as his stare might be, she didn’t light up, unlike when Skarde had had his mouth on her neck.With Cade, she was left somewhere between ennui and borderline curiosity.
“Would you do it?”she asked.
His eyelids closed, shutting off his focus on her neck.His shoulders drooped as if giving in to something he fought.
“I didn’t think so.You’re smart.Why do you persist in being the Directorate’s errand boy?Do they have something on you to keep you enslaved to them?”
A bird cried in the distance.
Every time that particular noise happened on the show, VanFliet showed up and someone died.
“I’m not going to be the expendable Red Shirt in this miserable place,” she said.
“What’s a Red Shirt?”
