Page 28 of Veradel
The phrase rebounds in my skull, discordant and off-key. The look on her face before she left just now—hell, the look on her face all day, as if she’s two gags away from spewing all over my shoes—pushes new adrenaline into my veins.
I need to peeis the excuse she gives to men like Tristan. But I’m not fucking falling for it a second longer. If she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s sick, that Arad’s vampire venom is affecting her more than expected or something…
In five strides, I’m out of the house, surging down the road in the direction I saw her take off. A few of the children are out, playing with a ball in the patches of mud that have accumulated between houses, but they all give me a quick nod of attention as I pass.
Usually, I simply smile back at them, but right now my alpha status has good use.
“Did you see Saskia pass?” I ask them.
By now, everyone knows her name. Several of them nod eagerly. The oldest, a thirteen-year-old kid named Milo, points toward my house down the road. “Yes, sir. She went that way. Around back.”
“Around back?” I question, my blood frosting over.
“Yeah.” The youngest giggles between little fingers. “Do humans have bad hearing like their bad sense of smell? We asked her what she was doing, and she didn’t even answer!”
I don’t answer either, striding off again with panic fraying at my edges. Fortunately, Idohave a good sense of smell… and I just caught a whiff of her trail, strawberries and roses lingering over that underlying scent of decay.
“Saskia?” I call, my feet thundering as I barrel into the woods.
Her scent zigzags, like she was staggering, and my pace quickens into a run. The farther it goes, the more a new fear begins to crack somewhere in the vicinity of my sternum.
Was she trying to run away? From me?
No sooner has that question raced through me than her trail ends near a pile of moss-eaten logs. A flash of red hair on the ground has me thudding to my knees in a flurry.
“Saskia?”
Before my mind can even process what’s happening, my arms shoot out with lightning speed to scoop Saskia up against my chest.
My free hand grips her shoulder, shaking it slightly. “Hey, hey, hey, wake up. Come back to me, baby,” I plead, but her head only lolls to the side, her face ghost-white, her lips parted, and her eyes closed like she’s merely sleeping.
But she’s not. Something is wrong—I can smell it lurking beneath her skin. That scent that makes bile rise in my throat. It’s even stronger than it was ten minutes ago, as if Arad is somehow speeding up her fossilization process from within the Wall, trying to take her away from me sooner.
Gathering her in my arms, I can hear the faintestthump, thump, thumpof her heart, so slow it makes my own halt in its tracks.
But the rest of my body is already moving, sprinting through the woods and up the street with Saskia cradled against my chest.
In under a dozen panicked breaths, I reach Taika’s clinic, leaping up the ramp and pounding on his door so hard the hingeswhine.
“Taika!” I bellow, the desperate plea leaving my throat like a wounded animal.
But there’s no time to wait. Seconds are precious. I kick the door, and the frame cracks from the force just as a light finally flicks on in the downstairs window.
Raising my boot again, Taika swings open the door in a flurry before I can flatten it to the ground.
He rubs his glassy eyes, adjusting to the sight of us with a few extra blinks.
“Help her,” I get out on an exhale, nearly knocking him over when I brush past him in my panic.
With a quick survey of Saskia in my arms, he steps back and closes the door, not bothering with the fact that it’s barely hanging on the hinges. “In here. In here. Tell me what happened.”
He shuffles around, pulling a pillow and a blanket out of the closet while I lay Saskia down on the first bed I find. I’m not even sure if it’s Taika’s personal bed or a patient one. I don’t care. Not when her head falls to the side like a rag doll as soon as I lay her over the sheets.
“What happened?” Taika repeats firmly, lifting her neck to slide the pillow under her head.
“I don’t know.” Without her in my arms, my knees tremble, my hands shake. My voice comes out ragged and hoarse. “I don’t fuckingknow.We were reading in my father’s office, then she left to use the bathroom, and I found her passed out in the woods.”
I can’t get my breathing under control, and each breath I drag in reverberates in my ears, drowning out the sound of Saskia’s heartbeat.
