Page 95 of Brutal Knight

“Don’t rush him,” Lachlan says. I don’t know who he’s talking to.

Aiden paces from the door to my bed. He has a hungry look, his body hunched with tension and unspent energy. He stops when he sees me blinking.

“Good.”

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and try to collect myself. My mouth feels cottony. I unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and breathe in as deeply as I can.

The first thing I ask is, “How long was I out?”

“Just since last night,” Lachlan says.

I turn to look at him. The movement feels stiff, but not impossible. My entire body aches. I shift in bed and when I use my muscles to sit up, there’s only a faint burn.

“How bad?”

Aiden answers this time, waving vaguely at my chest. “Through and through. You got fucking lucky. The bullet didn’t even hit bone.”

“No vital organs, no limbs,” Finn adds. He gets up from his chair by the window. “But you lost a shit ton of blood. Looked like a horror movie when we got there.”

“You’ll be all right,” Aiden says.

His voice sounds tense. It’s like he’s holding something back or dancing around the truth. I don’t like it. It sets me on edge, making my jaw clench. I ready myself for whatever is coming next, prepared to demand an answer.

Before I can say anything, Lachlan speaks.

“Willow’s been taken.”

Those three words make my adrenaline spike. It cuts through the drugs, through the bandages, through the stitches. It makes me nearly jump off the bed.

Fuck. No.

I have to save her.

It’s the only thought in my mind. Everything is a rush of images, disjointed memories of the moment right before I was shot. She told me she loves me, her eyes shining like stars beneath the streetlamps. And then she was ripped away from me. I don’t know where she is, but I know that someone has her.

Someone who’s going to do exactly what I always feared.

With a low grunt, I throw the sheets off and swing my legs out of bed. I grit my teeth through the pain of it. There’s a burn and a heaviness that moves through me. I know the feeling is blood loss and probably a blood transfusion. My body isn’t prepared to do anything just yet.

But fuck that. I have to.

It’s not smart to be up and around so soon after being shot, but there’s no way I’m just going to lie down and wait. Not when it’s Willow.

I grab for my clothes and start to throw them on. I don’t think about the buttons or the zippers, and I don’t care about the ache I feel when I move my arm and my shoulder protests. All I know is that I need to go.

I pull the IV from my arm carefully, then press the tape and cotton over it. I don’t care if I feel like shit in the next five minutes or the next five hours. I can’t waste any more time lying here when Willow is gone, taken.

If one of the disgraced Raven Syndicate men has managed to come back, I know they’ll torture her. They’ll do messy work because Dmitri never trained them well, and they’ll hurt Willow to try to get her to give up her power.

But even with the chance it’s old syndicate men, I know the more likely scenario is that her father has her. And because it’s her father, I know just what he’s like. He’ll hold Willow captive, maybe even let his men do exactly what they did when she was a fucking child.

I can’t let that happen.

I promised her I’d keep her safe. I swore I wouldn’t let her be hurt again, wouldn’t let her suffer what she’d gone through again.

Pushing my body to rise above the pain and weakness, I grab my pants and pull them on. One of my brothers brought a change of clothes for me, and I tug the shirt over my head too.

The door swings open as I finish dressing. A doctor comes in, moving nervously when he sees me.

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