I nodded.
“But you can risk me,” I drawled dryly.
He turned his head up to study the ceiling.
It was true. Especially with the newest Prince of Dragons pending arrival.
Although we did have another few months before that happened.
Your girl’s calling out for you again, Perdita’s silky smooth, husky voice said in my mind.
I know, I replied back to her. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Two months ago we’d brought Brooklyn into the sanctuary.
And that’d been the day my life changed forever.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” Keifer growled. “Blythe’s puking again.”
I didn’t say anything as he left the room, actually somewhat thankful that he was leaving without me having to make up an excuse.
I walked to my closet and picked another shirt up off the shelf where I had a large pile of them.
Shucking the one I was wearing off over my head by the back of the collar, I placed it on the shelf and shrugged into a new shirt of the same exact color.
Then I hurried out of my room with the old t-shirt held firmly in my hand.
I made it to the infirmary in record time.
I’d started timing myself since I came down here so much.
“You really should tell Keifer what’s going on,” Skylar, my big sister, suggested.
I turned my head to study her for a quick second before moving my gaze to the small, broken woman lying in the hospital bed along the far wall.
Although all the other beds were occupied as well, my eyes were only for her…for Brooklyn.
I still couldn’t explain it.
It happened the moment I touched her as I was helping her out of the small, cramped cell I’d found her in.
It’d been terrible.
Something I never wanted to see again in my life.
I laid the t-shirt down over Brooklyn’s restless body, and instantly she stilled.
It was my scent that calmed her, though.
The scent of a mate, Perdita said with annoyance.
I ignored her.
I was trying valiantly to ignore the fact that Brooklyn was my destined mate.
I knew the moment I had her in my hands as I was carrying her out of that hellhole, but there wasn’t a single fucking thing I could do about it, seeing as Brooklyn refused to wake up.
There was no longer anything physically wrong with her body.
She’d healed in a matter of moments, thanks to our mate bond.
A bond that wasn’t supposed to be possible without us first being together, in the biblical sense.
But, what I’d learned from a book my father wrote to his sons about mate bonding, a book I’d had given to me by my brother, it was possible for the mate bond to pop into place under extreme physical duress.
Although, that was only assumed by my father because his mate bond had not formed like that. He’d only heard about it.
Everything about the bond I shared with Brooklyn was completely foreign and new to me.
I was learning as I went along.
And I couldn’t share it with her, because she wouldn’t wake the hell up.
My side started to itch, and I raised it up to study the tattoo that’d started to appear once I’d gotten Brooklyn to safety.
It was a big one.
It started at my right pectoral muscle, and traveled all the way down my side to my right hip bone.
It was a mass of swirls, runes, and dark lines.
And Brooklyn shared the same one on her body.
That’d been how my sister had found out about our mate bond.
She’d been stunned by the revelation, but luckily had held my confidence as I waited for answers.
Answers that wouldn’t come if she didn’t wake up!
I sent that telepathically to her, but as usual, she didn’t even twitch.
Sighing, I took a seat beside the bed and propped my feet up on the side of it.
I laid my head back and got what little sleep I could.
Which inevitably wasn’t much because Brooklyn’s terror and pain flooded my mind each and every time I got any REMs.Chapter 2I remember a time when I could get out of bed without making sound effects.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
Three months ago
“What did I say, Brooklyn? I told you to stay away from that trash. But you had to keep around her and look where it got you!” my Uncle Joseph brought the whip down again.
I closed my eyes and prayed it would end soon.
When I first started what the Amish called Rumspringa, I knew I would never return to my parents’ holding.
From the ripe young age of seven, I’d realized that the world that I’d grown up in wasn’t what I wanted to live for the rest of my life.
I’d met a girl in nursing school, and she changed my life for the better. Introduced me to a whole new world that I had no idea even existed.
We became best friends, Blythe and me.
At sixteen, I left my parents’ home for Rumspringa, and I’d taken everything I’d owned with me.