Page 17
“Calithea?” Seconds later, Cadmus falls to my side, his hand resting at my back.
Another intense throb explodes between my hips, and I tumble off balance. The ground slams into my shoulder, but the pain is forgotten for the jolts of electricity flaring inside of me.
“I’ll get Titus.” An air of panic clings to Cadmus’s voice, and I grip his arm, trembling with the tension wound so tight inside of me, as I wait for the next wave.
“No! Please! Don’t leave me!”
“Cali, you need relief. It gets worse every day.”
More bullets of agony pierce my womb, shooting straight up into my ribcage, where they steal my breath. “Ah, God!” Curling into myself fails to quell the war that has erupted within me. “Cadmus!”
The world spins at a dizzying pace, and my chest turns cold with the nausea stirring there.
“I can’t do this, Cali. I have to get Titus,” he whispers at my ear. “Just hold on.”
Nails scoring down his arm, I silently plead him to stay, the tears in my eyes blurring out the troubled look on his face.
“Titus!” His roar echoes over the empty stretch of land, and in the pause that follows, there’s no response. “Titus!”
More seconds pass, and my stomach muscles tighten on instinct, as the next round of pain makes itself known. A horrific sound rips from my chest, when the agony spears my gut, as if someone has peeled my organs from it.
Solid arms slide beneath me, lifting me up into the air, and the world spins again in my periphery, the light turning to dark, as he hoists me onto the back of the truck. It bounces with his leap inside. Again, he lifts me into his arms and lays me down onto the unmade bedding from this morning.
Water trickles down my face from the canteen he presses to my lips, urging me to drink. Cold sweats bead across my skin, the burn of a fever heating my cheeks.
“I want to help you, but I can’t. I can’t do this.” Pressing his forehead to my temple, he strokes my hair, damp with sweat. “I wish I could make it better for you,” he whispers.
Blades of misery slice across my abdomen, my thighs trembling, and I reach down to cup the ache in my core that reaches up into my womb.
Breathing hard, Cadmus sits back against the wall of the truck, his muscles tense, pulsing with blood and adrenaline. His body urging him to do what his mind refuses. Hands stroking his skull, he stares at me, while I writhe and squirm like bait on a hook. His eyes are lost, his face screwed up in panic, and he opens his palm to the peyote buttons captured there.
Through stomach-twisting cramps, I watch him consume the drug, his eyes on me all the while, as if he’s taunting me, leaving me to suffer alone. Tears streak down my temples and another round of pain slices through me, like broken glass across a flower petal. I grunt with the agony and glance up to see Cadmus shaking and twitching. His pupils dilate wider with each passing minute.
Sobbing through the contractions and tightening of my muscles, I fail to notice Cadmus has moved over me, until his breath hits my neck.
“Shhhh,” he says, and I know it’s not me he sees. If it is, it’s some altered version of me, trapped behind the veil of the drug’s hallucinogenic properties. “Do you hear him, Cali?”
Through the shield of tears, I stare back at him to find his eyes are vacant and unfocused, but his question is distracting enough to block out some of the pain. “Who?”
“Valdys.” His palm slides down my arm in a soft caress, and his words push the pain away, as I allow myself to fall into this trance.
It’s been months since I’ve been touched. Months since I’ve surrendered to the feel of palms against my skin. As much as I want to fight him and stay in this anger, my body is hopelessly primed to his touch, already wired to his voice and his scent, which reminds me so much of Valdys. If I close my eyes, I can picture my beloved Alpha. His hands on me. His breath on my skin.
It’s wrong. All wrong.
“No!” I turn away from him, my lips peeled back in disgust. “Don’t you dare touch me like that. I don’t want gentle from you. I don’t want to enjoy this. You’re not Valdys!” I turn to face him, catching the flinch of his eye, as I verbally wound him with my anger. “I want to hate every minute of this, Cadmus. Make it hurt. And remind me why I’ll never find him.” Tears stream down my temples as the words fly past my lips. “Remind me why I never deserved him!”
His jaw hardens, muscles visibly bunching with his ire. “He’s destroying you. Tearing you apart every time we come up empty!”
“And now’s your chance to do the same. Finish me off. Destroy me like you promised back at Calico. You get off on pain, right? So, now’s your chance!”
“My pain, not yours!” Eyes blazing with fury, he leans into my face, nostrils flaring like an angry bull.
I tip my chin in defiance, holding his stare. “Well, I’m giving you permission. So do it.”
“He gave himself over, Cali!” The words hit me like a sledgehammer, swinging out of nowhere, and I sit stunned for a moment, wondering if I heard him right. “The night they came for us at the waterfall. Titus told me he turned himself over. Willingly. Quietly, without a fight.”
My muscles vibrate with tension, dancing around the words that render me in shock. The ache in my womb flares, and I curl into myself, focusing on the breaths that flutter in and out of my lungs. “He would’ve only given himself over if he thought it would’ve saved us, and you know it.” In spite of the pain, I push the words out for Valdys.
