Feeling a gentle hand rest on my neck, I try to remain calm, but my heart is racing. “Her pulse is rapid,” Trey says. “Can you hear me, Kricket?”
I remain silent.
“Kricket?” Jax asks a little louder than necessary.
“She’s awake,” Trey says derisively, and a moment later a hand comes down hard on my butt, making my eyes jerk open as a squeak escapes from me.
“Don’t touch me, chester,” I hiss, turning to Trey and narrowing my eyes at him. His violet eyes narrow back at me. Wiping the back of my hand over the corner of my mouth where drool has collected, I straighten in my seat. Glaring at Jax, who’s in the front next to Wayra, I test the handle of the car door, but it won’t open. Pushing the switch of the automatic window, it won’t open either. My head crashes against the window as dizziness overwhelms me.
“Whoa! Easy now!” Jax says from the front, looking like he’s about to crawl over the seat to get to me, but there’s little chance of him fitting through the narrow space. Jax is almost as big as Trey, at least 6’5” and all brawn.
Leaning back against my seat, I hold up my hand to stop him from coming to me. “I’m fine,” I lie, closing my eyes for a second and trying to regain my equilibrium.
“You don’t look fine. You look like you’re about to boot,” Jax replies. “Stop the car, Wayra. I want to get out and check on her.”
“She looks fine,” Wayra says, peering at me through the rearview mirror. I hold up my middle finger to him and he just stares at me, like he doesn’t know what it means.
“Yeah, but it’s my job to make sure that she is fine. I’m the medic,” Jax says adamantly.
“Ah, c’mon and admit it. You wouldn’t be half as concerned if she had a face like a sloat,” Wayra counters with a smirk.
“Wayra, if she turns up dead, they’re not going to send you to face Skye, that’ll be me because I’m the medic. I’m trained to patch up combat wounds…this should be simple,” he grumbles. “I’m responsible for her health—let me do my job.”
“Pull over, Wayra,” Trey orders. The car immediately slows, pulling to the side of the road. The door locks click open. Opening my door on the passenger side, Jax crouches down by my side as cold air seeps in around him. I can’t tell what time it is, because it’s gray and overcast outside, but it’s definitely daylight. I must’ve been out for a while.
Opening a case, Jax withdraws a set of glasses that look like something someone would wear after eye surgery—grandma goggles. Trying to put them on me, I fight off his attempts, pushing the glasses away.
“These don’t hurt…see,” he demonstrates, putting the glasses on and looking like a complete tool. “They just check your vitals—synapse firing rate…dendrite chemical composition…reuptake rates…just standard stuff,” he explains, grinning and taking off the glasses.
“All that and they’re so fashionable,” I reply sarcastically, continuing to pull back as he attempts to put them on me. “Let me just break it down for you, Jax. My head feels like one of you smashed it with a rock. I need some water and maybe an aspirin and I’ll be super. Oh, and if you could just let me off at the next town, that’d be even better.”
“Water I can do…aspirin is…what’s aspirin?” A small smile touches his lips as his eyes scan mine.
Seeing that he’s being truthful, that he really doesn’t know what aspirin is, my breathing increases, choking me. “I…can’t,” I manage to say, as I begin hyperventilating. Looking around wildly, I feel like the walls of the car are caving in on me.
Trey’s warm hand goes to the back of my neck, making me bend forward, while he murmurs, “Breathe slowly…calm…even…” He strokes my back gently, his voice soft and silky. Jax jumps in the car, having to duck his big body as he goes to the bar on the side.
Slowing down my breathing, I accept a glass of water from Jax. Sitting up and sipping from the heavy barware, my hand comes up to touch a tender spot that is throbbing behind my ear.
“Careful.” Jax warns me as he touches my hand and directs them away from the small bandage my fingers felt. “Your incision is still healing.”
“My what?” I feel like I might be sick.
“I inserted a translator implant into your temporal lobe,” he smiles at me until he sees my ashen expression. “It’s okay,” he explains quickly, holding up both of his hands. “It’s just a translator. You’ll be able to understand a host of languages now without any difficulty. Some words may still be foreign, but it will work well for the most part. Now I don’t have to speak English for you to understand me.” He smiles, like he did me a favor by shoving something into my brain.
“Take it out,” I whisper, feeling my hands shake as I raise my fingers to the bandage again.
He glances at Trey who shakes his head. Jax looks back at me, “I can’t.”
“You can’t or you won’t?” I ask in growing panic.
“He won’t.” Trey answers for Jax.
Jax frowns. “You need it, Kricket. Everyone has one. See?” He turns his head and folds his earlobe away so that I can see a tiny scar behind his ear. “All it does is translate. That’s all. I promise.”
“Who told you that you could do that to me?” I ask as anger is replacing distress.
“I did,” Trey says beside me. Lifting my eyes to Trey’s and seeing how exquisitely the shade of violet fits with the darkness of his brows and sun-kissed skin, I manage to whisper, “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
His eyes soften a little at the corners right before I hit him in the side of his head with my heavy water glass. As water and glass shatter outward, I hurl myself through the open door of the car, striking the ground and running across an open field covered with a thick blanket of snow. Stumbling a couple of times, I manage to stay on my feet by putting my hands into the drifts.
Trying to increase the length of my strides, I nearly fall on my face when my feet are kicked out from under me. Trey’s arm snakes around my waist, catching me up and hoisting me over his shoulder. He jogs back to the limo, shoving me inside and shutting the door behind us. He pushes me onto the seat beside him. The doors lock immediately as Trey barks out the word, “Drive!”
Feeling the car pull away again and breathing in shallow gasps, I swallow hard, looking at Trey in the seat next to mine. The side of his face is bleeding from a cut near the hairline and his brow is already beginning to turn an ugly shade of purple. A little of his blood has dripped onto his dress shirt, marring the crisp, white fabric. Jax extends a cloth to Trey, who presses it to the side of his face while he watches me coolly.
“Kricket,” Trey says my name like a warning and I flinch. “Every choice you make will affect you. So, think hard before you make your next move. There will be consequences to your actions.”
“All actions come with consequences,” I murmur, attempting to mask my fear.
“Painful consequences,” he restates his meaning.
“I’ll shoot for the other kind,” I reply, raising my chin a notch and trying to look aloof.