I scream from the shock, from the pain, and my legs go out from under me. I hit the ground hard, my head bouncing off the packed snow as every single part of me shrieks in agony.
Make it stop, oh my God, make it stop! Whatever he did, please, please, please make it stop!
But it doesn’t stop. It goes on and on and on until I can barely breathe. Barely think. Barely be. At one point, I try to push up to my hands and knees, but I’m too weak. It hurts too much.
I hear Jaxon shout, and I use the last ounce of strength I have to turn my head toward him. He’s writhing on the ground, legs drawn up, body arched in pain.
“Jax—” I reach a hand out toward him, try to call his name, but I can’t reach him. I’ve got nothing left. Darkness wells up inside me as I collapse back onto my stomach, and I do the only thing I can do to get to Jaxon.
I reach for the mating bond…and then scream all over again when I realize it isn’t there.
107
I Never Asked for
This Anyway
Time passes. I don’t know how much, but it does.
Enough that Cole and his posse of sadistic wolves disappear.
Enough that dawn finishes creeping over the sky.
More than enough that the reality of my missing mating bond sinks in.
The pain is finally gone and, in another world, at another time, I guess that would be a good thing. But right here, right now, in this time, at this place, I miss the feeling of it more than I can ever say.
I miss the searing heat of it.
I miss the violent cold of it.
I miss the overwhelming omnipotence of it as it fills up every nook and cranny of my heart and soul.
Because without it, without the agony and the ache, all that’s left is emptiness.
Yawning, gaping, everlasting emptiness.
I’ve never felt like this before. I never even had a clue I could feel like this. When my parents died, I was numb. I was angry. I was lost. I was sad.
But I was never empty. I was never destroyed.
Now I’m both, and I can’t even summon up the will to care.
Time is ticking away, seconds fading into minutes that I don’t have to spare.
I should be walking into the arena with Jaxon right now.
We should be taking our place on the field right now.
We should be fighting this atrocity, facing down Cyrus and the evil that’s taken over the Circle like a cancer, eating away at anything good that might have once been there.
Instead, I can’t even get off the ground.
I glance over at Jaxon, realize that he, too, is still on the ground. Unlike me, he’s not lying flat, though. He’s curled up in a ball, hands over his head like he’s desperate to ward off the next blow.
But there are no more blows coming, because there are no more blows to be dealt. Cole, in his infinite hatred, struck the death blow, and I didn’t even see it coming.
At least the worst is over. No matter what dungeon they throw me in, no matter what terrible things Cyrus has in store for me, at least none of them will ever feel like this.
At least I will never feel like this again.
I take a deep breath, then start to cough as I breathe snow into my nose and down my throat. I roll over out of the most basic form of self-preservation, then stay that way because there’s no reason not to.
Sunrise is coming, turning the edges of the sky a myriad of colors—at least for a minute or two. And then lightning crackles across the sky. Thunder booms, and the darkest clouds I’ve ever seen move across the sky straight toward us.
“Grace.” Jaxon calls my name in a voice made hoarse by too much pain, too much loss.
“Yeah.”
“You can’t go in there,” he rasps.
“What?”
“The arena. You can’t go in there without me.”
“I know.”
He rolls over to his side, reaches a hand out to me, and I think about taking it. I want to take it. But he’s too far away, and it doesn’t matter anyway. A touch of fingertips won’t bring back what we lost.
“I mean it, Grace. They’ll kill you if you go in there. Or worse, take you back to London and destroy you piece by piece.”
Silly boy, can’t he see that I’m already destroyed? Already broken into so many pieces that I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to try to put them back together again.
My parents are dead.
My memory is gone.
My mating bond is gone.
Why on earth would I go in there to fight?
I’ve got nothing left to fight for.
The clouds creep ever closer, blocking out the last remnants of light as sleet begins to fall, the rain and ice stinging my skin, leaching the last little bit of warmth from inside me.
A heavy lassitude overtakes me. It has my eyes closing and my mind wandering and my breathing slowing to almost nothing. There’s a voice deep in my head telling me that it’s okay, that I can just stay right here. That I can rock shut as a seashell and let the stone take me.
I don’t remember the last three months. Maybe if I stay stone long enough, I won’t remember any of this, either.
I take one last breath and then let go.
108
Pom-Poms and
Pompadours
“Grace! Grace! Can you hear me?
“Damn it, Grace, can. You. Hear. Me?
“Don’t do this. Don’t you dare do this again. Don’t you fucking dare.
“Get up! Damn it, Grace, I said get up!”
“Stop it.” I don’t even know who I’m talking to; I just know that there’s a voice in my head, and it won’t go away. It won’t let me be. All I want to do is sleep, and it just keeps talking and talking and talking.
“Oh my God, there you are! Grace, please. Please come back. Please don’t turn to stone.
“Grace? Grace? So help me God, Grace, if you don’t wake up right now, I’m going to—”
“What?” I demand, cranky and pissed off and more than ready to bite the head off whoever it is who keeps bugging the hell out of me.
“Get up! I mean it. You need to get off this snow. You need to get into that arena. Now!”
I creak one eye open and see him staring back down at me with those ridiculous blue eyes of his. “Ugh, Hudson. I should have known it was you. Go away.”