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The short rumble of his anger told me what I said bothered him. “At least you’re not denying it,” he huffed.

“There’s no point. The blame lies with me,” I admitted, stroking V’s jaw affectionately.

The pain leaving her throat was fingers around my heart, squeezing. Seeing her anguish was a torment orchestrated by the Devil himself. And in my opinion, Eroswasthe Devil.

“Who is he?”

Huffing, I rubbed along V’s arm as she came out of her seizure and visibly calmed. “Someone you’d be lucky never to meet again.” Peering up at the wolf, I finally acknowledged his presence. “Trust me, he’s killed more of your kind than you’d ever meet in a lifetime. He’s ruthless and powerful, and now that he’s after V, we can’t stay.”

“Stay? Where would you go?”

I opened my mouth, but V arched and stiffened, immediately going into another seizure. Then another.

Nigel dropped to his knees, attempting to get closer. “Is she...going to be okay?”

“She’s been poisoned. What do you think?”

Nigel grunted. “Still can’t help but be a sarcastic asshole, huh?”

“Still too immature and full of rage to bother staying quiet?”

“Wow, you’re such a fucking bastard.”

“My sentiments exactly, dog.”

I didn’t care enough to send him away. Instead, I watched the red-haired Hunter grow rigid and gasp, eyes rolling back into her head. Foam built up at the sides of her lips, and I wiped it away, pulse racing. For minutes I tried to keep her safely on her side, but the seizures no longer paused from one moment to the next. They all ran together, and it could only mean one thing.

We’re running out of time.

I looked down at my phone, hoping to see something from Sloan, but there was nothing. “Schiesse.”

“This reverse serum of yours better work, because I’m confident Mia will have the antidote in fifteen minutes,” the wolf commented, full of baseless confidence.

“We don’t have that kind of time,” I hissed, finally lifting my gaze to the naked Shifter. “She’ll be dead in five.”

“What?!”

The fear in Nigel’s eyes on any other day would bring me unbridled happiness. It would make my day and I’d likely skip around V, completely content with getting one over the wolf.

But today, it only mirrored my own fear.

Sloan appeared to my internal relief, and time seemed to come to a full stop as he and I worked together in unison to get the reverse serum into her.

I stabbed the syringe into her neck and pumped the liquid into her bloodstream, ready to save her from the endless torture of a sleepless death.

Poison like this was a dark, painful trap, where the body hurt and the mind remained aware. But overall physical function was gone. So, the person afflicted was trapped inside an unending torture until the poison was either expelled or claimed their life.

The trouble with the reverse serum was it took several minutes, if not more, to take effect. Then her body needed to expel the poison and repair her lung. If the poison was too far gone...

We only have minutes.

“Look at me,” Sloan commanded.

Swallowing around the painful knot in my throat, I lifted burning eyes to his expressive light blue ones. The rim of liquid distorting his face alerted me to the fact that tears—actual tears—were about to fall from my eyes.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. It had been decades since I had any reason to. I regarded everyhumanemotion as pointless. Crying was by far the most useless. So, I hadn’t cried at all. Not since...

Giselle.