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Now?

Now, I was fuckingrunning.

Right back into the shed.

I found Tenn motionless in the mud. One of the roof’s heavy wooden beams had his right arm and shoulder completely pinned. Which maybe wouldn’t have been too lethal, if it weren’t for the fact that there were huge, black nails sticking out of the beam.

Those nails had torn the skin at the side of his throat. Blood pumped out of him like a fucking firehose of black.

No!

Mud seeped into my pants. I didn’t even know I’d fallen to my knees. Panic had me in its grips, shaking me like a broken doll.

Stop the bleeding. Move the beam. Get him out. End this merciless fucking rain.

Go back in time to five minutes ago so that I might have never pointed at this shed and made him come here.

“Tenn!” I screamed.

No answer. I couldn’t see his face like this. He was on his stomach, his head wrenched to the side, his features hidden beneath the beam.

“Fuck!” I ripped off my shirt, one of the ones he’d made me, and shoved it against his bleeding neck. But I couldn’t wrap it around like a tourniquet, could I? What if he suffocated?

He’d suffocate if I didn’t get this fucking beam off of him!

I gripped it and heaved with everything I had, but it was no use. I was too small, to weak, too human.

“I’ll be back. Please don’t…”

The end of that sentence terrified me too much to say it.

I stumbled out of the shed and ran.

Rivven did a double take when I slammed through the door into his saloon. His eyes widened, and went white, when he took in my bare stomach and bra.

“I need your help,” I sobbed.

For a second, he looked horrified at my tears. And then, a stoic mask of determination slammed into place. In the chaos of my fear, his words from yesterday came back to me with vivid force. What he’d said he’d do for an upset human female. That he would find out what was wrong.

And he would fix it.

Please, Rivven, let that be true,I begged silently as I tore back out of the saloon. Rivven was hot on my heels and he easily overtook me with his long legs once we were outside.

“The shed!” I shouted. Those Zabrian ears of his must have caught the word despite the thunder that nearly drowned me out. He sprinted to the shed, a streak of dark leather, long hair, and pale blue hide in the rain.

By the time I caught up, Rivven was down on one knee by Tenn’s head, his right shoulder shoved against the beam. His boots fought for purchase in the slippery muck. Every musclein his bare torso strained. The tendons in his neck looked like they might pop right through his hide. For a terrible, wonderful moment, the beam budged.

But his boots slipped, and his grip gave out. My shaking hands shot to my mouth, barely holding back a scream.

“Blast,” he breathed through clenched fangs. Dark blood seeped from his mouth, trickling down to his chin. He must have bit himself somewhere. “Too heavy.” His white eyes sought mine. “Go to the road. Get the others. I’ll try to keep the weight off him as best I can.”

“I… I don’t want to leave him.”

“You have to,” he grunted, once again shoving his shoulder against the beam and straining. “If you want to save him.”

That was all the convincing it took.

I was off like a shot, stumbling shirtless through the storm. By the time I reached the road, I nearly collapsed with relief to see the dark, sodden shapes of two riders in the distance.