Page 74 of Crave Me

I went to my knees beside her, a sense of loss hitting me right in the chest. Right where our bond should exist. Right where I’d felt her that moment we’d first met.

Right where she should still be now.

What…?

“Vesperus.” Cara’s voice barely registered, and it was almost immediately drowned out by Kaspian taking over at the scene.

“Where the fuck is Astrella?” he demanded. “We need water!”

“She’s putting the fire out over there,” Cara told him, her presence fading away from my back as the two of them began to work in tandem.

This was an event we’d spent years training for, one I’d never thought we’d actually experience. Because my territory always came first. My people were my life.

But I couldn’t… I couldn’t focus. It felt like my soul had been removed from my body and pinned to the ground before me, dying right alongside Nyx.My mate. My future.

I barely knew her. However, my spirit… my spirit already worshipped her.

How is this even possible?I marveled, my hands fluttering uselessly over her. “What can I do?” She was a goddess. She couldn’t truly die. She’d already told me that.

“If you somehow manage to destroy my corporeal form, my spirit will just go back to Khaos to be reborn again.”

But how long would that take?

And would it feel like I’d lost her for good? Would it dismantle the fated-mate magic?

Was this sense of loss I felt a result of losing the other half of my soul?

I’d already speculated that her leaving the realm might feel as though she were dead. And so we’d rejected the bonds to avoid this sensation.

However, I… I felt fucking useless.

Alone.

Shattered.

Like I’d taken the bullet, not her.

My gaze went to her wound and the blood pooling around it. “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. It was a simple gunshot to the sternum. Those hurt like a son of a bitch, but they weren’t life-threatening.

I could survive several of these and remain awake for the agony of healing.

Nyx shouldn’t have been taken out by a single bullet.

I checked her head and neck—two of the only true vulnerable locations on an immortal—and found nothing.

This didn’t make any sense.

Kaspian reached my side, his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t see a head injury. Spinal cord is intact, too,” he said, speaking my assessment out loud. “Why is she still bleeding?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” The wound on her chest should be healing. But it wasn’t. “Help me move her. Maybe the bullet is still inside her?” That shouldn’t be possible either. My body always rejected foreign objects, pushing it out to heal. And quickly, too, as I was a master vampire. Same with Kaspian.

He helped me move her to check her back.

More blood.

“It went clean through,” I said, shaking my head again. “She should be healing.”

“Was the bullet laced with something?” Kaspian speculated. “A spell of some kind?” He assisted me in rolling her back to the ground as he yelled for Paxton.