Page 197 of Cruelly Bitten

I…

Pain shot through my skull, darkening my vision. Blurring Keys’s lifeless form. Dimming the candlelight.

Silencing Cam’s roar…

Cam?I whispered.I can’t see. I can’t…

Vibrations shook my limbs as the world spun around me. So fast. Too fast.

Then the only thing I could feel was nothing at all.

Everything had gone silent.

Cold.

Deathly still.

Cam…?

Nothing.

Not even the sound of my beating heart.

I’m dying, I realized.Just like before…

Only this time, it wasn’t Cam who’d killed me. It was someone else entirely.

But who?I wondered, my mind fading.Who has betrayed us now…?

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CAM

“Fuck!”

I phased down the hall, Ismerelda’s blood a beacon to my beast. Except the moment I stepped outside, the sweet essence dwindled.

I chased it to a nearby parking lot, where it disappeared entirely.

Less than ninety seconds was all it had taken for someone to abduct Ismerelda.

I punched a nearby wall, a roar ripping from my throat. I had to figure out who had her. What car the culprit had taken.Anything.

I also needed her to talk to me. To tell me she was all right.

I shouldn’t have left you in that room,I told her, furious with myself.I should have just stayed in the hallway with Keys.

Thinking of the human made me wince.

I’d left a mortal in charge of her safety.

What a fucking mistake that had clearly been.

But I hadn’t thought… “Fuck.” That was precisely the problem. I hadn’t thought at all. I’d blindly trusted.

I’d made assumptions.

And now…