A deep, heart-wrenching growl came from his lips and within seconds, he had me against his bedroom wall, his hips supporting my weight, his left hand gripping my right arm and keeping it pressed against the wall, while his right hand held my neck.
“How did you get back here?” he hissed, anger poisoning every word.
It was almost as if history was repeating itself, considering all the familiar sights and sensations assaulting me: the predatory glare in his steely blue eyes, the chill of his breath, the helplessness my vulnerability around him brought about, how small and fragile I felt jammed between his body and the wall… It’d all been done before, but this time, I wasn’t the same girl. I was no longer a scared, whimpering victim trembling beneath his touch.
“This isn’t you, Derek.” It was a soft whisper, but not lacking in conviction. I gently wrapped my fingers around the wrist of the hand he had over my throat.
The muscles of his jaw twitched at my touch. His looked murderous and yet severely conflicted. His hand closed down on my neck, threatening to choke me.
“Answer my question and choose your words well, because they might just be your last. How did you find your way back here?”
I kept my hand on his wrist, my fingers caressing his skin, hoping to soothe him. “Vivienne showed me the way.”
The misty haze in his eyes cleared and the darkness lifted to once again show me a spark of his bright blue gaze. Right then, he quickly stepped away from me, wriggling his wrist away from my touch as if mere contact with me would somehow burn him. “How did she…”
His question faded into the background the moment I saw a wooden stake, clutched by two trembling hands, rise in the air, poised to stab Derek in the back, right through his heart.
“Ashley? No!”
I pushed Derek to the side and found myself startled when he actually budged, perhaps more out of surprise rather than my strength or ability to push him aside. With him out of the way, the wooden stake Ashley meant for him dug its way through my right shoulder.
I screamed in pain the moment my flesh tore and blood rushed out. I clasped the stake with my left hand. The throbbing pain was making my head spin.
Ashley’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “Sofia?”#p#分页标题#e#
I looked up to face her, only to watch with horror as Derek approached her. The stake had come from his personal stock. Each of us had one. He taught us how to kill a vampire before I left The Shade. I remembered him warning us that if we ever used it against him, he would kill us himself and that’s exactly what he was going to do to Ashley.
When his hands rose in the air, poised to hold her by the neck, I gasped at what I was certain he was about to do. He was about to break her neck and he was perfectly capable of doing it with barely any effort at all.
“Derek, don’t…”
His one hand grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair, while the other gripped her jaw tightly. “She was about to kill me.”
“She was defending me!”
I drew a breath when he pulled her head back and his hand closed tighter over her jaw. Conflicted wasn’t a good enough word to describe the expression on Derek’s face.
“She’s a hunter…”
The stake in my shoulder was agony, but seeing Derek kill a dear friend right in front of me was something I could not survive. Desperate, I staggered forward and gently held the wrist of the hand he had over Ashley. “Please.”
Forgetting just how strong he was, he pushed my hand away and the motion sent me tumbling to the floor. I whipped my head toward Ashley, fearful of the worst. To my relief, Derek threw her toward the direction of the bed. Not very gentle, but at least she’ll live. She fell to the bed face forward. I then saw the hawk on her lower back. Hers was a tattoo and not an iron brand like Derek’s but it was the exact same symbol. The hawk… what does it mean?
Derek’s focus was now on my injury. He knelt on the floor in front of me. Concern and guilt traced his stunning blue eyes when he saw the blood gushing from my shoulder. His jaw locked. “This will hurt.”
Before I could even react to his warning, he pulled the stake out of my ligament in one quick motion. I cried out, certain that I would faint, but I wasn’t given that reprieve. The pain the stake caused going out was twice the pain it dealt me going in.
I wished that I could somehow shut down one or more of my senses, but awareness sometimes felt like a curse I would forever have to deal with.
“You have a punctured ligament and a displaced shoulder,” Derek informed me upon closer inspection of my injury. “I’ll need to put your shoulder in place before healing you.”