“Part of me wishes I wish I could draw this out,” I told him, “but no matter, your death has been a long time coming. Thanks so much for coming to me, so I could do it with my own hands.”
Using my knife, in my right hand, I sliced his right and left carotid, saw him understand he was going to die, and let him live with the knowledge he was about to die for another twenty seconds before I buried his guard’s knife in his throat, slicing and blocking his windpipe.
Maybe I should’ve cut his cock off first, hammered on his knees and elbows, made him hurt some before I killed him, but the only thing necessary was that I made sure he never came after me again. This wasn’t about revenge, but about not having to look over my shoulder.
I left the knife in his throat and watched him die, and then realized Duke was standing beside me, back in human form, wearing jeans and no shirt. Barefoot. A quick glance told me he’d taken the jeans from one of the dead men.
“Ranger and Brain are gonna fly the plane out of here, but you can’t fly with that cut on your leg. Will you let me carry you to the car and get you to the yacht? We have supplies on it to take care of you.”
Brain was still in his hybrid monster form, a bloody mess. Ranger was human, but also bloody. The plane was going to need serious cleaning to be useable again, and getting it off the island as soon as possible would be good. I recognized the look in Brain’s eyes, knew he couldn’t get back to human in the next five or ten minutes, and also realized at the rate my leg was bleeding, we needed to get to the boat fast and get the bleeding stopped.
“I love you,” I told Brain. “I’ll see you in a few days.” I already knew he wouldn’t touch me in his monster form, worried his claws may scratch me and turn me. Same with a goodbye kiss, the risk I’d get enough saliva to change me was almost nonexistent, but he wouldn’t risk it.
He nodded, and I let Duke carry me off the plane.
I laid flat in the back while Duke drove, and felt my pants soaking with more blood. I wasn’t going to die in the next twenty or thirty minutes, but within an hour I’d be seriously weak from blood loss.
“Not saying it’ll come to it, but I need to know, just in case…” he paused a good five seconds before finishing with, “I need to know if you and Brain have talked about what’s involved in being turned.”
“He says there isn’t a group for the women who want to go lone wolf, and my choices would be the little bit of camaraderie I’d get from the RTMC as an ol’ lady, or joining a pack without him.”
“So, if I have to choose whether to let you die, or turn you?”
“Turn me. Also, if the choice is cutting my leg off, or turning me… I’ll handle being a wolf better than being a one-legged human.”
“You want it to be me, Gonzo, or Bash?”
Talking was keeping my mind off my leg, a little. “You’re the strongest, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you.”
“We’ll have a… connection, for maybe as long as a year. I’ll be like your Alpha until you can break away from me.”
“Yeah well, at least I’ll be alive. We’ll figure the rest out from there.”
“Okay, the road’s about to get rough but we should be to the boat in five minutes.”
“You signaled them?”
“Yeah, they should be at the dock when we arrive. I’ll carry you to the yacht and send Gonzo back for the suitcase.”
We’d carried one of the suitcases onto the plane, as Ivankov had told us to bring the money with us. We’d lied and told him the other was in a storage facility, as we hadn’t wanted to risk travelling with both together. He hadn’t bought it until I’d told him I didn’t want to put all our eggs in the same basket, and then he’d laughed, and I’d died a little more on the inside, just hearing his laugh.
I shook my head, reminded myself I’d watched the life leave his eyes and waited for his heart to stop beating. He was dead. He’d never bother me again, and Ranger and Brain were going to get rid of the evidence.
I remember Duke carrying me onto the yacht, and Bash cutting my pant leg off. I know they gave me a shot, and someone cleaned the wound and wrapped it. I’m not sure exactly who did what, but when they finished, I remember telling them I’d change my clothes when I woke. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough, because they told me I couldn’t sleep in bloody wet pants, and they cut them off, along with my underwear, but kept me strategically covered with towels.
Chapter Forty-Three
Harmony
I woke with a start, nauseated, and yelped in pain when I tried to get out of bed to run to the bathroom. Duke was right there, helping me, and he mostly carried me to the bathroom and then held my hair as I puked into the sink.