Hunted(37)
It was so much worse than he thought. Far worse.
Her chest still rose and fell, but her breathing was shallow. Her eyes were open, but glossy, like her soul had left her body already. She stared sightlessly up at the sky, her face pinched in agony.
The worst of it was her neck. Her chin hung cocked at an angle as she panted through the pain. The wound was on the right side of her neck—a nasty, gash exposing tendons and the raw meat of her neck. The blood loss turned her naturally glowing skin a sickly parlor.
“Help her!”
Ryon snapped out of his shock.
She looked so close to death. Ryon tore his shirt off, wadding the material and pressing it tight to the wound to staunch the bleeding. “Get a medic here now!” he shouted.
The guards ran to do his bidding, Lyle and Reece staying behind. Lysse was still alive, but they’d trussed her up so she couldn’t escape.
“Reece, you know something to help?” Lyle asked. “I know you’ve had some experience in combat healing.”
Reece knelt beside Penelope. He prodded her wound, watched her pupils, took note of her heart rate and the massive amount of blood loss.
The female Ava, none other than Lysse, had nearly eaten a bite out of Pen’s neck. The truth of Lysse’s identity was staring them back in the face.
“Lysse bit her,” Lyle said. He looked as though he was having difficulty coming up with anything to say. Ryon supposed that would happen if the woman he’d been sleeping with was an Avagarian traitor. How had they never figured it out? Who knew what information she had leaked to her people? Already Ryon could see his friend trying to work it out.
“She’s going to turn,” Reece said, finishing his examination.
The men looked away. “Maybe not,” Lyle said, hopeful.
“Everyone who gets bitten by their venomous fangs turns,” Ryon said. He’d known the second he saw her torn neck, the second he’d seen that Ava on top of her. He’d known then, but he’d blocked it out, trying to ignore the ugly truth.
Reece jumped in. “Not necessarily true. Sometimes they just die.”
Ryon’s head turned slowly; the glower he set on Reece made the man leap back a step and blush.
“My apologies. I didn’t mean---”
“Forget what you meant,” Lyle cursed, waving him away.
The guards finally returned—empty-handed. Ryon stood. “Where’s the medic?” Penelope was looking even paler than she did a minute ago. They didn’t have much time before she either sank completely into death—or her body absorbed the venom, transforming her genetically into one of the creatures.
Out of the breath, the guard panted. “Can’t find a medic. It’s chaos in the kingdom. No one knows where they are. If I’d guess, probably at the front lines. People are hurt. They say a bomb went off at the border wall destroying part of it. Ava’s leaked in heading straight for the silver mine.”
“Of course,” Lyle said bitterly. “So that’s how they got in. Do we know how many there are?”
“Rumors are saying a throng. We’re pushing them back though. They haven’t made it in far. Some homes are already burning. People are dead, sir.”
Ryon heard the conversation, but he kept his eyes on Penelope. He was at her side, holding her hand. He wanted to scream from the top of his lungs.
What did he do now!
He didn’t have an answer.
For the first time in his life, he had no idea of what to do. He had no way to fix things from being so terribly wrong.
And if he made the wrong choice—he’d kill her.
Chapter 14
“There’s only one way.”
“What that?” Lyle paused in his conversation with the guards.
They had Lysse tied up and she was unconscious, but the traitorous bitch wasn’t dead…yet. Ryon wanted to rectify that problem with his bare hands. He wanted to make her bleed, to make her pay for what she’d done. Woman or not, she’d lost his respect when she’d bit his fucking wife. Wife, yes. That’s how he thought of Pen. Hell, he’d scream it from the top of his lungs. Penelope was his and he loved her and would protect her until his dying breath.
“There’s only one way,” Ryon repeated.
Ryon removed the wadded, bloody shirt from Pen’s festering neck wound. Her eyes hung at half-mast, in a glazed, dead expression. Her chest faintly rose and fell, her breaths alarmingly slight.
“There’s no more time. I have to try to empty the poison from her.” It was crazy, he knew. But it was not like he had a lot of choices right now.
Lyle blinked. “How so?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Reece said in disbelief.