“Don’t look at it, and it won’t be so bad,” Jedrek tells me.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Both he and Adam chuckle at me, but neither says anything else. I look around the room. Nothing looks too suspicious. There are a lot of blood samples in a cabinet to my right. I wonder whose blood that is.
“Okay, you have enough. Take the needle out of me,” I demand after a few minutes.
“You know, I don’t like doing any of this either,” Jedrek tells me as he takes the needle out. He wraps a bandage around my arm and forces me to look at him. “Some of us weren’t given a choice.”
I stand up and look him straight in the eyes. “Except you were. You made the wrong choice when you decided to fight fate.”
Without waiting for Adam, I walk out of the room and head down one of the hallways. I have no idea where I’m going, but I don’t want to be near him right now. I know that he’s not actually bad, but I still have a right to be angry at him. Adam runs out of the room and grabs my arm, halting my progress. I fall backward into his chest before I can steady myself.
“If anyone sees you walking alone, they won’t hesitate to attack you. Their emotions for you run from hatred, to anger, to lust. You need to stay with me if you want to remain safe. No one will go against me.”
“They wouldn’t know what hit them if they went against me,” I tell him.
“That may be true, but some of the Gadramicks here are more powerful than you would guess. I wouldn’t push your luck, Ryanne.” Another surge of warm feeling hits me as Adam looks down at me. A need to protect me is written all over his face. Adam is very conflicted and I want nothing to do with it. I take a step back, creating distance between the two of us.
“Take me back to Liam.”
With a sigh, he turns around and starts walking in the opposite direction. Of course I went the wrong way. I follow after him, not trying to quiet my steps. I’m frustrated and I want everyone to know it.
Adam stops in front of my cell door and looks back at me. I avoid eye contact and cross my arms, waiting for him to open it. I want to make sure Liam is safe—that they kept their promise. Adam sighs when I refuse to look at him and unlocks the cell door, gesturing me inside.
Walking through the doorway, my eyes immediately land on Liam sitting against the wall with his left arm propped against his knee. His head snaps up when I enter the cell, and I let out a sigh of relief when I see he’s in the same condition he was when I left. They didn’t try anything. His eyes linger on the bandage on my right arm before flickering up to Adam in the doorway with an angered look crossing his expression. I walk over to Liam as Adam closes and locks the door behind him without saying anything to either of us.
“What happened?” he asks me when we’re alone. He grabs my arm and looks at the bandage before looking back at me.
“They took some more of my blood.” I sit back against the wall and close my eyes. I’m not sure how long we’ve been here. A couple hours at least, so it’s probably around mid-afternoon by now. Liam’s stomach growls loudly when he sits down next to me. “I’m sorry Liam. They’ve never given me food here before, so I wouldn’t count on it,” I tell him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks me. I sigh and lean my head on his shoulder. Liam can always tell when something is going on with me.
“I don’t like it. Dravin and Adam are kind of being civil…it’s creeping me out. They’re planning something and I’m going to find out what it is before it’s too late.”
Chapter Thirteen
Colton
“Do you think Liam will try to contact one of us?” Natalie asks me as I throw our bags in the back of the car. Shutting the trunk, I walk around to the passenger side of the vehicle and open the door, ushering her inside. She sits in the middle and turns toward me, waiting for my response.
“I sure hope so,” I tell her as I get in. Natalie leans her head on my shoulder again and sighs. They’ve only been gone a couple of hours now, but it’s already been too long. I wrap my arm around her shoulder, attempting to comfort her. We’re the only ones who understand what the other is going through right now.
“I’ve called everyone. They’re all meeting us in Whiteshire. We’ll formulate a plan afterwards. Everyone is contacting someone else, so we’ll have a little more than we were expecting,” Tom announces.
“But will it be enough?” I ask.
“I’m not sure.” I flinch as the honesty in his voice. “We’re not really sure what we’re up against right now, Colton, so we don’t know how many people we need.”