Jace held the cup up to my lips and I swallowed convulsively, until the flames in my throat matched those in my arm.
“Are we done yet?”
Marc shook his head and capped the first—now empty—bottle. “It’s still bubbling. If we’re lucky, this’ll keep your arm from rotting off before we get you to the doc.”
The next bottle was no better, even with two more doses of tequila and a can of Coke. But by the time he got out the suture kit, I was feeling pretty good—arm notwithstanding.
Marc threaded the wickedly curved needle, and Jace poured more alcohol. “That’s enough, zurramato!” Marc snapped, with a glance at the plastic cup. “She can’t Shift if she can’t focus.”
Jace ignored him and tilted the cup into my mouth. “She’ll be fine by the time you’re done with that,” he said while I swallowed. Marc glowered, but kept his mouth shut.We had to move into the bedroom for the stitches, and they each took one of my upper arms, because the room was tilting by then. As was the bed. I lay on top of the thin bedspread and my towel gaped open over my left hip and thigh. I started to close it, then remembered I couldn’t use my arms yet. So I left it open.
No one seemed to mind.
Marc stretched my left arm out on another clean towel. I couldn’t feel it by then, and was starting to wonder if he’d cut the whole damn thing off. “Faythe, I need you to hold still.”
Was I moving? “And I need you not to kill him.” My head rolled on the mattress and Jace slanted into view on my other side, oddly tilted, though he sat on the mattress next to me. “And you not to kill him.”
“Damn it…” Marc whispered. Then, “Faythe, you’re drunk. Just shut up and hold still.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Jace snapped, scooting closer to my head.
“How much did you give her?”
“Enough so that she won’t feel much of this.”
“I’m seriousss,” I insisted, raising my head to look at Marc. “You guys should be friends. You have so much in common.”
That time Jace cursed, and Marc glanced up sharply. “He’s right, Faythe.” Jace slid off the bed onto his knees on the floor, eyeing me from inches away. He was trying to tell me something, but his eyes didn’t match his words. “Just go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be all sewn up and ready to Shift.”
I tried to go to sleep, but my arm wasn’t as numb as I’d thought, and the needle hurt. “Will I be able to fight when you’re done?” I asked, rolling my head to face Marc again.
“I think so. You’ll just need time to rest and finish healing, even after you Shift.”
Jace made an unhappy noise in the back of his throat. “She’s only got three hours.”
Marc frowned and looked up from the neat stitches he was sewing in a jagged line down my arm. “Why?”
“Oops.” I laughed, and Marc pinned my upper arm with one hand to keep me still. “Forgot to tell him that part.”
Twenty-Four
“What the hell is she talking about?” Marc demanded, glaring across me at Jace.
“Sew while you yell,” I insisted, and when Marc made no move to comply, I tried to poke him with my free hand. But Jace gently forced that arm back onto the mattress, and I stopped struggling when pain shot through my still-broken wrist.
“You’re going to hurt yourself, Faythe. Just hold still.” He rubbed my shoulder, and Marc bristled. “She’d be easier to reason with if you hadn’t gotten her drunk,” he snapped.
“She’s never easy to reason with.” Jace grinned at me. Then he met Marc’s glare and his brows dipped so that their scowls matched. “I hate seeing her in pain.”
“You think I like it?”
“I don’t know what you like.”
“Shut up!” I laughed and rolled my head to glance from one to the other. “I know what you both like.”
“Fuck!” Jace threw his arms into the air, then eyed me desperately until Marc gripped my chin and turned my face toward him.
“What does that mean?”
I laughed again, but then suddenly I was crying, and I don’t know how that happened.
“Let go of her,” Jace growled. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Yes, I do.” I jerked my chin from Marc’s hand and stared up at him, wishing I could wipe the stupid tears trailing down the sides of my face. “You both like me, though I can’t figure out why right now.”
Marc relaxed, and Jace exhaled slowly in relief. What had he thought I was going to say? I was drunk, not stupid! “Okay, now that that’s out in the open, please be quiet and let Marc finish sewing you up.”
Another sharp point of pain pierced my arm with the next stitch, and I bit my lip.
“That was never exactly top secret,” Marc said as the thread tugged at my flesh. “Everyone knows about Jace’s little crush.”
Jace went stiff on my right.
“Not everybody…” I was horrified to hear myself say. Had Jace given me tequila or fucking truth serum? He squeezed my elbow, desperate to shut me up, and I smiled at him in sympathy. “I know. It’s the tequila.” Marc glanced first at me, then at Jace in confusion. Like I wasn’t making sense! “Don’t you remember what happened last time I had too much tequila?”
Damn it! Okay, maybe I was drunk and stupid…
Marc laughed, and Jace froze, until Marc turned back to the needle. “Now, that was a hell of a night!”
Jace scowled at me, and suddenly I remembered that tequila had given them both a chance to get back into my…life. And with that realization, I silently vowed to keep my mouth shut until the alcohol had left my system.
Fortunately, without my own voice to keep me awake, I fell asleep in spite of the repeated, prickling pain in my left arm. Sometime later, I woke up on the hotel bed, still wrapped in the towel. My left arm was encased in sterile gauze, which gave off an unfamiliar chemical scent. My right arm was bare and stretched out across the mattress. I was grouchy, in pain, and distressingly sober.
And alone. Or so I thought until I heard the soft rumble of male voices from just outside the window, where two familiar silhouettes stood side by side. “Damn it, Jace, this is suicide. There’s no way we’ll make it out of the territory with Lance.”
“If we don’t try, we’re dead. And so’s Kaci. And Calvin will wind up with Faythe.”
“He will, anyway, if this goes wrong,” Marc growled.
Jace’s shadow shrugged beyond the thin curtains. “She’s willing to take that chance for Kaci. For all of us.”
“Of course she is. She has no concept of her own mortality.”
I rolled over and levered myself up on my right elbow, careful not to let my hand or wrist brush the bed. The towel slipped halfway down my chest.
“Yes, she does.” Jace sounded mad, but he was holding it in. “She’s courageous, not careless. She just values everyone else’s life more than her own. That’s an Alpha trait.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Marc paused, and I could practically hear him counting to ten in his head. “Maldito sea! When this is over, we have to have a serious talk.…”“Hey!” I called, knowing they’d hear, and Marc would shut the hell up. Was I going to spend the rest of my life standing between them? The door opened and Jace brushed past Marc to be first through the door. I shot him an angry look. Marc wouldn’t put up with much of that, whether or not Jace understood what he was going through.
“How long was I asleep?” The alarm clock read 9:34—in the morning, presumably—but I had no idea what time I’d passed out.
“Less than an hour,” Marc said, and I breathed deeply in relief.
“Good. Jace filled you in on the plan?”
He frowned and sank onto the opposite side of my bed. “You mean that slow-motion suicide attempt? Yeah. I got the basics. We sneak onto Malone’s property, break into the guesthouse, and somehow drag Lance out without alerting anyone else. Then we run for our lives.”
I frowned. “You got a better idea?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Then let’s have a look at my arm. I need to start Shifting.”
“She’s gonna need food.” Marc scooted closer as I held my wrapped arm out to him. “And we should probably eat, too.” He glanced up at Jace, who obviously knew what was expected of him. But Jace couldn’t bring himself to volunteer.
I closed my eyes, counted to five, then met Jace’s angry gaze. “Jace, will you please make a food run?”
He nodded stiffly. “What do you want?”
“Burgers are fine. Three for me, and some fries. And whatever you guys want.”
“Bring her four.” Marc shook his head at me when I started to protest. “You’ll need it. And probably more. You’re going to have to Shift at least half a dozen times in the next couple of hours—possibly twice that—and you’ll have to eat and rest in between, or you’ll pass out. Again. And even if you look healed, you probably won’t be one hundred percent, which means you only fight as a last resort. Got it?”
I started to argue, then got a vivid mental image of my wrist re-cracking when I threw my first punch. Which could very well get all of us caught, and both of them killed. “I got it. Now, can we get this off? I feel like a mummy.”