She swallowed, her mouth had gone dry. “I think you overestimate yourself.”
“No.” He sniffed the air. “Even now, you want me.” His damn nose. There would never be any hiding anything from him. “I’m not an animal.” She said the word with more disdain than she actually felt. “I can control my baser instincts. I can decide to ignore my hormones. Particularly if I don’t like the person for whom those feelings are directed.”
“We’ll see.”
She was working on a clever retort when the first shudder wracked her body. Her body seized up under the onslaught of pain. She screamed out but heard no sound. Tears plunged from her eyes. This was death. It had to be. She would perish in this hospital bed never having done any of the things she wanted to accomplish. Despair for chances not taken warred with the physical distress destroying her from the inside out.
“Oh no.” She tried to swallow, forcing herself to remember she could breathe.
“Elizabeth?” Rex voice penetrated her haze of pain. “What is it?”
“The twins.” She could barely get the words out as another shudder drove into her body. She hoped her mother knew how sorry she was she would never be able to help her. If only she’d been stronger, better, more than she was…
Rex pulled her into his strong embrace, holding her head up against his chest. She could hear his strong heartbeat. After a second, the pain in her body receded. How was that possible? They’d hit her hard. Time would stop their magic assault but the twins had too much power to wait out. They’d knocked over Rex’s car and not even been drained for a full day.
“How?” She had to ask even as her eyes started to close. Her body needed to heal, to recharge her magic after the energy assault she’d taken.
“They can’t hit me. For now, although it won’t last forever, I am protected from them by a wolf-spell my sisters-in-law bestowed on me. You are in my arms. They can’t touch you.”
She rubbed her nose against him, not caring, for the moment, if it made her look needy. “If only I could spend forever in your arms.”
Elizabeth could feel the blackness of sleep pulling at her. It was seductive and more powerful than she was at the moment.
Rex whispered against her ear. “You can.”
Nothingness took her in its arms.
Chapter Five
Rex scooped Elizabeth up in his arms. He didn’t have time to wait for this damn CT
test. He had to get her out of there. One way or another, he had to transport them to Florida and deal with the mother of the horrific twins who were attempting to kill his mate.
Her neurological exam had been good. He was going to have to hope she was fine.
His sisters-in-law could examine her in Westervelt if there was no one in her pack who could help her first. Now he just needed to figure out how to sneak her out of the hospital without getting arrested. He scoffed at the thought. No human jail would hold him.
Keeping his head down, he carried his small mate as if he had every right to exit the hospital with her in his arms. She was still wearing the paper gown but he didn’t dare take the time to dress her. Instead, he’d scooped up her clothes and carried them out with her. She could change later when she woke up.
Rex gritted his teeth and moved forward as fast as he thought it was safe to do without drawing attention. Perhaps he need not have worried. The humans didn’t like to look at Elizabeth. It was their loss as far as he was concerned. If they couldn’t see past the curse, then they were simply blind or stupid.
His next problem? He didn’t have a means of transportation. This was not an insurmountable issue. Like his newly borrowed phone, he would simply take a car for as long as he needed it. He couldn’t help the grin that crossed his face. Elizabeth had hated when he had called his taking of the phone “borrowing it.” Her moral indignation had been plastered all over her face.
She was going to be upset all the time while in his presence. He stole things when he needed them. As much as possible, he returned the items when he no longer needed them.
Perhaps if he left the island more often, he’d be better prepared for what he needed on the outside. In any case, he wasn’t going to concern himself too much with the right and wrongness of things. He had never promised anyone he would be a hero. Certainly his pack didn’t think of him as heroic.
Moving into the parking lot, he pulled Elizabeth even closer. She might get cold. He didn’t feel the chill the way she would, and to make matters worse there was the issue of the paper gown. Horrendous the way these humans treated their sick.
One-handed, he managed to manipulate the car door open to a black SUV he hoped would blend in pretty well on the drive to Florida. There seemed to be a lot of them on the road.