Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Rayne,” Weston says, immediately reaching up and crudely yanking the dart from my neck.
Images flash through my mind, but my thoughts are slowing down, already.
This only happens in the movies.
I sink onto my knees.
When I feel a cold rush of liquid along my knee I realize I’ve dropped my glass of champagne.
The last thing I see is the high, vaulted ceiling of the Onyx front room.
The ornate chandeliers, far up above me.
The shifting shadows that the candles make along the wooden walls.
Then everything goes black.
“You’re pretty when you’re knocked out.”
I pull in a gasp of air as I wake up with a start.
The world still looks hazy for a moment, but as I wake up I see that I’m still in Onyx, though I’m in the common room in the back, now.
I feel like I’m moving through sludge.
My limbs are heavy like bags of sand.
Hunter’s on a chair far away, across the room from me.
He couldn’t have been close enough to have whispered those words in my ear, but as I slept, I swore he was saying them to me.
I’m able to keep my eyes open for brief moments, here and there, trying to fight the urge to fall back into slumber.
What happened to me?
It’s a question I can’t answer yet.
And with the smallest shred of energy I can muster, all I do is watch Hunter.
He watches me, too.
And I’m too out of it to protest.
He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his black collared shirt.
I gaze at his forearms, and the strong muscle that forms a line from his elbow down to his wrist.
There’s a little constellation of freckles along his skin there, forming no particular shape.
His brow is slightly furrowed as he leans back in his chair, looking at me like he’s trying to figure out an answer to a question that’s too complex.
Trying to figure out who did this to me?
Or something else?
I can’t take my eyes away from him, every time I manage to open them.
It’s like Hunter’s the only person in the room, and in the hazy fog of my mind I’m not thinking clearly about him.
Still shocks me, how handsome you are.
Even more than you used to be.
Why did I kiss you? How did I ever have the fucking courage?
I realize one of my arms has fallen asleep and I groan a little as I try to move, shifting positions on the sofa.
The moment I move my body an inch, Weston and Noah realize I’m half-awake.
And they’re at my side in an instant.
“There he is,” Roman says from the edge of the room, clapping his hands together.
Roman doesn’t usually say much, but it seems like he was truly worried about me.
Soon I realize the other side of the room is filled with people, too, including some girls from Luros and a few guys from Double Daggers, sitting on couches nearby.
Hunter just watches as the others come over to my side, asking me a million questions.
“Thank God,” Weston says, looking me over. “The nurse said you’d be fine in a few hours, but I was still praying you weren’t about to fucking croak.”
“Jesus, Knox, you don’t need to be so blunt when he just woke up,” Noah says, breathing deeply.
“Nurse?” I ask, my voice low. “What nurse?”
“We took you to the campus hospital. You got sniped, we couldn’t find anyone outside on Red Row who could have done it, and we didn’t know what the hell was in that thing. They found out it was just a strong sedative. Somebody wanted to tranquilize you, but not kill you.”
Yet again.
Just on the edge of death, but not crossing the line.
What the fuck is going on?
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Maybe they just got their dosage wrong. Anything can kill you in a high enough quantity.”
A group of the girls from Luros come over to give me hugs, even though I don’t know who some of them are. Things finally start to die down.
More than anything, I’m wrecked, bone-tired, and I want to go to bed.
I doze off, then come back to consciousness, over and over again, and I know there are still some remnants of the sedative in my blood taking me in and out of sleep.
Hunter doesn’t come over to comfort me.
But he watches me the whole time, as I drift in and out of lucidity.
Eventually, Weston helps me out of the common room and up to bed.
My own bed.
Finally.
Thank God.
As I finally pull the covers over me to sleep, the room is blissfully empty and Hunter isn’t in here.
All I can see is the opposite side of the dorm room.
The gleam of the knives that Hunter brought in here, laid out across his desk.
Knives that I could easily report him for. That I still might report him for, if I want to.