The P.J. Stone Gates Trilogy (#1-3) (39 page)

An answering growl reverberated off the walls, “I just saved her.”

“I would have—was going to save her,” Bryn snarled.

“I gave you a month,” Khol snarled back.

“Hey,” I grumbled. “No fighting.” My eyelids finally seemed to shed their excess weight and I blinked them open to a much too bright room. “Bright lights,” I muttered to myself, feeling like I imagined a Mogwai would . . . Just call me Gizmo.

“Oh, my God, you’re awake.” I barely had time to focus in on Jenna’s elated face before she was on me, crushing me with a much too tight bear hug.

“Can’t breathe,” I sputtered.

“Oh, right, sorry,” she said as she released me. “Guys—she’s awake. Not just mumbling anymore,” Jenna called out without breaking visuals with me.

Khol and Bryn seemed to just appear at my bedside, both of them wearing almost identical expressions of surprise intermingled with joy. I looked from face to face and couldn’t figure out why everyone was just staring at me. “What happened?” I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something pretty major.

Bryn dropped down beside me and took me in his arms, pressing his unshaved face into my hair. “Twice. I’ve almost lost you twice now.” His voice cracked about half way through belying his strong emotions.

I looked over his shoulder and met Khol’s eyes with question. “You were shot.” Khol said. His gaze flicked away from me as if he couldn’t bear to look at me when he said the rest. “I healed you the best I could. I couldn’t do it properly with you being so close to death . . . and unconscious . . . You slipped into a coma . . .”

I gasped as the memory slammed home . . .
An image of a threatening shape outlined from the lights in the hallway before a gunshot exploded in our direction. Me reacting without thinking and throwing myself into the path of the bullet in a bid to save Bryn from being hit. White-hot searing pain ripping across my shoulder just before a blinding light erupted in my head. Everything going silent except for a ringing in my ears and the rasping sound of my breathing before everything went dark.

“I remember,” I whispered in shock. “I almost died.” Yes, the words felt right when I said them out loud. Even though Khol had just said as much himself.

“I wasn’t worried,” Jenna exclaimed. “I knew these two big galoots wouldn’t let you die.” She grinned at me through long, thick black bangs. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. Jenna hadn’t dyed her hair some outrageous color but the black let me know that it wouldn’t be long before the sticking to the shades in nature restriction to help her go incognito, was going to get thrown out like last week’s leftover’s.

“I still don’t understand why I only slipped into a coma if I was so close to death, and I couldn’t be healed properly.” I reached up around Bryn, who was still clinging to me, to feel my head and found nothing but a whole healthy scalp and hair under my fingertips. I heaved a sigh of relief . . . No bald spots.

“It took all of my strength to heal your body.” It was his turn for his voice to crack. “But even then I almost failed. A part of you went somewhere else I—”

Bryn released me abruptly and turned to square off with Khol again. “I would have found her. I—”

“
You
don’t have the power. I gave you a month.” Khol’s power snapped out and rolled off of him in angry waves. “She could have been like that for years if I would have waited for you to figure it out.”

“She’s
my Anam Cara
,” Bryn grated through clenched teeth.

“Are you even sure about that anymore?” Khol’s words felt like a slap to my face and my heart doubled in time. What did he mean by that exactly?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bryn said, mirroring my inner thoughts.

“Your bond was shaky at best out here, and with her near death experience—”

“Holy shit!” Jenna interjected. “It could have null and voided your
Anam Cara
bond Bryn, just like it did to Khol’s before!” I had been bonded to Khol as his
Anam Cara
for what felt like five minutes before I’d attempted to take my own life. Being so close to death had broken the bond, and Khol being so filled with guilt, had finally let Bryn bond with me. Could all of that have been for nothing? Could my and Bryn’s
Anam Cara
bond be broken now as well?

“Exactly,” Khol confirmed.

Bryn’s whole body seemed to deflate with the revelation and he turned to look at me with a torrent of dark emotions swirling around in his sea storm eyes. I awkwardly pulled myself from the bed and lurched into him still feeling weak. “Bryn. It doesn’t matter, we’ll fix it.”

He stared down at me for a dozen heartbeats as if he was searching for an answer to something in my face before he spoke. “Maybe it happened for a reason.”

It suddenly felt like there was a boa constrictor wrapped around my chest as I struggled to breathe. “What—what are you saying?”

“Just what it sounds like.” He looked away from me not wanting to meet my eyes. “Maybe being mated to Khol would be the best thing for you.”
This isn’t really happening. I must be dreaming, or still in a coma. That’s what it is—I’m having a horrible coma induced nightmare. None of this is real.
“He has the power to protect you when I can’t.”

“No, listen to me, none of that matters! I love
you.
I want
you
. Bryn—”

“No,
you
listen to
me
. It does matter. We can’t even bond all the way, and having you walk around without a full bond is like painting a sign on your back asking other male dragons to force themselves on you. And—and—” Bryn stammered as he took me by the shoulders, his eyes burning a bright dragon blue. “What if Khol hadn’t been there when you were shot? You’d be dead.”

My face crumpled up and huge fat tears began to run down my cheeks as I gulped for air. “Please—I love you.” It was a miracle I managed to get even those words out.

Bryn’s face softened as he cupped mine in his huge warm hands, his thumbs wiping at my tears. “I’m only doing this because of how much I love you, Peej. You tried to sacrifice your life for me once, now it’s my turn to do it for you.”

“No, I won’t let you,” I squeaked.
No
. . .
no
. . .
no
. . .
no
. . .
no . . .
The one word began to bounce around in my brain as I struggled not to panic. Bryn was just upset; he wouldn’t really leave me. He’d told me he would fight for me as long as I wanted him. He’d promised. He’d told me
always.
I’d trusted him--in him.

“You don’t get a say in this choice.” Bryn then dipped his head and took quick possession of my mouth, sliding his tongue in to intertwine with mine. I clutched at his shoulders trying to pull him closer to me, and he let me for a brief moment before he broke all contact completely.

I stepped into him to try and hold on but he just disappeared. “No!” I screamed, knowing there was no way for me to follow him. My skin felt ice cold without his touch and I dropped to the ground as my vision blurred like watercolors running off the page. “No!” I screamed again. Khol’s warm strong arms wrapped around me in an effort to comfort me but instead I decided to direct my hysteria at him. I wrenched around to face him and began pounding at his chest. “This is your fault! You did this on purpose! All of it! You never meant to let him have me, did you?” I just kept pounding at his chest. “Did you?” I screeched. He didn’t answer, and it was probably just as well because nothing he could have said would have made me feel any differently in that moment. I blamed him for Bryn walking away from me and I wanted to hurt him like he had wounded me. I reached out and clawed my nails down his face, then his chest, and then I started ripping at his shirt as if once that was out of my way, I could rip his heart out with my bare hands like it felt like he had done to me. Khol remained motionless and took everything I had to give with barely a flinch . . . which only angered me more.

“P.J., stop,” I heard Jenna say, but her command had little effect on me. “She’s going to hurt herself,” she then said to Khol.

“She’ll be fine,” Khol stated calmly.

“She’s making you bleed,” Jenna argued.

“I will heal.”

“I hate you!” I seethed, directing all of my anger from everything at Khol. I just kept scratching and tearing at him until I lost all sense of everything and eventually collapsed in his arms. I vaguely remember him carrying my limp body over to my bed and depositing me there before I lost the battle of consciousness to my exhaustion.

I had no home. I belonged nowhere. I was a single leaf, separated from my tree of life and set adrift into a sea of nothingness. By walking away from me, Bryn had painted my world the deepest black. There was no point in going on anymore. I wouldn’t take my own life; I had only tried that once in order to spare Bryn a life of torment, but I could simply stop living . . . cease to exist. Maybe if I just laid here long enough I would simply disappear into the nothingness that I felt had already swallowed me.

“Peej.” The heartbreakingly familiar voice rasped just as the bed angled down from the weight applied to it. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” A large warm hand attempted to run through my ratty, tangled hair. It’d been days since I’d washed it, let alone brushed it.
So good luck with that
. . .
asshole
.

A flash pan of rage quickly flared through my system. How dare he break my heart into a million pieces and then seek to comfort me! He told me he would always love me . . . always fight for me . . . lies . . . all lies. “Don’t touch me!” I croaked, even as my body craved nothing but more of his caresses. “You don’t get to comfort me when I’m this way because of you.”

“Peej,” Bryn whispered, as if it pained him to say my name. “It’s what’s best for you. We were kidding ourselves before to think we could truly be together.”

I sat up and whirled around to face him, my dragon fire magic rousing just under the surface, luckily I was too weak to actually access it. “And who said you get to decide what’s best for me? You don’t get—” My anger fizzled out as I took in his dejected face and slumped shoulders. “I love you, Bryn. How can I live without you?” I said as I reached out to touch him. He snagged my fingers with his large hand and met my gaze. His eyes seemed to be a much darker blue than normal, as if the light from the room couldn’t be reflected in them, as if he had lost a little bit of his life essence somehow.

“You won’t have to live without me, Peej.” His eyes moved over me and came to rest somewhere over my right shoulder. “I’m still your best friend. And that’s never going to change.”

A weird strangled noise escaped from the back of my throat that I seemingly had no control over. “
Best friends
? Can you actually look at me now and tell me that you truly believe there was ever a time when that’s all we were?” Of course, he technically wasn’t, in fact looking at me at the moment.
Coward.

Bryn remained silent as the seconds ticked by, probably trying to think of something good to say in response to my question. But what could he say? No matter what words he used to try and sooth me, to try and make things easier on me, we both would know they would be a lie. “You almost died . . . again.” He muttered as he turned his whole body away from me. “And I didn’t have the power to save you.”

“You’re the one who’s killing me now!” I exclaimed with anguish as I crumpled back down on the bed, darkness pushing around the edges of my vision. My breath caught in my throat the moment Bryn loomed over me and cupped the side of my face in his warm palm. I studied the familiar face of the man who I’d come to think of as home . . . a home that I had currently been dislodged from. His black eyebrows were furrowed as if in pain, and they stood out in stark contrast against his pale smooth skin. The planes of his face seemed harsher than I remembered them, as if some hardship had eroded away what was left of the carefree Bryn I used to know. He had changed so much over the last year . . .
We
had changed so much over the last year . . . and yet one thing had remained constant for me. “I won’t let you walk away from me,” I whispered, thinking of a time, which now seemed like an eternity ago, when I had determinedly decided that I would make him fight for me whether he wanted to or not.

“You can’t stop me,” he said, even as his thumb circled my cheek tenderly.

I focused on his full supple lips as I pursed mine, noticing his eyes followed the movement. With an abruptness that he hadn’t been prepared for, as evidenced by the grunt that escaped him, I wound my fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him down to me. I arched my head up so I could slant my lips over his as I aggressively slipped my tongue into his mouth. He only resisted me for a moment before I felt the stiffness in his body melt away and make room for another kind of tension between us. His hands slid down to explore my body in the heated way a lover does who knows exactly what his partner enjoys. I sucked on his tongue and drank down the flavor of him with a desperation I’d never felt before. Back when we had just crossed the line in our relationship, I wouldn’t have really known what I was missing if he had walked away, but now . . . now I would mourn the loss of his touch with every breath I took for the rest of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought.