Hunted: A Claiming Novella (The Claiming) (15 page)

The female Ava, none other than Lysse,
had nearly eaten a bite out of Pen’s neck. The truth of Lysse’s identity was
staring them back in the face.

“Lysse bit her,” Lyle said. He looked as
though he was having difficulty coming up with anything to say. Ryon supposed
that would happen if the woman he’d been sleeping with was an Avagarian
traitor. How had they never figured it out? Who knew what information she had leaked
to her people? Already Ryon could see his friend trying to work it out.

“She’s going to turn,” Reece said,
finishing his examination.

The men looked away. “Maybe not,” Lyle
said, hopeful.

“Everyone who gets bitten by their
venomous fangs turns,” Ryon said. He’d known the second he saw her torn neck,
the second he’d seen that Ava on top of her. He’d known then, but he’d blocked
it out, trying to ignore the ugly truth.

Reece jumped in. “Not necessarily true.
Sometimes they just die.”

Ryon’s head turned slowly; the glower he
set on Reece made the man leap back a step and blush.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean---”

“Forget what you meant,” Lyle cursed,
waving him away.

The guards finally
returned—empty-handed. Ryon stood. “Where’s the medic?” Penelope was looking
even paler than she did a minute ago. They didn’t have much time before she
either sank completely into death—or her body absorbed the venom, transforming
her genetically into one of the creatures.

Out of the breath, the guard panted.
“Can’t find a medic. It’s chaos in the kingdom. No one knows where they are. If
I’d guess, probably at the front lines. People are hurt. They say a bomb went
off at the border wall destroying part of it. Ava’s leaked in heading straight
for the silver mine.”

“Of course,” Lyle said bitterly. “So
that’s how they got in. Do we know how many there are?”

“Rumors are saying a throng. We’re
pushing them back though. They haven’t made it in far. Some homes are already
burning. People are dead, sir.”

Ryon heard the conversation, but he kept
his eyes on Penelope. He was at her side, holding her hand. He wanted to scream
from the top of his lungs.

What did he do now!

He didn’t have an answer.

For the first time in his life, he had
no idea of what to do. He had no way to fix things from being so terribly
wrong.

And if he made the wrong choice—he’d
kill her.

Chapter 14

“There’s only one way.”

“What that?” Lyle paused in his
conversation with the guards.

They had Lysse tied up and she was
unconscious, but the traitorous bitch wasn’t dead…yet. Ryon wanted to rectify
that problem with his bare hands. He wanted to make her bleed, to make her pay
for what she’d done. Woman or not, she’d lost his respect when she’d bit his
fucking wife. Wife, yes. That’s how he thought of Pen. Hell, he’d scream it
from the top of his lungs. Penelope was his and he loved her and would protect
her until his dying breath.

“There’s only one way,” Ryon repeated.

Ryon removed the wadded, bloody shirt
from Pen’s festering neck wound. Her eyes hung at half-mast, in a glazed, dead
expression. Her chest faintly rose and fell, her breaths alarmingly slight.

“There’s no more time. I have to try to
empty the poison from her.” It was crazy, he knew. But it was not like he had a
lot of choices right now.

Lyle blinked. “How so?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,”
Reece said in disbelief.

Ryon held out his hand. “Give me your
knife.” Reece withdrew his blade, looked at it for long moments, then handed it
over. “Mind telling me what you plan on doing with that?”

“Just watch.”

Her neck looked like chewed red meat.
It’d been chomped on, ligaments severed. Broken into savage pieces.

He’d triaged soldiers before, even
friends, but this—seeing the woman he loved hurt, shook him on a whole other
level.

The flesh of her neck was torn up
enough, that in a way, made what he was about to do easier.

Ryon cut into the wound, worsening it
and causing a fresh resurgence of blood—what little she had.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Reece
shouted, stepping forward to intervene.

Lyle shook his head at him. “Let’s see
for ourselves.”

Ryon might have laughed if Penelope’s
life wasn’t, literally, in his hands.

The blood came, surging, squirting from
severed veins, and with it—venom. Dark, royal blue, swirling almost like black
viscous oil. The venom had penetrated deep into her body. With how much blood
she’d lost, the poison had to be completely pumped out. He literally needed to
drain it from her, and hope she’d have enough blood left to survive.

Sweat dripped into his eyes. He swiped
it away with his shoulder, breathing hard with focus.

“She’ll need a transfusion,” he said, an
afterthought. His eyes and mind were absorbed on the task at hand.

The oozing venom, thicker and stickier
than blood, slowly started to ooze out of her veins. Her slight breaths pushed
more and more out. He gently stroked the veins to relieve more of the poison.

“Stay with me, Pen. Don’t go now,” he
whispered to her. He didn’t know if she could hear him or not. There was so
much he wanted to say. And he needed her to be alive and well for it.

“She’s losing too much blood,” a guard
said, looking rather pale himself.

Lyle was stiff as a board. “Ryon, maybe
you should---”

“No!” He cut him off viciously. “Don’t
tell me what to do. Not now. I’m so close. Have to focus…” he trailed off,
coaxing more poison from her.

Her chest rose, scarcely an inch of
depth.

So much blood, coating in a thick pool
that was soaking into the earth. It covered his hands making them wet and
slick. He told his brain to ignore that. To remain
focused
. Her life
depended on it.

If only it was that easy!

But every single thought, every single
breath, every single action seemed to take him ten times longer than normal,
moving agonizingly slowly as he fought to make the right choices.

The blood depleted to dripping drops of
black venom. He could only hope he’d removed all of it, or the majority of it.
Anything, to save her life.

Her chest exhaled and her shoulders
sagged. No more movement.

Ryon froze, eyes afraid of seeing the
truth.

He waited for her to take her next
breath.

It didn’t come.

“She’s dead,” someone gasped.

No! No! No!

She was not dead. He
refused
to
let her die. He
refused
to allow her death on his hands. She would live,
God
damnit
!

He began trying to resuscitate her,
pulsing his fists over her ribcage and heart for ten long seconds, then he
opened her mouth, pinched her nose closed, and breathed air into her mouth.
Again. Then again. He didn’t stop. He fell into a rhythm of palpitating her
heart, breathing into her mouth, then checking for a pulse on the un-chewed
side of her neck.

Seconds passed. Then a full minute.

“She’s dead, my friend,” Lyle said,
emotion heavy in his voice.

No. He refused to believe it. She wasn’t
dead unless he said so.

He continued resuscitation.

Pump, pump, pump. Breathe, breathe.
Repeat
.

Another minute passed.

“Stop him already! She’s dead. Show her
some respect!” The guard who dared to speak was promptly silenced.

Pump, pump, pump. Breathe, breathe.

Another long minute went by.

“Ryon, maybe you should consider…” Lyle
began.

A cough.

Ryon’s eyes flared, his heart skipped a
beat.

Heck-heck!

Everyone leaned closer, speechless.

Penelope’s eyes fluttered, slowly
peeling open like a newborn. Her face was deathly pale, but her chest abruptly
fell and rose as she began breathing on her own.

Tears filled his eyes out of nowhere.
Overcome, he gently hugged her close to him. He wanted to weep, but instead he
told her how he felt.

“I love you. I love you.” He’d never
wanted to tell anyone something so much in his whole life.

Then, as he was breathing in her sweet
scent, she reached out and touched his hand.

He’d take that as an unspoken vow any
day.

Chapter 15

The
calm after the storm.

Some
semblance of normalcy was finally returning to the Tarlèans. The attack had shaken
the foundation of safety that Lyle and Ryon, and many others, had fought years
for. They would survive. Their people would carry on. The last of human
civilization. They had to protect their own, and most of all, keep that silver
mine.

The
silver mine, owned by the Gaines family, had taken the brunt of the attack. The
silver mine was their only line of defense to protect the Tarlèans from the
Avas. If they ever lost that mine—Lyle knew the repercussions would be deadly.

The Avagarian attack had been shut down
with quick efficiency thanks to General Ward’s military war plans quickly being
implemented in the case of such an attack. They’d been as prepared as they
could’ve been. Workers were still clearing debris from the explosion site of
the wall.

Alas, the wall will be rebuilt where the
Avas had blown a hole in it. The engineers expect it to be completed within a
fortnight. They would regroup as a people and overcome. As they always did.
There was no other choice—but to give up and surrender. And that was not an
option.

A two-knock tap, rapt and brisk, sounded
at the study door.

Lionel Edward Richard Hargrowe, or
“Lyle” to his friends, did not rise from his seat as the Duke of Gaines was
escorted into his chambers. Uncommonly, the duke rested quite heavily on his
cane for support, his leg appearing to be in a brace of some sort.

Reece, his most trusted personal guard,
stood behind the duke, spear tall at his side, eyes forward. He waited poised,
ready at a moment’s notice to strike. If necessary.

Some people, foolishly, had tried to
reach across the desk to take a stab at Lyle in the past. What those would-be
assassins failed to realize was that Reece’s silver-coated spear was six feet
long and sharp enough to slice through human bone with little effort. All it
would take was a lunge, and Reece’s spear would be in perfect position to spear
the heart. Most citizens never noticed Reece’s specific position in the room,
or his quite, deadly spear. They overlooked it and him. Such certainties upon which
Lyle and Ryon relied.

Lyle did not rise as the duke took his
seat across the mahogany desk from him. Customs dictated he should stand in the
face of another royal leader. Lyle refused to stand for the bastard. And as of
yet, he didn’t know just how much of a role the duke had played in the attack.

Few did he loathe more than the duke.
Not that he’d let the duke learn of his hatred. That would only give the man
power over him. Something which he refused to give.

The duke.

His half-brother.

A half-brother that Lyle had learned
about on his father’s death-bed. Leave it to his sanctimonious father to
confess all on his deathbed, when it was too late to seek vengeance. But not
too late to hold on to anger.

His father had lain in his deathbed when
he told a younger Lyle about the bastard son he bore in an affair with his
mistress, Virginia Marmot Gaines. The duchess. Leave it to his father not to
let a married woman stop him from his lascivious activities.

Nor did it stop Virginia from having an
affair. After she grew pregnant, she played the child off as her husband,
Richard’s, baby. It wasn’t until some twenty-eight years later that Lyle, at
his father’s death bed, had been forced to hear the truth.

He had a brother, a half-brother. The
then-young Duke of Gaines, though he hadn’t been an official duke yet, was a
hated competitor in school, sports, and women. The duke would inherit his
father’s dukedom after Richard Gaines’ death, a year later.

Lyle’s father, King Brice William
Hargrowe of Tarlè, never did have much of a sense of humor. On his deathbed, a
younger Lyle had asked his father to repeat what he said, certain he’d heard
his father wrong. He couldn’t have a half-brother, after all. He had a mother
and a father and no siblings to note. He simply couldn’t believe in his naïve
mind that his father could commit such an act against the family, against his
mother, and against him.