Made By Design (Blood Bound Series Book 2) (49 page)

The feel of a warm and shaking hand pressing against my cheek stole my gaze. Ty’s face was a mirror of agony as breath rasped from his throat. It became even shallower and rattly with the tremors that rushed like a flood back through his entire body. Yet even in this state, his hand somehow remained against my jaw, thumb grazing my bottom lip. His mouth parted with the shadow of a smile. “I-I…l-love you, Amelia. I w-will always…l-love you.”

“Ty, no!” I screamed, clutching his shoulder and shaking. “Don’t say that. Don’t say goodbye.”

In my violently shaking hands Ty’s entire body turned limp. I watched his eyes roll back to the whites. Then I heard the breath release from his throat and lungs. Suddenly his body felt as if it weighed more than a freight train. He slipped from my grasp and his skull hit the marble with a crack.

I leaped onto his chest. “Don’t leave me!”

With the heel of my palm I began compressions. An innate sense washed over me as even more black-stained red blood streamed from Ty’s wounds. I needed voltage. I needed the electricity that sparked from my body and hands. Like a defibrillator to jump-start his heart. But there was nothing. All of its force had been used to blast Caius from Ty.

A rib cracked under my palms as my compressions became desperate. “Wake up!”

“Amelia. Sweetheart.” My mom had come up behind, resurfacing since she took after Caius and the guards. Her fingers curled around my arms, pulling me back. “He’s gone. It’s time to let go.”

I tore my arms free and beat my fists against Ty’s chest. “No! I can bring him back. I can save him. It’s not too late!”

Pressure squeezed around both my arms and hauled me off Ty. Even though I was aware that one of the two was Kendrick, I lashed out with nails and feet. Thrashing to get free, thrashing to get back to Ty. “Let me fucking go!”

“Amelia.” Dorian’s grip on my arm tightened. “It’s too late. There’s nothing you can do.”

The tunnel grew longer and Ty’s lifeless body became smaller. “You’re not dead. Move. Speak.
Do
something, Ty!”

In my relentless thrashing I managed to release one of my arms. My freed hand curled around the dagger’s hilt at my thigh and struck out, connecting with flesh and bone.

Dorian’s resistance failed and my mom cried out, rushing to his side.

Kendrick caught my armed hand and squeezed, cracking bone until I released the dagger. As it clattered to the floor someone appeared before me. A flash of light reflected off the gun rising in Troy’s hands. A whistle sounded and something sharp sunk into my throat.

Legs and arms failed. Eyes rolled.

Then there was nothing but cold darkness.

“We can’t tell her.” I heard my mom’s voice as though she were speaking under water. She sounded impossibly far away. “She’s been through enough already.”

Arms supported my weight, cradling me against a firm chest. Light sent flickering pins of shinning beams through my closed lids. But I couldn’t open them. Invisible weights pinned them shut, preventing sight. The same drowning weight had hold of my body, bones, and muscles. I couldn’t move. Then there was darkness again.

In the darkness, a cone of light opened up before me. What I focused on was the last event I ever wanted to relive.

“Time to die, mongrel.” Caius’s sword had struck its target, a knife through butter slicing straight through Ty’s heart. Ty’s head dropped, wolf eyes almost wide at the hilt of a thick silver sword protruding from his chest. A noise of surprise escaped his muzzle, almost sounding human. The gruesome and wide gaping hole pulsed hiccups of rich blood as Ty’s body slid from the sword. He crumpled, a wolf-shaped ragdoll falling to the ground. Bones turned to liquid. Then his body vibrated with a convulsing shudder. His human and naked form lay bleeding out between the fallen.

Agony scored my own heart, as if I’d been the one run through. As if my heart was a gaping hole of pulsing blood. So I was dead, and this was hell. It had to be. Nothing else could be so cruel.

The shattering reenactment faded and fresh voices danced on a wave around me.
Ty!
I fought against the fading memory. The blood, the scene…Ty’s death. Hell or not, letting go wasn’t an option. I wanted to stay here, in this never-ending torture. So long as I could see him. But it was no use. Ty was gone, and the fresh voices kept growing louder.

“She should have woken by now,” Dorian muttered. I could hear shuffling. No, not shuffling. Pacing. Then a distinct thud followed by something shattering against a solid surface. “Have you even left this room in the last two days?”

“No.” A broad hand cupped over mine, squeezing. “Troy said the tranquilizer should have worn off by now.” Kendrick’s voice, and he was speaking right beside me. The hand covering mine squeezed again. “But that’s under normal circumstances.”

“Her injuries weren’t that bad.” Dorian sounded like he wanted to hit someone.

The pacing started back up as a door creaked open. Someone barefoot padded over soft carpet. “That’s true,” Mom said, her voice broken. Her steps neared my other side. “Her physical injuries have long since healed with the blood transfusions. Though no amount of blood can heal a broken heart. Only time can do that.”

Behind my eyelids, I saw Ty. His body was draped over my lap, his face a mirror of pain, his breath a rasp from his throat. Against my cheek his hand lay. It trembled like a leaf in a gentle breeze while his thumb grazed my bottom lip. A ghostly smile parted his lips. “I-I…l-love you, Amelia. I w-will always…l-love you.”

“Ty, no!” I clutched his shoulders and shook violently. “Don’t say that. Don’t say goodbye.” Yet as my words swirled on a repeating echo around me, Ty’s face began to fade. His body had turned limp in my hands and his eyes rolled back to the whites. With the release of breath from his throat, the sudden compacting weight of his body followed. The sight of him disappeared like a puff of black smoke.

“Ty!” I screamed, throat raw as ground meat. The heaviness of my body was returning, the light of reality hauling me back. Striking pain pierced my heart, like a lance spearing through my chest to come out clean on the other side. In its wake was a gaping hole that would never heal. One that would never close up. Excruciating pain crippled my entire body, flourishing like flesh-eating acid from my shattered heart outward. It engulfed every bone, every vein, and every inch of my flesh. I knew what was about to happen. I was waking up, my conscious mind forcing my lids to flutter against dim room light. Forcing me to leave the horrific memories of Ty’s death. There was nothing I wanted less than to wake, to leave this dreamlike state behind. What awaited was a world that had been robbed of Ty. My life would never be the same without him. To know that I would never be able to see Ty’s face, or hear his voice like I just had in these heartbreaking but lucid dreams? It was worse than reliving the scene of his death over, and over. I wasn’t ready to leave, to let go. I wasn’t ready to give Ty or his vivid memory up.

“No!” I screamed and flailed, striking and fighting. “Don’t leave me. Ty!”

Hands pressed my wrists back, pinning them against soft pillows. “Amelia, it’s okay.”

“NO!” Using my whole body, I thrashed out. “Ty, no!”

The restraints against my wrists released. Arms flung in a split second to wrap around my body, drawing me close and squeezing. Lips found the crown of my hair, and pressed down. “Shh.” Kendrick’s cool breath ruffled my eyelashes. “I’ve got you.”

My body’s thrashing was useless. Against Kendrick’s strong arms, mine were as weak as a child’s. I stopped fighting, limbs trembling with exertion and the excruciating pain that radiated from my shredded heart. Tears filled my eyes and I squeezed them shut, clinging to Kendrick’s sides with desperate hands. “He’s gone.” I struggled to breathe and clutched the amulet in a tight fist. “He’s dead.”

A smaller and more delicate hand found my back and began moving in slow circles. “I know, sweetheart. I know…”

We stayed like that for a long while, Kendrick’s arms holding me, and Mom’s hand continuing its gentle support. After what felt like an eternity of struggling through the incessant waves of pain, I somehow slowed my hyperventilation and took a steady breath. I drew from Kendrick’s hold, still crying unending tears. We were in my bedroom, dark-purple drapes drawn and chandelier extinguished. Light glowed from the black-velvet lamp at my bedside. Kendrick was on the edge of my bed, his arms loosened but still holding me. Mom sat on my other side, expression riddled with relief and grief all at the same time. Her eyes were puffy as hell. Dorian stood across the carpeted space at the door, hand gripping tight to a manila envelope. Behind him, my mirrored dresser was crammed with bouquets of flowers. There were red and white roses, purple lupines, and white and black calla lilies. More flower pieces decorated the floor space around the dresser, growing outward like a living garden. There was also a smashed vase beside Dorian’s bare feet. The smash I’d heard earlier.

“Who are all the flowers from?” My voice sounded hollow and far away.

Mom leaned forward and patted my knee. “They’re from your true followers. The ones that came to witness your coronation, and…” Her words broke off with a deep unsettled sigh.

I knew what she had been about to say. “The ones who didn’t die at the hands of the damned.”

“Yes.” Kendrick drew me back against his chest.

Tears kept rolling down my face, an unending supply that refused to stop. I swiped them away and looked from Dorian to Kendrick, then to my mom. “I want to see him. I want to see Ty.”

Dorian moved closer, looking at Kendrick then Mom, an evident question cast from his eyes. His concern shifted to me. “Amelia, don’t you remember?”

Kendrick’s grip around me tightened and his lips met my hair again. “He died.”

I jerked away and shook my head. Like I hadn’t been there when it had happened? Like I hadn’t just relived the torture in my own nightmares? My fists clenched. “I know that.” Then they unclenched. I wasn’t angry with them. “I do. I just…”

Using the back of my hand, I wiped the wetness from my face and jaw. Fresh billowing pain surged from my heart, rawness swamping down to my stomach. So much of me wanted to believe that he wasn’t gone, that there was still something I could do to…
save him.
I chocked on a sob, tasting acid spike my throat.
I know you can save me.
Ty’s faith in me hadn’t even wavered with his dying breaths. And I had failed him.

I cleared my phlegm and acid-filled throat, and sniffed back the snot that clogged up my nose. My blurry vision rose to Mom. “Please, I need to see his body.”

There was a moment of tension-fueled silence. Mom’s expression strained while she shared a tight-lipped frown with Dorian and then Kendrick. “Ty’s funeral is today,” she said, her gaze returning to me. “You’re not invited.”

~

Kendrick diverted his lingering gaze from the rearview mirror, where Dorian sat, silent and motionless. That was at least ten on my count since we snuck out of the house. A conspicuous look came my way. “You know your mom will kill you when she finds out you’re gone.”

Beyond the moving car it was daylight. Gated properties rushed past on one side and ocean scenery was a blur on the other. For once it wasn’t raining or snowing.

“We’ll be back before she wakes up. She’s not going to find out,” I said, tone narrowing on a warning. “Isn’t that right, Dorian?”

On the outside I was a reflection of strength and stability. But inside? I was drowning, organs swimming in acid that made my head, stomach, bones, and heart feel as though they were being eaten alive, melted slowly from the inside out. The agony had been escalating from the second I woke, from the second I remembered exactly what I had lost. Kendrick, of course, could feel the depth of my emotional wounds. They radiated like poison through our bond. Still he knew me, maybe even better than I knew myself. Now wasn’t the time to talk things out. Instead we were heading to Ty’s funeral, against my mom’s forbidding command.

A tidal wave rolled my stomach and I strained my throat in an attempt to keep rising vomit from pouring up.
Ty is dead
. The horrific reality made me wonder if this could just be a terrible nightmare. My worst fear come to life. But I wasn’t that lucky. The pain of his loss alone proved that.

I threw a glance over my shoulder to my brother. Since my insistence to see Ty to say goodbye before his body was surrendered to the ground, he hadn’t spoken a word. “Dorian?”

My brother flinched, eyes straining harder than they had been the second before. He frowned, focus tearing from the blank A4 envelope in his hands and up to me. “Huh?”

“I said…” Then I stalled. Dorian’s expression was guarded and his fingers were clinging to that envelope in his tight hands for dear life. I twisted further in my seat and pointed a finger. Giving into my slight curiosity, I pleaded, to who or what, I wasn’t sure, that whatever was in his hands would distract a twinge of the torture I was living. “What is that, anyway?”

Dorian’s gaze slid up to the rearview mirror then back down. His expression tightened. As if looking at me caused him physical pain. In the same instant I saw Kendrick exchange a cautionary look with my brother. Then the link to his thoughts and feelings shut off. “Nothing you need to worry about,” Dorian said.

“Yeah,” Kendrick chimed in, voice way to cheery to be anything but put on. “Let’s focus on getting through today. We can worry about everything else, later.”

There’s more?
The viscous blow of accepting that Ty was dead was already more than I could take. My continued involvement with him had been the catalyst that had delivered him into the vengeful path of Caius’s sword. It was more than I could live with. More than I wanted to live with. And now there was more? Would it upheave our lives further? Did it have to do with…
Ty?

With widened eyes, I shot a look at Kendrick. His focus was trained intently through the windshield at the sun-speckled road. His thoughts were still unreadable, a vault closed and the dial spun. Still there was no way in hell I was about to let this go. And if either Kendrick or Dorian thought I would, then they had seriously forgotten who I was. I glared at my brother. “I have a right to know. Tell me what’s in that envelope.”