Page 75 of The Wild Man

But he’s not swaying me on this. He can rant and yell to his heart’s content. It won’t change my mind. Nothing short of death will keep me from finding Wild Man.

I start shoving at his chest, my moves becoming frantic. “Move!” I yell.

Desperation fills my mind when he doesn’t move an inch.

“Ever, stop,” he barks, reaching for my arm.

I pull away. I can’t stop. I won’t ever stop. Not until I get back to Wild Man.

I start kicking out at him, scratching the hands reaching for me, yelling at the top of my lungs to be let go. I know what I must look like. A crazy person on the verge of hysteria. But I don’t care and they don’t understand.

“Mad, Spencer,” Dad grates between his teeth, capturing my wrist when I lash out toward his face. His eyes are hard as he stares down at me.

I watch in my peripheral vision as Mad and Spencer approach us. I don’t like the look in Dad’s eyes right now. He’s in his alpha protective mode and there’s no telling what he’ll do.

“Hold her down,” he tells my brothers in a firm tone.

I’m so shocked by what comes out of his mouth that it takes a second to register the words. And in that second, Mad and Spencer go for my arms, and I’m forced down on the mattress.

“Dad!” I yell, pulling on my brother’s grips. “What in the hell are you doing?”

He walks to the nightstand and grabs something. He holds it up, and I realize it’s a syringe. He snatches the cap off and tosses it on the nightstand.

“Dad?” I croak.

He comes to sit on the bed by my hip. I’ve stopped struggling because it hurts my head too much. Mad and Spencer’s grips loosen, like they’re afraid they’ll leave marks on my wrists.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” he says. The anger has drained from his eyes and a look of remorse replaces it. I know from that expression that he really is sorry. That this is eating him alive. “But I have to do this.”

“Please don’t,” I beg, tears sliding down my cheeks.

“You’ll see things more clearly when you wake up.”

I shake my head. “I won’t. I’ll still love him.”

He doesn’t say anything else as he quickly flicks at the syringe and squeezes the plunger just a little to make sure there are no air bubbles, then sinks the needle into my arm, emptying the plunger. I move my eyes away from him and stare up at the ceiling, a steady stream of tears still sliding from my eyes.

“I’ll always love him,” I whisper, the last word falling from my lips right as everything goes dark.

twenty-five

Wild Man

I clench my jaw and suck in a short breath of air as I try to force my body up off the ground. A grunt of pain blows through my teeth when a sharp pain pierces my side. It feels like I’ve been stabbed between two of my ribs and the knife is still wedged inside. Even the lightest of movements has my vision going blurry. My whole body hurts, like a big bear chomped on me and aggressively shook me, banging my body against trees.

It doesn’t matter though. I have to get to my feet and go after her.

They took my momor.

I know it was her family. Her father and brothers. Even if one of them hadn’t whispered in my ear that I would die for hurting his sister, I would have still known.

And now they’re going to pay for taking her away from me.

When I told momor that I would kill her family if they attempted to take her, it was the truth. At the time, at least.

Now, they’ll pay, just not with their life, but with a lot of pain. I want to rip their heads from their necks. To use my knife and gut them like I do the animals I kill for food. To filet their skin from their bones and toss their carcasses to the side to let the other animals feast on them. But I can’t kill them because momor loves them. It would hurt her, and I know killing them is something she would never forgive.

I try to open my eyelids, but I can only crack them open into slits. It’s barely enough for me to make out that the sun is either going down or coming up.