Page 85 of Ready or Knot
“They’re saying up to five minutes because of the road blocks,” he says. “She ok?”
I shake my head as I see her back, blood soaking through her cropped shirt and dripping along the waistband of her skirt. Carter and Logan are crouching in front of me before the man can say anything else. Logan’s focused on her back, pulling her shirt up enough to see what happened.
He scowls as he looks to where Rylan has one of the people pinned before he curses viciously. I follow his look, and my stomach drops.
“God fucking damnit,” he mutters.
“Little Omega,” Carter murmurs, and she sobs, the noise breathless and weak, flinching a second later. Logan shakes his head and focuses on Faedra, muttering something I can’t quite understand. Someone is crying nearby, and the woman held under Dominic screams when she doesn’t manage to break his hold.
“She deserved it!”
The voice cuts across the chaos surrounding me, shrill and cruel and horrifyingly familiar.
Fuck. Me.
“Shut up,” Dominic growls.
Carter twists, fury etched in his face, but Rylan cuts him off before he can do anything that’ll get him in trouble, grabbing him by the shoulder with a quick shake of his head, the knee that’s holding Harper to the ground not moving an inch.
“She’s going to need you with her, not warming a holding cell with these two.” His voice is low but firm, and Carter tips his head back, his throat moving with his forced swallow.
Logan’s lips flatten, but he doesn’t look up from Faedra’s back, his hands quickly becoming covered in her blood. There’s finally sirens in the distance, growing louder with each thundering heartbeat in my ear. Jasper holds back Violet, her eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth. He pulls her to the side as three police officers come running through the crowd.
“Jude, is there another one on your side?” Logan asks, pulling me back to Faedra in my arms.
“Another what?” The words are growled, but Logan’s lips thin at the thread of fear running through my voice.
“Another stab wound. She’s still wheezing like there’s another one.”
The man who called for help steps forward as the third officer begins asking questions, the woman he’s with holding out her phone, a video queued to be watched on the small screen. My stomach twists. Everything fades, the voices blurring together when I help Carter pull Faedra off of me so Logan can see her front. He hisses another curse.
Before he can tell me what to do to help, the sirens cut off, and there’s a flurry of movement around us.
“Shit, Logan.” One of the EMTs crouches next to him, deftly wedging between Faedra and Carter, and Logan shakes his head, not offering a response. “Weren’t you supposed to be at the game tonight? What happened?”
Logan explains what we’ve noticed, and the EMT pulls Faedra from my arms, calling out for someone else.
“Ah shit,” he mutters. He calls a code into the radio clipped to his collar, and Logan grunts. “We’re going to need more space, guys. Finish whatever the officers need, alright?”
Logan blows out a breath. “Can one of us stay?”
The man nods. “Pick now. It’s going to be fast.”
Both of my best friends look at me. Behind Carter, Dominic eases off of Melanie as one of the officers handcuffs her. She locks eyes with me, hatred so pervasive in her gaze that I want to punch her.
“Jude goes.” Carter’s firm. My attention snatches back to the situation in front of me. “The second she’s gone, you’re going to make a poor decision,” he says quietly. “You go. We’ll follow once we know what’s happening with the rest of it.”
“Shit, Jasper, I can wait,” Violet mutters. Another EMT evaluates her arm as Jasper shakes his head.
“Alright,” the man says. “Here we go.”
Two more people crowd around us, adjusting us all without saying a single word until we stand on the outside of them, their hands flying over Faedra, cutting away her shirt. I move to my left, blocking the last bit of space so no one can casually look over and see my Omega half naked.
“Faedra, right?” the first EMT asks Logan, glancing back at him.
“Let’s tape down the posterior ones,” a paramedic says. “We’ll try for a typical occlusive on the anterior. She’s going to need a thoracostomy either way.”
“Yeah, her name is Faedra,” I tell the man when Logan is pulled away by an officer before answering.