I let that sink in, and an image I’d seen in my dreams recently bombarded my brain, an image I’d fought like hell to repress when I was awake.
My head started to spin, time unravelling and barrelling backwards, scrambling my thoughts with a ton of ketamine that was long out of my system. I heard Italian voices. A Romanian voice. And I saw the eyes of a Crow who didn’t want me to die.
Rocco.
I blinked hard. He was the present I needed to focus on, but cold laughter pulled me back. My pulse amped up, tunnel vision bearing down on me.Fuck’s sake. This hadn’t happened before, not when I was conscious.
“Cam.”
Saint moved, warmth sliding from my side to behind me, his chest to my back, absorbing the impact of whatever bullshit was rattling through me, shaking the foundations I needed to stay whole. He wrapped his arms around me. “Come back,” he whispered.
I’m right here. But I wasn’t. I was in the same place Embry went every time we talked about the men who’d lanced a blade through his gut. The same hellfire that made his eyesburn.
Except... I wasn’t angry.
I wasn’t anything.
Without Saint curving heat down my spine, I’d have felt nothing at all.
“Cam.” Alexei broke through the haze. He seized my chin with a cold hand and kissed me. Once. Twice. Not deep, buthard, demanding my attention. Yanking it from the abyss until his features sharpened enough for me to see them.
He said nothing else. Just stared.
Saint nuzzled my neck. “We don’t have to do this. Any of it. It’s not our fight. We can walk away.”
“We can’t. They’re coming for Embry.”
My voice was distant. My answer an automatic response that he already knew.
He nuzzled my skin where the needle had jabbed me. “They won’t. Not if we let them be.”
“No.”
He expected that answer too. If he hadn’t, he didn’t know me at all.
“Without violence then.” Alexei still gripped my chin. “Without fire and pain.”
“It’s not that. I was thinking about Rocco. I remember him from the night the cartel came for us. He hesitated... he didn’t want to hurt us. And just before you got there, I— Fuck. Ithinkhe was gonna fight for us. That’s all it was, I was trying to tell you that he’d fight for us now, but something happened to my brain.”
Alexei frowned.
Saint held me a little tighter as they had a conversation over my shoulder with their goddamn fucking eyeballs. I squirmed in his hold, but it was half-hearted. His embrace was grounding. Soothing. I was too weak to give it up.
Alexei kissed me again, but it was lighter this time. Warmer. “They hurt you with more than we can see. It will take time to feel better. Time and closure. I will find Rocco and I will speak with him. If you are right, he is our greatest ally.”
Rocco.I grinned a little as the fog began to shift. “You remember his name now?”
“Do you remember yours?”
My breath settled, heart rate collapsing to a semblance of normal. “I remember.”
Alexei pressed closer to me, his slate gaze slicing into me, seeing everything I hadn’t said. Thoughts I didn’t know I’d had. “I know what it’s like to be alone with this. Do not become what I am.”
“I—”
“No.” He sealed my mouth with his palm and crushed me against Saint. I was bigger than them both, especially him, but they towered over me now, the strength of their bond something I could only wonder at.
Fuck. I love them.