Bound to Blackwood by Sharon Lipman Read Free Book Online Page A

grim. Her pale-gold eyes blinked back the wash of tears as she met all the expectant faces and Thorn realised that everyone was holding their breath. Thorn braced himself.
    “He's going to make it," Soraya said.
    Thank the Holy Mother of Fae! There was a collective sigh of relief and out of the corner of his eye, Thorn saw Lena sink back down to the floor. He looked carefully at his sister and knew she was holding something back. The lines around her mouth were tight with tension and her eye still held a look of… was it sorrow? He could not be sure. “Tell me, Soraya,” he demanded.  
    Soraya sighed and she reached up to rearrange her dark hair into a messy top-knot. “We nearly lost him twice. The bolt was fitted with an automatic syringe filled with some sort of anticoagulant. I've never seen anything like it, but it's why Lena couldn't stop the bleeding and why he wasn't healing.”
    Everyone turned to look at Lena, but she just continued to look at the wall in front of her as if she was in some sort of trance.
    “I've sent samples to the lab. It's nothing I have seen before so it had us stumped for a while. He had four transfusions before I could even look at getting the arrow out. The damned thing missed his heart by a matter of millimetres and it wasn't just the arrowhead that was barbed, the shaft was too. Phoenix had to push the whole thing through his body and out of his back. Whoever did this, knew exactly what they were doing.”
    Fucking Hell! Thorn was not surprised that Kaden had nearly died; he'd done the evac himself and seen what kind of state his Keeper was in. He was surprised about the technology the Fallen had utilised. He was hoping that this anticoagulant, or whatever it was, was not standard issue, but he was guessing that if it proved effective then it could soon very well be. Shit.  
    “What now?” Skylar asked.
    “Now he rests.” She narrowed her eyes at Thorn who inhaled deeply, then held his hands up in surrender. “I mean it Thorn. He hasn't regained consciousness from the surgery yet but when he does, I don't want any of you boys tempting him back to work. You know as well as I do that he'll be out of my care as soon as he can possibly manage it but I'm still not sure about the anticoagulant and I don't want to take any chances. I want him off active duty for at least a fortnight, a month if I can manage it.”
    “It's that bad?” Thorn asked, even though his sister was not given to over exaggeration. A month was a long time for a Vampire to need to heal.
    “This facility is my Command Centre Thorn. What I say goes.”  
    The statement was met with silence, but Thorn couldn't hide the tilt of his mouth, which was threatening to break into a full-blown grin. “Yes, Ma'am.” He added a salute and it got the reaction he was hoping for. It started with a snigger from Mercury, but soon everyone was sporting a relieved smile. There were even a few chuckles, from everyone except Lena. The tension lifted. “Come on, let’s get a drink. Fuck knows, I need one!”
     

    Soraya and Phoenix went to clean up whilst the guys headed for the bar up in the main house. No one seemed to notice that Lena had stayed.
    After everyone left, she snuck into the recovery room. Kaden looked a hell of a lot better than she'd thought he would. Soraya had done a good job cleaning him up. If it weren’t for all the equipment beeping at her and monitoring him, she'd have thought him asleep. In the normal “I'm tired” kind of way, not in the “I've just nearly died and I'm medicated up to my eyeballs” kind of way.
    She finally let go of the breath she'd been holding since Soraya had come out of the operating room. Unsteady on her feet, Lena collapsed into the chair at Kaden's bedside and put a trembling hand on that of her Keeper. She slouched in the chair and closed her eyes for a moment.
    Greene lay under the foot of a Fallen. He strained his neck to look at his Amocinta and his daughter.