Page 119 of Stubborn as a Shadow

“I’ll do everything I can. You know I will,” the death mage promised. He held his mouth in a grim line. I’d known him long enough to understand what that look meant. He didn’t think he could do it. He thought it was already too late. “Let me look.”

I swallowed hard. Then a soft weight pressed against my side. I jerked in surprise and glanced over to find Violet there. Her face was wet, and her eyes were red. Where the gag had been tied, her skin looked raw and sore.

“Let him help. It’s the only way,” she whispered as she wrapped her hands around my arm like I was her lifeline. I wanted to shake her off. But I didn’t. Morgan wouldn’t want me to. Her voice was rough—whether from her earlier screams or her raw emotions, I wasn’t sure.

I pulled my jacket away to reveal the worst of Morgan’s wounds. The others were bad too, but these two in particular…

Blood pumped from them with each sluggish beat of Morgan’s heart. Teague put his hands on Morgan. The ozone scent of his magic rose around us, and all I could do was stare at the wound, willing it to go away.

Violet clung to me.

Sirens shattered the quiet, then faded as the police cars sped past us. Maybe they’d catch the hunter. I hoped they would. They might be human, but the SC had a special way of punishing hunters—and she deserved everything they’d do to her.

Ogden in his dragon form shot across the clear blue sky, following along behind the police. He’d overtake them soon. His dragon was lithe, but powerful. Maybe he’d just fry the hunter in her car. I’d be okay with that too.

I wondered how many humans would be exposed to magic today. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. If anyone looked up, they’d see Ogden. And he couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a dragon. I’d spent my whole life working for the SC, making sure that the secret world of supes was protected, but now… Now I just wanted that woman caught. At any cost.

More vehicles arrived.

I was nudged aside so Xander, the local supe doctor, could assist Teague. He didn’t use magic to heal like Teague, that wasn’t how his sphinx magic worked, but he was a doctor. And for the first time since seeing Morgan collapse, I felt a tiny sliver of hope. With both a doctor and a death mage helping him, everything that could be done was being done.

I thought about begging the Eternal Magic for help too, but I didn’t think she’d view death the same way I did. She was all powerful. Timeless. Never-ending. Life and death were not beginnings and endings to her. They justwere.

No. I wouldn’t turn to the Eternal Magic. I couldn’t trust her not to take my mate away from me.

“We need him to shift,” Xander muttered. “We can’t get him to the hospital like this.”

“I know,” Teague said between clenched teeth.

All around us people were moving. Isaac and Adrian were checking the building and the abandoned vehicles. Davie and Edie were cuffing the hunters. I suspected a couple of them were dead, but the duo still cuffed them. No one trusted a hunter, not even a dead one.

They’d also cuffed Gary.

Violet didn’t question his arrest. I hoped that meant she hadn’t colluded with him. I didn’t think she would put Morgan in danger, but I didn’t know the woman. If she’d knowingly brought the hunters to Morgan or our town, we’d find out. Then she’d face an even worse fate than the human hunters.

But for now, everyone let her stay at my side. And I found I didn’t mind her being there. She and the others were here for Morgan, but also to support me. It was an unexpected realization. My gloom would have abandoned me, more concerned with their own selfish interests than anything else.

Suddenly, Xander and Teague’s movements grew more frantic.

“No…” I whispered. “Morgan…”

They were losing him.Iwas losing him. Losing my mate only days after meeting him. How could the Eternal Magic be so cruel?

I grabbed his hoof, needing to feel him, wishing he’d shift so I could feel his hand in mine.

Then an unfamiliar SUV with blacked out windows rolled into the parking lot. Everyone but Teague and Xander tracked its approach. Edie pulled out a wicked-looking dagger from a sheath at her hip.

The vehicle stopped just a few feet from where we crowded around Morgan’s oh-so-still body. The rear window closest to us rolled down, and the vampire—Keenan—peered out at us from the safety of his dark interior.

“Let me help,” he said without preamble.

“Go back to whatever rock you’ve crawled out from,” Teague shouted, not looking up from what he was doing to Morgan.

“You know I can help, mage,” the vampire insisted.

Xander glanced at Teague. “What’s he talking about?”

Teague’s nostrils flared.