Vampire King Chapter 26

Save Her
Kane
I am walking through a meadow in the darkness. The tall grass waves in the breeze as the moonlight. glints off of the trees in the distance. A slow fog rolls in from the edges of my vision. I am all alone, yet I know that Emory is somewhere nearby.
I’m not sure if I’m looking for her or if I’m just cognizant of the fact that she is here, but as I near the tree line, she steps out, barefoot. Her hair is blowing in the same wind that stirs the trees, and the light makes her jade eyes glow.
She looks lovely as always, but also a little wild as she stands there in a long green dress, her hands
folded in front of her.
“You should have told me,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry.” She has to be talking about the cherry blood, how I nearly tore her apart because I didn’t know she was a virgin and had to leave the room before it was too late. “I have been wanting to speak to you all day. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
Like you just did,” she says, her tone very direct. “I accept your apology.”
A smile slips over my lips. “I’m so glad to hear that. Maybe that means we can try again?” I take a few. steps toward her, but she retreats.
“No, it’s too late,” she says, her hands up between us. “It’s too late for us to try again now, King Kane.”
I pause, questioning why she says that. “What do you mean?” I ask, “If you want to wait until we know one another better, we can. I just… want to be with you. We’ve got all of the time in the world.”
She shakes her head. “No, we don’t. You do. But I don’t. My time is over. And you’re too late, Kane.”
Too late?” I repeat. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“You’re. Too. Late. Kane!”
With that, Emory goes flying up through the trees, as if he’s been wrenched back by some unseen force, her arms and legs whipping forward as her eyes widen and her face morphs into a silent scream.
“Emory!” I shout after her, running through the trees, trying to keep up with her, but she’s moving so fast, it’s impossible, even for someone with my speed.
I keep running though, even when she fades from my line of sight. And then a familiar odor hits my nose.
It’s the smell of blood.
Her blood.
I tear through the trees, looking for her, crying out her name.
Then I see her.
She’s impaled on a tree, high above my head, a branch piercing her right through the navel. Blood drips down from the wound, but it’s also pouring from her mouth, her nose, her eyes, even her ears.
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Have Her
“Emory!” I scream, beginning to climb the tree. I need to get to her before all of her blood is gone, before she completely fades away.
My fingers and toes bite into the bark as I scale the tree as quickly as I can, but when I finally get to her, it’s clear, she’s already gone. Her eyes stare straight ahead, her head lolling to the side.
“Emory?” I whisper her name as tears begin to stream down my cheeks. “Emory?”
In my head, all I hear is, “You’re too late-Kane.”
“Kanel Kane!”
I sit up on my couch, my lungs whooshing as they fill with unnecessary air. I look around. Where is that voice coming from.
“Come on! I need you! In the library! Are you asleep? For ** sake!”
Lex. It’s my brother shouting at me. Whatever the ***k is wrong it, must be really bad. My stomach tightens as I immediately think it must be Emory, though I don’t know why she would be in the
library.
my
The cup of blood I’d been drinking when I fell asleep sits cold on the coffee table. I scurry to shovega.
feet back into my shoes and take off for the door. Throwing it open, I nearly collide with Nellie and
“Thank god, Your Highness. It’s Emory!”
“In the library?” I ask them, and they confirm that as I rush right past them.
I am in the library in a matter of seconds, throwing the doors open and rushing over to my brother who is sitting on the floor, cradling her.
“I called for Dr. Martin,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Wh-what-“I can’t finish the sentence as I see that she has two deep bite marks on either side of her neck, and her arm is clearly broken, torn from its socket. I drop to my knees. “Who did this?” I ask him, but I already know..
“Opal and Jacob. I sent the guard after them. I… I…”
He can’t get any more words out. I know how quickly a vampire can drain a wolf shifter of all of their blood, so I don’t doubt that my brother did everything he could within his power to call help, but I don’t understand why he doesn’t appear to have a scratch on him.
I have no time to stay here and ask him questions. I scoop Emory into my arms and take off for the infirmary. She needs a blood transfusion, and she needs it now. Every second that her o**ns attempt to pump blood that isn’t there is a second closer she comes to complete o***n shut down, something she will never recover from.
Wolf shifters heal differently than humans, and for Emory, it’s more like an engine with no gasoline that will need to be primed before it can start again as long as she has some blood in her body. That blood will pool in her brain, heart, and lungs, trying to keep them functioning for as long as possible while the other systems go into full failure.
She’s still alive for now. I can hear her heart but only faintly. I’m shocked. I can’t believe Opal would stop unless she was completely dead, but they might’ve been frightened off by the appearance of all of the guards. Either that or Lex managed to get Emory’s heart working again. I can’t ask right now. I have to get
Η
her to help. Then, I will worry about what happened and how to track down the two miserable ba*ds
w***ho did this
Rainer is coming at us down the hallway in a rush. “Do we know where they went?” he asks.
“No. Ask Lex.”
I see him look at Emory as we breeze past him, and his eyes narrow for a moment before a look of anguish takes over. I don’t have time to analyze my best friend’s feelings for her at the moment either. He’s already told me about the discussion he had with her earlier, after all, and I get that he’s trying to be my friend and hers-maybe more for her. If she lives, and she wants to be with Rainer, so be it. For now, I have to get to step one first
A nurse holds open the door to the clinic for me as I burst through the doorway. “Room five, Your Majesty,” she tells me, and I carry Emory straight there, lying her down on the table as Dr. Joe Martin comes through the door, rolling up his sleeves to his elbows. He’s followed by several nurses carrying blood bags.
Immediately, the nurses strip her torn gown from her, throw on a hospital gown, and start the IVs, one in each arm, while the doctor checks her vitals. I stand back trying to keep out of the way while I still need to see absolutely everything that goes on.
The doctor and his team work quickly to get the blood flowing back into Emory. At the same time, they patch up the marks in her neck where she was bitten, and the doctor sets her broken arm and puts it in a cast. He says, “Her shoulder was dislocated, but now that it’s back in place, I believe her body will heal itself fairly quickly because of her shifter DNA, so long as we get enough blood in her to do so.”
“Is this shifter blood?” I ask him, and he nods.
“Yes, I always keep some on hand. It’s from the shifters in the feeders’ dungeon, and it’s all type 0, so she shouldn’t have any problem with her body rejecting it.”
I trust Dr. Martin completely, but I know he’s not used to working on shifters. He does get the occasional injured human, but most of his work is with vampires, and there’s not too much that can be done when a vampire gets hurt. Setting bones perhaps, but our bodies heal so quickly, if we are able to heal from whatever wounds are inflicted, there’s not much for a doctor to do.
Still, there’s a reason I keep him and his staff around, and it’s
times like this.
“Thank you,” is all I can say to him, and he nods, knowing he will be well paid for his services, as will his
entire team.
“I believe she will make a full recovery, Sir,” he says about a half an hour after we’ve entered the infirmary. “It may take a while for her to wake up since she lost so much blood to her brain and other vital o**ns, and when she does awaken, she may have some trouble remembering everything that happened, but I will be surprised if she doesn’t pull through. Clearly, she is a strong woman.”
I think about everything Emory has been through in the last few days, since her father sold her to me. The doctor has no idea just how strong she truly is
The staff clears out of the room, and I sit on Emory’s good side, the one where her arm isn’t broken, holding her hand, hoping that she is okay.
I think about the dream that I had right before Lex and Nellie woke me up, and I wonder if it was really a
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Save Her
nightmare or if somehow Emory managed to reach me in my dream from the other side. Could she have been dead for a while?
I have no idea, and I won’t dwell on it, but I know that all of this is my fault. I failed to protect her in her own home. I failed to fish out all of the corrupt guards, and I failed to make sure that my word was enough to keep everyone within my jurisdiction from being harmed.
With her hand in mine, I make a silent vow that I will ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, not to her or anyone. When she wakes up, if she can forgive me, I will do whatever it takes to make sure she is safe and that she knows how very much I care about her.
In my mind, I hear another message, this one from Rainer.
“Guess who I just found?” my best friend says. “What are your orders?”
Initially, my thought is to tell him to kill them both where they stand, but I still have to consider they are both the children of a powerful Vampire King. Do I want to start a war over this?
I do-but I won’t, not unless I have to.
“Bring them in if you can,” I tell him, “but if you can’t…. go ahead and end them.”
“You got it, Your Highness,” he says, and I can hear the bloodlust in his voice.
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