Page 121 of The Souls Harvest
With a single move, fluid and precise, she bends her knees, dropping like a dead weight, sliding off Galen’s cruel embrace and sinking her teeth into his bare forearm, ignoring the knife too close to her face.
I leap forward, but chaos explodes around me with a mixture of frenzied, overlapping voices that only stop when a firearm goes off.
Something hard hits the floor, followed by Mack’s muffled swearing as he drops next to me, on his belly and with his hands over his head. “Women are reckless! This is why I’ll always prefer an octopus over a girlfriend.”
Chapter 43 - Game of Secrets
July
Biting someone with rage is undoubtedly painful for the person you want to hurt. But an arm full of muscles and tendons is not like attacking the tender meat of some grilled chicken.
Galen groans in pain when I lock my jaw, and my teeth lacerate his flesh. But my gums also scream in agony, as if my teeth were pushed back inside my skull.
Blood spurts in my mouth, and I retch, letting go of his arm as my eyes tear up, concealing for a second the chaos happening all around me.
I slump on the floor, hitting my knees on the hard tiles and spitting red saliva. My ears ring with the sound of Galen’s pain like the aftermath of an explosion.
“She’s bleeding—”
“She’s alive and,clearly, capable of defending herself. Don’t overreact. Mack? Shut that door, and—you—stop blinking like a fool in love and drop that ridiculous knife. July managed to break the connection with Roden, but we don’t know for how long.”
“Fuck!” Looking at the knife as if holding a ball of fire, Galen drops it and scrambles away from it - and from me - shaking his head. “You don’t know the half of it. Roden was in my head…But I was in his as well.” He winces, his voice weakening with every word.
“We don’t need to,” Kris laughs bitterly but with a hint of worry. “If half of his plan was to threaten the life of his own daughter, I don’t even want to hear the rest of it. Besides, nothing simmering inside Roden’s mind will ever make any sense.”
For a moment, the only noise in the room is that of nervous breaths, like wind rolling over a soon-to-be battleground.
I try to push myself up slowly, but fall back down when Galen swears in pain, ignoring Sable’s presence.
“What the fuck have you done?” he yells, staring at someone behind me before throwing his head back, hissing in pain as his hands stretch for his right leg, a pool of blood quickly spreading from under it. “I would have never allowed him to hurt her…I cannot…This fucking hurts, Merya!”
I jerk my head to the right, wincing when the thin cut on my neck reopens, and look up at Merya, still holding a smoking gun in her hand.
A sudden wind bursts from the window over the kitchen sink, carrying the scent of distant rain and surprising everyone, including Tabitha, who must have flattened herself against the wall when Merya fired to protect Sable, now howling in her mum’s arms.
“For soul’s sake, Merya, two inches to the left, and that would’vebeen me,” she shouts, her naturally rosy cheeks flushing with a darker shade of panic.
“But it wasn’t…Hey! You stay down, or I swear, next time, I’ll put a hole in your chest. Roden is clever, and I still need to decide if you’reyouagain.”
I struggle to tear my eyes away from Merya when a hand gently cups one side of my face.
“You’re okay,” Kris’ voice soothes my senses, his gaze as soft as his touch.
...falling in love every time I sent you back to him.Roden’s words come back to me, and for a moment, I let myself dive into Kris’ eyes, setting aside the image of Galen bleeding. But it’s hard to ignore Merya and Tabs bickering over Merya’s reckless decision to use a gun in such a small space, Galen’s increasing demand for help and Sable crying her eyes out.
I gently take Kris’ hand and lower it before getting back on my feet and filling my lungs with air. “Enough!” I shout with all the despair I’ve so far nested inside.
Everyone stops talking, even Sable, who hides her face against Tabs’ neck, whimpering. I feel a bit guilty, but if she’s half as strong as her mother, she will get over it.
“Do you want to keep talking about something we can’t go back to and stop and let Galen bleed to death? Or would you like to hear whatIfelt while Roden was acting like a megalomaniac father of the year?”
“Wow, I like this new July even more.” Mack sits on the floorcross-legged and elbows Kris in the ribs.
I cautiously approach Galen, who’s managed to rest his back against the wall but whose face is increasingly turning pale and tired. Our eyes find each other, and his gaze drops to the thin red line on my neck, darkening with sorrow.
“I’d like a few minutes alone with Galen,” I ask, trying to keep at bay the memory of Roden spitting hate from Galen’s mouth. Trying to ignore the thin, milky veil slowly disappearing from my best friend’s eyes.
I’m glad nobody can hear my heart, or they will know how stupidly scared I am to be left alone with him.
