THE HYBRID QUEEN AWAKENING

RIPPED APART

Zara’s POV

Athdal Haven / Western Boundary

The forest felt really wrong tonight, and I mean the kind of wrong that makes your skin feel cold because it was way too quiet and even the crickets were too scared to make any noise.

I was out there anyway, standing right on the border line. Everything felt different now and I couldn’t do anything to change that.

Dain, god. I could not get him out of my head. I kept seeing the same thing again and again. Those black lines moving up his neck while his eyes turned completely white. I don’t even have the right words to explain how that felt.

My stupid hands failed him. I’m supposed to be the last Liphra with healing powers, but I couldn’t save anyone, and everyone in that room watched it happen. My fingernails dug into my arms so hard that they were probably going to leave bruises. I did not care about that at all.

“I felt it slipping away from me,” I said out loud like there was someone there listening to me. “I had it in my hands... I was so close to saving him.”

Then I heard a dry branch break behind me, and my heart started beating so fast against my ribs that it felt like it was trying to get out of my chest.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

Then he walked out from the trees, with his hands up and moving really slowly. “You don’t need to be scared,” he said.

Kain.

Jesus Christ. “You’re so f*****g quiet when you move,” I said to him, and my voice was shaking like I was an i***t. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

He smiled at me a little. “That’s something new. You don’t usually get scared.”

He walked closer to me, looking at my face carefully. He could see that I was about to run away. If he waited just two more seconds, I would have been gone already.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?”

I turned back toward the border because I could not look at him. If I looked at him I would either start crying or try to kiss him and neither one would help right now.

“I needed to get some air.”

“That’s all? Just air?”

I pressed my fingers together until it started to hurt. “I killed him,” I said. “My job is to save people, right? To heal them and fix what’s broken. But I couldn’t even do that one thing...”

“He didn’t die because of you.” He said that from right behind me now. I can feel that he’s there without turning around to look.

“You don’t understand what I mean. I... I wasn’t strong enough to hold on. I couldn’t stop his life from slipping away from me.”

His hand touched my shoulder, then he moved it slowly up and down my arm, and I hate how that simple touch makes me feel calm. “Hey. Look at me, Zara.”

I did not turn around right away.

"Zara."

I turned around slowly and looked at him. His eyes were looking right into mine now. “Didn’t you feel the poison fighting back against you when you tried to heal him?”

"Yes I did."

“Didn’t you try everything to stop it from taking him away?”

“Yeah but...”

“Shhhh... you did everything you could do. You did more than anyone else in that room did.”

“It wasn’t enough though,” I said.

“No, it wasn’t enough, but for tonight it was more than enough.”

His thumb was moving in small circles on my neck. “You’re still learning how to do this,” he said. “And what you did in there...” he breathed out like saying it was hard for him. “Most healers wouldn’t have even tried to do what you did.”

“I failed him.”

“You survived it.” His voice became really soft when he said that. “And next time, you won’t fail.”

I let out a sigh because part of me wanted to believe what he was saying and the other part wanted to hit him for saying it. “You really believe that?”

He looked at me in a deep way. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I know it for sure.”

My wolf moved inside me, but she was calm this time because she knows him and trusts him. I leaned forward just a little bit so I could smell him, and he smelled like roses. Damn I wanted him so badly. One more day... just one more day and he would be mine forever. We would be mated forever. Then I wouldn’t have to go through any of this alone anymore.

“You’re not scared?” I ask him.

“Scared of what?”

“Of this.” I moved my hand between the two of us because I couldn’t think of the right words to say. “Of everything changing between us after tomorrow.”

He smiled just a little. “I’ve been waiting for everything to change.”

My breath got stuck in my throat. It always makes me f*****g angry when he says things like that and really means them. His hand touched my hot cheeks, pulling my face closer to his face.

I felt his lips touch mine, and at that moment everything around us became blurry and unclear. I kissed him back, and I kissed him hard, because pretending that I didn’t want him was making me tired.

“Tomorrow,” he said to me, “you won’t have to carry all of this by yourself anymore.”

He kissed me again. I closed my eyes, trying to enjoy one second of peace and letting the feeling sink into me.

Then I heard something move in the bushes near us. Kain’s head turned toward the trees really fast. He heard it too. Three dark shapes came out quickly, moving straight toward where we were standing. They walked through the border like it wasn’t even there.

Vampires.

My whole body froze and I couldn’t move. “Kain!” I called out his name.

“I see them.” He pulled me behind his back, using his body to block me from them. “Stay back,” he says to me.

Like hell I’m going to stay back. I cannot stay back. My heart felt stuck in my throat and it was choking me. They were moving like smoke. No... they were moving even faster than smoke.

One of them jumped toward us, but Kain hit him while he was still in the air. The sound of the punch was so loud that it echoed through the trees. The second vampire started walking in circles around us, and then he ran straight at us. Kain jumped at him and tackled him right away.

The third one... there was something really wrong about that one. He was tall and his muscles were big, and he had a black tattoo on his arm that looked twisted and dark.

“Kain!” I screamed his name. I tried to run to him, but my legs wouldn’t move the way I wanted them to. God... my wolf was growling inside me, pushing against my ribs and trying to get out. It’s not enough... this is not enough.

Kain threw one of them backward. He was moving really fast, and every move looked perfect and clean, but there were too many of them for him to fight alone.

The guy with the tattoo stepped forward, and he looked like he already knew how this fight was going to end. He moved in a careful way, looking for a weak spot in Kain’s defense, and I saw the exact moment when he found one.

“No...” I could not say it loud enough for Kain to hear me, but he saw the look on my face. He looked at me. One second. One damn second was all it took. The vampire did not stop or slow down. I have never... ever seen anything move that fast in my whole life.

Before I could even scream, his hand went right through Kain’s chest. The sound it made was wet and ripping.

Everything stopped... it felt like the whole world just stopped moving, and I was stuck standing outside of it watching.

He pulled his hand back out of Kain’s chest, and Kain’s heart was in his hand. It was still beating, and it was still warm. God.

“No... no... NO!”

Kain’s body fell to the ground.

I looked up and the vampires were gone, just like that, like nothing had even happened. Like I made the whole thing up in my head, like my brain was broken and imagined it.

I dropped to the cold ground and crawled over to him. My eyes were so blurry from tears that I could barely see. My hands were shaking really badly when I touched him.

“Kain...” I pulled him into my arms and held him close to me. I did not care about all the blood. It soaked into my clothes and onto my skin and I wanted it there.

“No... stay with me. Please... you can’t leave me like this...”

I put my hands on his chest and pressed down as hard as I could.

“Breathe,” I said to him. “Just breathe... I can fix this. I can fix this for you...”

I could not do anything to help him. “No!” I screamed, shaking his body. “You told me I could do this... you said I could save people!”

He did not move at all. He died right there in my arms, and that moment broke something deep inside me. Grief and anger took over my whole body. My throat was burning because I was screaming so much.

He left a huge hole in my heart. My whole world died with him. I felt it happen.

I was not a healer. I was just a girl holding the dead body of her mate, and the universe can go to hell for doing this to me twice in one night.