Rachel. Dead.
The image of her blood-soaked body wouldn’t leave my mind.
Her face pale, her lifeless eyes closed like she’d gone in her sleep. But she hadn’t. The vampires had done this.
Put her in a state of death and life.
She did not transition into a vampire. Nor did she die fully as a wolf.
She became the in-between.
My assistant. My friend. Gone.
I stumbled away from the stretcher, my breaths coming in shallow gasps. My vision blurred with unshed tears, and my body trembled as a storm of grief and rage coursed through me. Lizbella trailed after me, her expression unusually somber.
“Briar…” she began, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it.
“Don’t,” I choked out, shaking my head. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay, because it’s not. Rachel…rachel is dead..”
