Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 84

I can't comprehend what I'm seeing. My mind swims, circling the drain as I attempt to fathom how the two were before me. "I-" Tired, so tired, it'd been just the two of us for so long as far as who I could rely on. Every time we handed off a task, it came back to bite us, so seeing this face in this time period-

He'd looked exactly how I remembered him. Soft, small, dressed fashionably yet stealthy with heavy strawberry blond curls and honey-colored eyes. Feminine, beautiful, gentle with a venomous glint behind those pearly white teeth. 

Adriam flinches, eyeing my leg. The expression snaps me out of my stupor. They were here, I had done it, I had warned them effectively and now they were alive. So what did that mean? What had I done?

 "Gods you really did end up seeing that mage, didn't you?" he murmurs, kneeling beside me to streak his fingers through the blood on my torn pant leg. I hadn't realized how badly my leg was burning, I jerked away from him only to freeze when I heard Verando groan. Pulled into too many directions after my wolf was crammed down for twenty-four hours, my brain was pushed over the edge. I'd used, I'd been taking enhancers, I'd time traveled, and my skin felt like it might implode.

"We have to bind him. Now. Right now." Before I fainted, before I died, before there was nothing left of me. Pushing away from Adriam, I crawl back toward the downed warlord. Victor is soundless as he helps me wrap the chains, though the pair glance cautiously back and forth. My pulse begins to calm as we start at his hands, I note that one of his wrists could potentially be fractured though it seemed to be already healing. 

Verando smelled wrong, how far down as Fenrir buried him? 

His arms are sliced and cut, in various states of disrepair from contending with our family inside the house. Layers of blood caked his skin and clothes, down his neck, and in his hair, soaking through in thick black streaks refreshed with dark red from Caspian and the werewolf. 

With Verando's shirt in rags, his skin nearly steams as we wrap the chain around his waist, over his elbows, up and over his biceps to hold his arms firmly behind his back. At the end of it, Victor jumps up to grab one of the padlocks. Snapping it shut on the end, he frowns disapprovingly at the bound, limp warlord. 

Now sitting upright, his head dips as Victor steadies him. Would this be enough? Could this possibly hold Fenrir? My body sways, blurring my vision, I've lost too much blood and not eaten or slept nearly enough. I couldn't do this, I was going to lose it.

"How did... Adam, why are you here?" I manage, shaking, fatigued, in pain, and horrified. I can't look at him, I keep my eyes locked on my soulmate, taking in every injury. The steady drip of the wound on his neck seemed to have slowed though it slowly spreads over the links of the chain, staining them the deepest shade of red.

Impatient with me, it would appear he was still tempted to treat me as his hands hover over my body with an uncertainty of where to start. "When you came... you told me you would do whatever it took to get back to your lover. Obviously, given our history.. I figured out who you were talking about. Thanks.. for the info on Victor, by the way." He pulls his lips into a small smile, carefully touching my face to guide my gaze to him.

Swaying his finger, I do my best to follow it. He checks over my eyes, "You've been thrown around yourself. When was the last time you slept?"

"Randy has been taken over by Fenrir." I gasp out, falling back onto my palm, flinching at the discomfort in my body. "Ah- Darrius! Xaiver-" Leaping to my feet, I nearly collapse as Adriam catches me, then giving a sharp look to Victor he flicks his head towards the house. The Russian is gone in an instant. "Tomas is already inside but Victor can go help him, we smelled all the blood, and I had a suspicion that something was incredibly wrong. "