Witness [A First Contact Romance]

34. Desperation (Part 2)

Lumiea

Year -19 (L.D.)

Pain burned through Aeryn's body and settled in her thigh like her bones were melting. Jace's dead weight seemed enough to squash her. Hot blood from his shoulder wound dribbled against her neck.

"Jace..." Her scratchy voice was hardly audible.

No response. Not even a stirring. What if–

Aeryn couldn't think about it. Not for a moment. She dragged her heavy hands up his side to his back in search of wounds. Tarry blood squished between her fingers. With her heart pounding wildly, she reached for his neck, too scared to think or breathe.

His faint pulse beat against her fingers.

Relief swept over her, but it only lasted a second. The panic returned and threatened to annihilate her self-control, except Jace didn't have time for her to give in to that. She had to assess his injuries and treat him as well as she could. Get them both out of here. Struggling in one good breath, Aeryn planted her hand on the ground and tried to squeeze out from under him. Searing pain scorched her thigh and nearly immobilized her. Had to push through. Aeryn screamed through gritted teeth, digging her good heel into the ground to give herself leverage. Her hands slipped against the blood covering them and she fell back.

Why did he have to be so heavy? How could she possibly drag him when she couldn't even get out from under him?

"Jace..." Aeryn craned her neck to see his back, catching glimpses of his tattered shirt and the torn skin. Blood oozed from all over his back. "Damn it." Tears pinched her eyes as she tried in vain once more to free herself. "Please, don't die."

Aeryn anchored herself, forced one shoulder out from under him, and then her chest. Able to breathe now, she threw all her strength into pushing him and prying herself out from under him, until finally, Aeryn had dragged herself free.

The pain doubled her over. When she touched the worst of it in her thigh, black dots popped over her vision and the room seemed to close in on itself. Bad. Very bad. The force of the explosion and the weight of Jace's body landing on her may have fractured her femur. And her ribs... Aeryn gasped as she touched the tenderness in her side. The explosion played through her mind again. Petrin must have had a device implanted as a contingency plan.

"Just my luck that you two are so dangerous together."

Petrin had said that whoever the Witness left behind mattered as much as the Witness themself and that he'd wanted to know who cared about her most. The slain bodies flooded her attention until her vision narrowed on the spot where Petrin had once sat. Charred black floor and chunks of clotted blood sharpened in her mind while the stump of his corpse blurred. Instead of trying to make herself see it, she trusted her mind's instinct to protect herself from registering the body parts, and she turned her back on the man who had given her so much information. The man who had tried to kill her and Jace in the end.