Free Keeper of the Alphas - Complete by Morgan Rae Page A

to her knees and flung open the cabinet under the sink. She yanked out a hairdryer and cotton swabs to get to the red first aid kit shoved in the back. It had clearly suffered some wear and tear because when she grabbed it, the latch came undone and the contents spilled out.
    Shit . Cami grabbed the bandage, swabs and pair of tweezers off the bathroom floor and shoved them back in the kit. Was that bad? Would it need to be sterilized or something? Alcohol…that did the trick, right? Rubbing alcohol had to be in here, probably. But that stung like a bitch. Would he need painkillers? Or maybe he could take a couple anxiety meds from her stash to take the edge off. That’d work, right? Would that work? What was she doing?
    What was she doing?
    Cami’s frantic fingers came to a stop and she held them straight out in front of her. They were shaking. Bad.
    This was a fit. She was having a psychotic break.
    It was all this stress. Her mom. Back in Tyburn. She thought she was over the delusions, but she clearly wasn’t.
    Seeing men turn into bears and bears turn into men. It was the same old story. When was she going to get her head right?
    “Cami!” Marcus’s voice jolted her back in her body, hollering from downstairs. “I need you down here.”
    Cami felt her blood tingle through her limbs as though waking them up. She didn’t have time to internally argue about what was or wasn’t real. A man was bleeding out because she pulled a trigger.
    No time to count to ten. Get up.
    Cami shoved everything back into the first aid kid and snatched it up, along with a handful of towels. By time she got back downstairs, the den was empty.
    A stab of fear (were her delusions really getting that bad?) before she heard him growl, “Over here.”
    Cami whipped around and saw him in the dining room, half-sitting on the table. Strands of hair fell in front of his eyes, but his silhouette was ripped, the bulky muscles in his arms straining to keep himself up.
    She made a real effort not to drop her eyes.
    “Right…sorry.” Cami moved into the dining room and dropped everything on the table. Marcus kept one hand close to his chest and used the other to shake out the towels and spread them across the table like low-budget tablecloths before he climbed up on it.
    “I need tweezers,” he said.
    “Tweezers, right…why?”
    “The bullet needs to come out.” It was then that she noticed that the mark around the hole in his chest looked strange. Strange for a bullet hole. It had blackened and the veins around it were dark too, as though someone had injected ink into his bloodstream.
    “What—?”
    “Silver,” he said curtly. His breaths were labored and his sharp eyes met hers. “I know this is all very…strange, but I need you to focus right now. If it reaches my heart…well. Tweezers. And that bottle of whiskey.” He pointed.
    Right . Cami grabbed the tweezers and twisted around to snatch a bottle of whiskey off the bar. She brought both over to him and he took the whiskey first. He uncorked it with his teeth and took a glug. Priorities and all. Then he splashed the open bottle over the tweezers and let the whiskey drip onto one of the open towels. And then he took a breath and plunged the tweezers into his wound.
    Marcus hissed through the pain as his fingers twisted the tweezers around. A new spout of blood trickled and made his fingers slippery. Cami watched him work it, her heart in her throat, but noticed his eyes begin to droop. He was fading, though trying to fight it, even as his fingers began to slow. His head hung as though suddenly sleepy and his body swayed.
    “Whoa—” Cami leaned forward, catching Marcus before he pitched off the table. She eased him onto his back, on top of the white towels, spotted with his crimson blood.
    His face was pale and he muttered, “I can…” But his tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth because his sentence faded. His eyes turned to Cami and…
    There was a pleading