Free Badlands: The Lion's Den by Georgette St. Clair Page A

The pain of the silver shot that had blown past and through Marybeth to puncture his flesh was nothing to the shards of pain that stabbed into his heart at the sound of his friend keening with pain. It was a high, helpless, animal sound.
    He laid her back as gently as he could, supporting her with his arm. Her thin face was set in hard lines of agony, her dry lips stained a shocking, heart-stopping scarlet.
    “Those bastards,” he growled. “IEDs loaded with silver. Those sons of bitches.”
    “Rex…” Marybeth’s voice was thready, and bright red arterial blood bubbled between her lips with each labored exhalation. He could see a weak, rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. “Finn, I…”
    He shook his head, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead. “Hush, Marybeth,” he murmured. “Don’t try to speak. You’re going to be fine.”
    But she wasn’t. He didn’t need a medic to tell him that she was all broken inside, torn by shrapnel, bones cracked and organs ruptured by the hellish force of the blast. The blast she’d taken instead of him, throwing herself in front of his body to save him.
    “I love you,” she whispered. “I always have.”
    He gripped her hand in his. Even though the heat beat down on them like a hammer, her fingers were cold. They felt so tiny against his rough palm.
    “I know, Marybeth. I love you too.”
    She gave a sad, trembling smile, and his heart broke.
    He did love her. He loved all the soldiers under his command. But that wasn’t what she meant, and they both knew it.
    They’d shared a single night of lust back when they’d first been assigned to the same squad, limbs tangled together in carnal defiance of the mortal danger into which they were being deployed. For Finn it had been a sweet, necessary release. For Marybeth it had been so much more. She had fallen for him, and fallen hard. He’d thought it was an infatuation. She’d insisted it was love. He had believed that by treating her as he would any other soldier under his command, he would spare her pain. Spare her pain? She lay dying in his arms because of what she’d felt for him. Her love for him had killed her.
    He rubbed gentle circles on the back of her hand with his thumb, but her eyes had taken on a dazed expression and he didn’t know whether she could feel it. He didn’t know whether she was looking at this world or the next.
    Her lips moved, but no sound came out. “I’m so thirsty…”
    He had no water to give her.
    Then the light went out of her amber eyes, leaving them lifeless and dull and seeing nothing at all.
     
    Somewhere, far away, someone was calling his name…
     
    Then Finn felt an enormous smack on the side of his head, so hard he staggered and let out a growl.
    He looked up, dazed. Liam and Jose were standing there staring at him. Finn shook himself hard and forced his lion back inside him. Fangs sank back into his gums, his mane shrank into his skull, claws retracted, and he was kneeling before them, naked, with the taste of blood and fur in his mouth.
    “What the hell, man?” Liam demanded angrily.
    “It’s okay. He gets like that sometimes,” Jose said, calm as always. That guy would be calm if a grenade went off next to him.
    “Not when he’s on patrol with me, he doesn’t,” Liam growled. He looked at Finn. “We’re a team. You go on my say-so and not before. You don’t run off by yourself. If you can’t be one hundred percent here with us, if you’re going to freak out like this, then you put the rest of us at risk.”
    Finn bit back an angry response and forced himself to stay calm. To stay human. “You’re right,” he rasped, his voice shaking. “It’s the anniversary, I guess. That’s not an excuse, though. If you want me to stop working security for you…”
    “No, jackass,” Liam said angrily. “I want you to get your shit together.”
    “It’s not the anniversary,” Jose said. “Last year you didn’t freak out like this. It’s