Free Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) by Hailey Edwards Page A

searching past my shoulder. “It won’t be much longer now.”
    “Wait.” Sensing the pack’s nearness, I lurched forward. “Why risk this visit? You gained nothing from it.”
    “Wrong.” A chill permeated the word. “This visit is a gift. Treat it as such.” Her knuckles whitened on the dagger’s handle. “I can reach you anywhere, Camille Ellis, through anyone. I will hunt you as you have hunted me, until my vengeance costs you everything, as your ambition has cost me.”
    “Ellis.”
    A flash of bare skin drew my eye as Graeson ran naked into the clearing with the wolves panting at his heels. Faster than my lips could form a warning, Bianca reared her arm back and hurled the dagger. The cruel blade sheathed itself between his ribs. Clutching the handle with a snarl peeling back his lips, he sank to his knees, and blood flowed in rivulets down his chest.
    Mind gone numb with shock—this wasn’t happening, I wasn’t losing him, not now, not like this—I fell back on my training. Lunging for Bianca, I captured her wrists and twisted them high and tight behind her back until her swollen belly protruded. I pinned them at her spine with a Word, laid her on her side, a position she couldn’t rectify without help, and bound her ankles together too.
    Charybdis couldn’t have planned his moment any better if he had cracked a whip over the wolves and driven them to exhaustion himself. Fatigue overwhelmed the pack bond. Shifting back to their human skins, with human hands to help, took a lifetime. One Graeson didn’t have to spare.
    Threat neutralized, at least for now, I ran to him. Skidding through the loose dirt on my knees, I caught him in my arms as he toppled forward. Sticky warmth plastered the gauzy dress against my chest. The dull bump of the dagger’s handle against my ribs sickened me. Gently, so gently, I guided him down to the ground on his side. The blade was serrated toward the handle, and he was pierced clean through.
    “I need to examine him.”
    Whipping my head toward the voice, I barely restrained myself from snapping at the man’s hands, which were raised in a nonthreatening pose that still managed to piss off my inner she-wolf who wasn’t so inner at the moment. At some point I had fully shifted to my warg aspect, and I was salivating at the taste of violence in the air.
    “He’ll die unless you let me help,” the man said.
    A whimper got caught in my throat, and then Dell was there, wrapping me in her arms and holding me steady while the man approached. His sweat stank with fear, of me or for Graeson, I wasn’t sure.
    “This is Abram.” Dell tightened her grip as the steady rumbling in my throat revved louder. “He’s our healer, the best in the Chandler pack. Bessemer was pissed as hell to lose him.”
    Breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, I hung on to sanity by my pinky nail.
    There was so much blood, too much blood, and Graeson’s lungs made a wet noise when he drew in air.
    Competent hands made quick work of the examination. Abram finished testing the entry and exit wounds with light fingers and made a ticking noise behind his teeth. “This has to come out, and all I’ve got in my bag is the contents of my medicine cabinet from home. Bessemer kept the rest. My supplies, equipment, all of it.”
    “Can you save him?” My voice came out raw but steady.
    “Yes,” he said earnestly. “It won’t be pretty, and I can’t trust your wolf to behave herself while I work. Getting that dagger out of him will hurt, and she may not trust that I mean her mate no harm.” A kind smile curved his lips. “She almost maimed me for looking at him while he’s wounded. While I admire the depth of her commitment, I’d also like to keep my hands attached if you don’t mind.”
    I tossed my head against Dell’s shoulder. “I can’t leave him.”
    “Hon, listen to Abram.” She stroked my back with her fingertips. “He’s treated Meemaw for years. She says he’s