“A child.”
“A child,” she confirms. “I was the one sent to handle the situation and to make examples of them.”
Shiloh draws in a full breath and releases it in a shuddering exhale. “I’m glad. I… I should have done it myself, but I couldn’t.”
“No. No, Shiloh, you shouldn’t have done it yourself. No part of this is on you.” Again, Monroe reaches out. Again, she drops her hand before it makes contact. “We failed you.”
Shiloh catches her wrist and pulls her into our hug. It’s the easiest thing in the world to lift my arm to encompass Monroe. It feels so fucking right, something gets lodged in my throat. We’ll figure this out and find a way through. I don’t have any doubts about that, not right now. I hug my women tightly to me, offering them comfort the best way I know how. “This changes nothing for me, Shiloh.”
“It changes nothing for me, either.”
Shiloh looks between us as best she can with our positions. “Seriously? I’m an Amazon, and you’re just going to accept that?”
“Yes.”
Monroe nods. “Yes.” She narrows her eyes. “Though my mother and I are going to have a discussion very soon about this.”
“Monroe—” Shiloh makes a choked sound. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on when her eyes roll back in her head and she goes limp. It’s only my arm around her waist that keeps her off the ground.
“What the fuck?”
“Mystic.” Monroe curses, and then she’s gone, sprinting toward the building to the right of us.
“Monroe!” She ignores me yelling her name, and I can’t chase her down without abandoning Shiloh, and I still don’t know what the fuck is wrong with Shiloh.
I see it as I ease her limp body to the ground. A tiny dart sticking out of her neck. There’s already a black ring around it, which is confirmation of Monroe’s claim. The Mystics love their fucking poison. “Goddamn it.” Monroe is out there going after a fucking Mystic, and if the fact they made it this far behind Amazon territory is any indication, it’s one of the leader’s elite squad.
Monroe might die.
Shiloh might die.
Panic grips me, and I fumble for my phone. It takes three tries to dial Abel and as the phone rings, I watch the black spread from the dart in creeping lines. This poison is a Mystic specialty. No one has ever figured out what exactly it is, and even with all our research, we’ve never found anything similar out in the world. It has to be something they cooked up in their greenhouses and labs at some point, which means only a Mystic will know the antidote.
“What?”
I have to set my phone on the pavement because I’m shaking so badly, I’m afraid I’ll drop it. “I need help.”
“Where are you?”
“Amazon faction, northern border. Shiloh’s been attacked, and we need an antidote to Mystic poison, and we need it now.”
Abel’s silent for a beat, two. When he speaks, his voice has gone soft with menace. “What the fuck are you doing there, Broderick? We have a treaty with them, but that doesn’t mean you can come and go as you please. You’re going to send us to war, and we’re not ready.”
I can’t think clearly enough to lie. “Shiloh brought us to her childhood home.”
Another pause. “Are you saying that Shiloh is an Amazon? Has been an Amazon this entire fucking time?”
“Yes. No. I don’t fucking know, Abel. She left the city years before we met her. What the hell does it matter?”
“It matters,” he bites out. My brother curses. “We can’t do a damn thing for her.”
“The fuck you can’t. Talk to Fallon. She’ll have—”
“I cannot do a damn thing for her,” he repeats, harder this time. “If we come in there to pick you up, guns blazing, Aisling will use it as ammunition to prove we broke treaty first. She and Ciar will join forces to crush the Raider faction.”
“If we don’t get the antidote, Shiloh will die!”
“I’m sorry.” He actually sounds like he means it. “But I have to weigh the lives of everyone in the faction against hers and, fuck. Broderick, I’m sorry but I can’t help her. If you can get her across the river to us…”
“Monroe went after the Mystic. I can’t leave her.” A decision I wouldn’t have hesitated to make a few weeks ago in this same situation. But Monroe went after the assassin on her own. She has no backup. I can’t leave Shiloh unattended, but I also can’t leave Monroe hanging here.
It’s not because she’s the Amazon heir and if she’s harmed, it will go just as badly for us as if Abel brought a squad to rescue us. I can’t leave her because… Fuck, I care about my Bride. More than care.
Gods, this is so fucked up.