Was she fucking kidding me?
“We got her!” One of her sisters answered.
“Oh, thank heavens.” She relaxed entirely, her muscles going loose as she caught her breath.
The bleeding slowed at her shoulder, but the wound was too deep to heal without assistance. As the fear for her life ebbed, another emotion took the helm in my head—frustration. She was going to live, but for how long? Was she always going to be this careless with her safety?
How the fuck had she thrown the other women in the crypt and not sealed herself in, too?
“This is going to need stitches.” My voice was barely above a growl.
Olivia blinked in confusion, no doubt reading my tone.
“I have a suture kit and I’ve stitched hundreds of wounds, but I’m happy to call for your family’s doctor if you prefer.” Keeping my rage at a simmer took every ounce of my attention. The last thing Olivia needed was for me to boil over in anger.
“So formal,” she tried to tease, but it fell short.
“Do you want a doctor or not, Olivia?” I snapped.
Her eyes widened. “No. I trust you.”
I nodded and removed myself from the bed, but my thoughts didn’t clear up with the space I put between us, they only grew more muddled. More furious. She’d deliberately put herself in danger.
By the time I’d fetched the suture kit and readied her for stitching, my temper was on a hair trigger. How the fuck could she have been so careless with her own safety?
“Ransom,” she whispered.
I finished the first stitch and glanced up at her, my heart thundering at the look in her eyes. There was so much love there…and yet she’d been willing to risk it.
“Honey, I’m okay,” she assured me, offering a sweet smile. “And I know you have to be pissed that Zorin was under our nose the entire time, but—”
“You think I’m pissed about Zorin?” My voice dropped into that deadly calm that always stole over me before a battle.
Her brow puckered in confusion. “Well, yes. Aren’t you?”
“Un-fucking-believable.” I shook my head and kept stitching, sewing my mate back together because she’d put herself in a position to become a piece of swiss cheese.
“I’m sorry?”
Give her the benefit of the doubt. My logical conscience broke through my animalistic instincts. Olivia was well trained. Maybe she had no other option? “Why don’t you walk me through what happened?”
She told the story as I stitched, and by the time I finished the last suture, I was ready to fucking murder Zorin…after I dealt with my own mate’s foolishness. I put the kit away and got off the bed, walking as calmly as possible to the bathroom to grab Olivia’s robe. When I returned, I let loose a sigh of relief that her color was back where it should be. “You’ll probably only need the stitches until tomorrow. A good day of rest and another feeding should heal you.”
Her gaze was skeptical as she took the robe from my hand and wiggled into it. “It’s not very often that you’re trying to put more clothes on me.” There it was again, her attempt at humor to diffuse my anger.
“Tell me something, Olivia.” I stood back from the bed and folded my arms across my chest to keep from reaching for her. Every instinct demanded that I curl my body around hers and protect her as she rested, but hell, she’d probably run out of the room and look for another enemy to fight.
“Okay?” She maneuvered into a sitting position and drew the lapels of the robe shut.
“At any point during the fight, did you consider putting yourself into the crypt?” I arched an eyebrow, which was the only muscle I trusted myself enough to move.
“What?” She drew back like I was the one who had lost my common sense. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, so you lived?” The last word came out as a roar, shaking the crystals in the chandelier.
Her mouth dropped open. “Are you seriously suggesting that I should have hidden?”
“I’m seriously suggesting that you could have locked yourself in that fucking security vault!” I moved backward, putting distance between us until my ass hit the dresser.
“You wanted me to run away?” she shouted, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed over the last couple centuries, Ransom, but I’m not some simpering wallflower who needs to be protected! I’m Princess Avianna’s personal bodyguard and I can hold my own with any male!”
“Any male?” I challenged, my jaw locking tight.
“Any male but you,” she spat.
“And the one who put a fucking knife in your chest inches above your heart!” I gripped the edges of the dresser and heard the wood crack as I squeezed.
“There were four of them!” She jabbed her finger at me. “I thought you out of everyone would be proud of me!”