Free Web NovelChapter 202: Chapter 201: Her Body Is Shutting Down
He didn’t wait for agreement. He simply gathered Eve from Damian’s arms, and he was moving again, that impossible speed, crossing the arena and disappearing through the exit before the brothers could even process that he’d taken their mate.
"FUCK!" Damon exploded, already running, Rex close to the surface and demanding they get to their mate immediately.
They ran....all three of them, pack warriors clearing a path instinctively, the crowd parting like water as three alpha wolves moved with singular, desperate purpose.
The estate was maybe a quarter mile from the combat grounds. The brothers covered it in under two minutes, their supernatural speed pushed to absolute limits, the bond pulling them toward Eve like a compass needle to north.
They burst into the master bedroom to find Raphael had already positioned Eve on the bed, had already placed one hand on her head and the other on her chest, brilliant green and gold light pouring from his palms into her convulsing body.
But something was wrong.
The light kept....flickering. Like it was hitting resistance, being pushed back, unable to properly connect.
"What’s happening?" Damian demanded, moving to the bedside immediately. "Why isn’t it working?"
"She’s drained," Raphael said, his voice tight with strain and concentration. "Dangerously drained. Not just tired....her power reserves are at absolute zero. Beyond zero. She burned through everything she had and then drew on reserves that haven’t fully developed yet, that her body isn’t conditioned to access."
His hands trembled slightly....the first time the brothers had ever seen him show physical signs of difficulty. "And now her body is trying to protect itself by shutting down all external input. But that protection is killing her faster than the depletion would. I’m trying to force energy into her, but her system keeps rejecting it."
Eve’s back arched again, another convulsion wracking through her small frame. More blood poured from her nose, her mouth. Her skin had gone chalky pale, almost translucent, making the blood stand out in stark, horrifying contrast.
"The powers she used today," Raphael continued, pushing harder against whatever barrier Eve’s body had erected, "the techniques I taught her, the knowledge her parents passed to her....those aren’t powers she’s properly integrated. She accessed them through desperate need, through instinct, but her body hasn’t been trained to channel that level of energy safely."
He looked up at the brothers, and his expression was raw with fear and guilt. "This is my fault. I taught her techniques she wasn’t ready for. I told her to trust her instincts, to access her parents’ knowledge....but I didn’t properly explain the risks. Didn’t make clear that drawing on untrained power could...." He broke off, focusing back on Eve. "If I’d been even a minute later, she would have convulsed and bled to death. And she’s not stable yet. Her body is still rejecting the energy it desperately needs."
Damon’s hands were fists, his entire body vibrating with helpless rage and fear. "What do we do? How do we help?"
"I don’t know," Raphael admitted, and those three words....from someone who always had answers, who always knew what to do....were more terrifying than anything else that had happened. "I’m trying to force through her defenses, but every time I push, her body pushes back harder. It’s like....it’s like she’s drowning and fighting off the person trying to save her because she can’t distinguish rescue from attack anymore."
Eve coughed....that wet, horrible sound....and more blood came up, so much blood that it couldn’t possibly all be from surface wounds.
Internal bleeding. Her body tearing itself apart from the inside.
Through the bond, they could feel her....distant and fading, her consciousness dimming like a light slowly being turned down. Not peacefully. Not gently. Fighting every inch of the way down, her survival instincts screaming even as her body shut down.
"There has to be something," Damian said, his voice raw. "Something we can do....the mate bond, can we feed her through that?"
"Try," Raphael said immediately. "I don’t know if it will work, but try. Pour everything you have into the bond. Maybe if it’s coming from you....from sources she trusts completely.....her body won’t fight it as hard."
The brothers didn’t need to be told twice.
They arranged themselves around the bed....Damian at her head, his hands on her shoulders. Damon taking her legs, both to help restrain the convulsions and to maintain physical contact. Silas kneeling beside the bed, one hand on her arm, the other on her waist, his body close enough that she’d feel his warmth through the contact.
And they opened the bond completely.
No restrictions, no careful management, no holding anything back. They poured everything they had toward Eve....love, energy, strength, the absolute certainty that she would survive this because she had to survive this because they couldn’t exist in a world where she didn’t.
For a moment, nothing changed.
Eve continued convulsing. Continued bleeding. Continued fading despite their desperate efforts.
Then....
Something shifted.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. But Raphael felt it....the resistance against his energy transfer loosening fractionally, her body’s defenses recognizing something familiar in what the brothers were feeding through the bond.
"It’s working," he breathed. "Keep going. Don’t stop. She’s starting to accept it."
The brothers pushed harder, drawing on reserves they’d need for their own functioning, not caring, only caring about getting energy into their mate before it was too late.
The light around Raphael’s hands intensified....green and gold mixing with the silver-blue energy that represented mate bond power, creating something that looked almost metallic in its brilliance. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Eve’s convulsions were slowing. The blood flow was....not stopping, but decreasing, becoming less torrential and more manageable.
"I need to break through completely," Raphael said, his voice strained. "Get past her instinctive defenses entirely and force her system to accept what it needs. But...." Sweat was pouring down his face now, his own energy clearly depleting from the sustained effort. "....it’s going to hurt. When I break through, when her body finally accepts the full transfer, it’s going to feel like burning. She might scream. The convulsions might get worse before they get better. You need to hold her. Keep her from hurting herself."
"Do it," Damian said immediately. "Whatever you have to do. Save her."
Raphael nodded once, gathered himself, and pushed.
All the power he’d been feeding carefully, trying to ease past her defenses.....he drove it forward like a battering ram against a locked door. His entire body went rigid with the effort, the light exploding outward so brightly that the brothers had to squint against it.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Eve’s back arched completely off the bed....only the brothers’ combined strength keeping her from launching into the air....and she screamed.
The sound was inhuman. Primal. Not pain exactly, but something beyond pain....every nerve ending firing at once, her body’s defense systems being forcibly overridden, the sensation of something foreign being driven past every barrier and directly into her core.
Her eyes snapped open....glowing so brightly with green light that they looked like they’d been lit from within, no white or iris visible, just pure burning power....and blood poured from her nose, her mouth, her ears in one final, horrible surge.
"HOLD HER!" Raphael commanded, not stopping, not reducing the pressure even as his own face twisted with effort and his own nose began to bleed from the exertion. "The barrier is breaking....just hold her!"
The brothers held their mate while she convulsed and screamed and bled, pouring everything they had through the bond, feeling through that connection the exact moment the barrier finally, catastrophically shattered.
Energy flooded into Eve’s system.
Not a stream. A deluge. A torrent of power rushing to fill a void, too fast for her body to properly process but no longer being rejected, no longer hitting resistance.
Her scream cut off abruptly, replaced by a gasp....sharp and desperate, like someone breaking the surface after drowning.
The convulsions stopped.
The blood flow stopped.
For one terrifying second, everything stopped....her breathing, her heartbeat, every function just....pausing....as her body tried to process the massive influx of energy.
Then her heart kicked again....hard enough that they could see it through her chest, through the torn and bloody training leathers....and she dragged in a breath that sounded like it hurt.
Raphael collapsed backward, his hands finally leaving her body, his own face gray with exhaustion and streaked with blood from his nose. "It’s....it’s working," he managed. "Her body is accepting it now. Processing it. She’s...."
He couldn’t finish. Just slumped against the wall, breathing hard, looking like he’d aged a decade in the past ten minutes.
