Protection

Chapter Thirty Three

Well, this is it! I don't think its very long, haha, but here it is, in its entirety. I will, however, include an epilogue! Thanks for reading to the end, even if it was terrible at times! :) I love my fans, and all your amazing comments (ahem, Bribelle) totally made my day! <3

The next moments were a flash.

Alayna felt faint at the metallic, salty smell of blood. She felt it tingling on her skin, felt Alex’s pulse, slow but alive. It was as vulnerable as a tightly held thread—liable to break any moment.

   He had lost a tremendous amount of blood. But no, her mind would not conceive of it. He must not die. He would not die. She believed that he would not die.

   Where had that man gone? She looked down, afraid, and touched Alex’s forehead. No, he still retained some of his color. Alayna knew, from being in the prison. Whenever a person turned a waxy color, whenever their nose looked pinched—death was inevitable. But he escaped these characteristics.

   Still, she was afraid.

The pain that kept coming and kept coming did not cease—it was a thousand times worse than the pain she had ever felt. Perhaps, because, she thought, it was because she was a little older.

  Oh, the moments were so slow!

“Alex, when we’re away from all of this…”

He lazily, sickly, opened one eye, which was frighteningly unfocused and glazed over.

“I won’t be marrying anyone else,” she said, with a buoyant smile.  

In a sudden flash of affectionate light, she pictured the happy years ahead. Oh, if only he would live! She knew and knew more than she knew anything, that she could not bear being anyone else’s wife.

  Where was that man! She was growing anxious and she felt Alex’s pulse. It was nearly nonexistent. He was dying, dying—and she did not know what to do!

   It was a blessing whenever the man returned, a doctor close at his heels.

She looked up at them, pitiful and white and her face grimy with tears.

“Move,” the doctor said.

Alayna knew him—it took her a moment, but she knew him to be the same doctor who had brought her into this world. He was old and wrinkled, with many liver spots on his thin white hair. His eyes were sunken but full of kindness.

  She wondered if he could coax energy and vitality back into Alex—her quickly fading Alex.

Gently, as tenderly as was possible, she removed Alex’s head from her lap, and placed it carefully on the floor.

 He did not look well. His face, though maintaining his natural contours, was insipid and deathly pale.

The young man stood a few feet back, and said gently for her to come, let the good doctor do what he could.

  She tossed a glance back to him, still bleeding and clinging to life by a weak thread.

How fragile life is, she thought. I know if…I should have known that life was so precious. Why have I treated him like he would always be at my hand?

   Alayna was answered by the dull knowledge that she was a fool.

“Madame,” the man said. She turned, as if in a trance. Her cheeks were gaunt and without color; it gave her eyes the expression of a ravenous, perfidious cat.

   “I don’t know,” she muttered, standing back. She knew that this man was correct. It was best for her to stand back, but she could scarcely hold herself away. With fear, she knew that anything beyond this point was sheer miracle.