The doctor whimpered, and everyone ignored her.
“Of course he is,” John said, darkness glittering around him. “She used to complain about it constantly back at Elite Academy. You’d know that if you ever bothered to listen to her.”
Violence ratcheted up.
Tensions sizzled.
The stabbed doctor staggered to her feet and limped through the door that led to the back room of the medical building.
The five of us were locked in a staring contest. Darkness expanded around Luka, and flames leaped higher off Corvus’s shoulders.
Another doctor burst through the same door, holding vials of different-colored substances. He hurried to the bed and leaned over Arabella as he brought one to her lips.
The tension broke as everyone whirled toward him.
“What the fuck are you giving her?” Corvus snarled as Luka asked, “What is that?”
Scorpius lunged forward with his knife drawn.
I grabbed my fellow Protector by his neck and yanked him back.
The colorful vials clattered in the doctor’s shaking hand. “I-I-It’s for p-pain and w-will help her s-s-sleep and heal,” he stuttered.
John ripped the glass from his fingers and sniffed it.
He tipped it back and wet his lips, licked at the substance, then nodded and said, “He’s not lying.”
“Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” Corvus bellowed at the doctor. “Administer it now, she’s clearly in pain!”
Luka snapped, “But do it gently.”
I raised my eyebrows because the quiet twin didn’t talk to anyone besides John and Arabella; now he was fighting with Corvus and addressing a doctor.
The doctor reached for John’s hands, but the twin pulled the vial out of his reach and pressed it to Arabella’s gray lips.
Immediately she stopped squirming and whimpering.
Her eyes closed.
A few minutes later, the doctor pushed a clipboard with hastily sprawled instructions into John’s hands and told him to administer her drugs as he ran out of the room.
Pussy.
“You sure she’ll heal?” I whispered as my knees gave out at the edge of her cot.
“Yes.” John didn’t look away from her.
Gradually, my mates and Luka knelt along the bed as our collective panic and aggression decreased until there was nothing but silence and Arabella’s strained breaths.
I bowed my head and swore on the ancient House of Malum—on the crest of a fire-breathing dragon, on the tender feeling that had engulfed me when I’d held her against my chest—that she would find shelter with me.
My Revered would find peace in my arms.
It didn’t matter that we were champions in the middle of a war. It didn’t matter that I was a soulless creature who had hurt her in the past.
Arabella would find sanctuary with me.
Forever.
Bang. The doors to the medical barracks flung open, and dozens of gore-coated soldiers stumbled in.
Doctors swarmed like mosquitos.
The battle was over.
Quiet was replaced by groans of pain as men and women collapsed onto cots. A man was carried in screaming.
White floors turned red, and doctors slipped as they hurried to patients.
Arabella slept through the chaos.
I prayed.
“Oh my sun god, is she okay?” Sadie screeched as she fell to her knees beside my Revered’s bed.
I glared at her and bemoaned my inability to speak. All of us bristled as the white-haired woman stared down at our woman with wide, worried eyes.
Corvus solved my problem by growling, “Get the fuck away from her. She’s not yours.”
Instead of Sadie obeying, her eyes glowed neon red.
She bared her teeth like a wild animal. A warning growl rattled in her chest as she said, “She’s my best friend, so you better fucking watch yourself. I know her better than all of you, and I’ll be by her side long after she’s done with you.”
I narrowed my eyes, and my stomach churned at her words.
“Shit, what happened to her?” Cobra hissed as he staggered over to Sadie. His arm was gushing blood from a stab wound, but he pressed a hand over it and ignored the doctor trying to get him to sit down.
The shifters were a virus.
“Worry about your own people,” Scorpius said, his jaw clenched as he traced his fingertips softly over Arabella’s arm.
Cobra’s pupils narrowed into slits, and his eyes glowed like his mates’. The jewels embedded in his skin turned into writhing black shadow snakes and gave him the appearance of a madman.
What my Revered saw in these animals was beyond my comprehension.
“She isssss my people,” Cobra hissed angrily at Scorpius, and he took a step closer to the bed like he wanted to fight.
Flames sizzled across Malum’s shoulders, and he stood up and blocked Cobra’s view of Scorpius and Arabella. The shadow snakes writhed faster across his skin, and flames leaped higher.
On the bed beside us, a man screamed as his nose was stitched back on.
“What happened to Aran?” the posh shifter Xerxes asked as he walked over and stood beside his mates. “Jax and Ascher are getting stitched up but are going to be fine.” He stared down at my Revered and furrowed his brow. “Why is Aran not awake?”
John sighed loudly. “For sun god’s sake. She took an enchanted sword to the stomach, but she just needs time to recover.”
A tense moment passed.
“Are you sure nothing happened to her heart?” Sadie asked with concern, the glow receding from her eyes.
“I’m sure,” John snapped at her with annoyance. “We wouldn’t be sitting here calmly if something had. Or are you questioning my loyalty to her?”
“Maybe I am?” Sadie snarled.
He glared daggers at her.
A long, tense moment passed.
Finally, Sadie said, “We’ll come back later when the men aren’t being psychos around her.” She tugged her mates away.
Cobra glared back at us with malevolent snake eyes as he let his mate pull him away.
I scowled back.
She was ours, not theirs.
They’d learn it soon enough.
Chapter 11
Aran
NIGHTMARES
Louch (adjective): not reputable or decent.
DAY 4, HOUR 18
“We have destroyed all the infected,” I said as I stood at attention in the strategy room—I didn’t remember volunteering to speak.
Everything was blurred.
Shadows and shapes bared their teeth and swallowed me whole.
My back was ramrod straight.
Arms behind my back.
Legs wide.
Head bent in deference.
The champions and generals stood beside me, all of us in a neat, obedient line before Dick, who was projected onto the chalkboard. Lothaire and the mysterious cloaked man flanked him on either side.
Lothaire’s singular eye was focused on me, and he nodded as if he was giving me strength. “Are you okay?” he mouthed.
I nodded back discreetly, then focused on Dick.