42. WOUNDS

42

WOUNDS

A iden snapped the neck of the rogue beneath him and then rose to his feet, chest heaving from the exertion.

He needed to get to Charlotte.

Shame weighed down his heart. Seeing the gun against her temple had paralyzed him with fear. He thought his freeze reaction to the gun pulled on them in the courtyard earlier was a one-off, but no.

When faced with the same scenario he went through, but from a different point of view, he choked, unable to do anything to save the woman he loved, while Noah tried to reach her instead.

Noah.

Aiden had to acknowledge the guy's resilience. Faced with everyone's mistrust and threats of death, Noah still threw himself into the fray to help, protecting Aiden's Korrena instead of allowing the rogues to harm her. In his eyes, that alone made Noah worthy of a second chance.

Charlotte's screams ripped him from his thoughts .

She lay on the ground, face twisted with agony and fear. He followed her gaze to find the asshole with the ponytail sinking his fangs into Blaire's throat.

"Blaire!" Lukas roared, shoving away from the rogue he'd been fighting. He ran for Blaire as Aiden cleared the distance to get to them.

When Aiden reached them, he tore the man away from her, allowing Lukas to catch Blaire when she collapsed.

Dominic closed in to assist Lukas.

Aiden and the rogue tumbled to the ground. The rogue snarled beneath him, sweeping his hands over the ground to reach the gun they landed near. Aiden's hands wrapped around the man's throat, but the rogue wedged the gun between them and pointed it at Aiden's chest, forcing him to rise.

He wouldn't let the fear of an inanimate object stop him. Not this time.

They grappled for control of the gun, snarling and grunting in their efforts until a crack shattered the air. His ears rang and buzzed as the surrounding sounds became muffled and dull.

The rogue beneath him stopped fighting, and the gun slipped from their hands, landing on the grass beside them. Aiden lifted his hands, and the fresh blood coating his skin shook him. His vision blackened around the edges, his breaths came in harsh pants, and his head swam as the buzzing continued.

He didn't feel pain.

Patting his torso, he searched for the wound. The ringing in his ears disoriented him, making it hard to concentrate on the world around him and the task at hand.

His gaze dropped to the rogue beneath him, who had stopped fighting. Vacant eyes stared up at him .

He scrambled off the dead rogue and vomited onto the ground, his fingers digging into the grass as he continued to dry heave long after his stomach emptied.

His mind ping-ponged back and forth between visions that had haunted him for months and the present, the two events blurring together until he could only cling to the sounds of crying and the feel of Blaire's healing magic in his memories.

Bloodied hands clutched the sides of his head and he wailed into the surrounding nothingness. Tears like acid scorched the skin of his face as they broke free after months of confinement.

"—den!"

His body bent forward, and he tucked his head, fighting against the demons in his mind that threatened to consume him as sounds filtered through the fading ringing in his ears.

"Aiden!"

Pressure met his lips; the strong taste of salt met his tongue when he parted his lips in surprise. In reflex, his lips moved against the softness caressing them.

The scent of buttery brown sugar and pineapples stole him from the nightmare he couldn't escape on his own. He blinked as the moonlight of the world around him came into focus for the first time since the gunshot.

Charlotte pressed her hands on top of his on the sides of his head, kneeling in front of him. Her kisses were tender and coaxing, urging him to come back to her. Her desperate longing for him bloomed in his chest, stealing his breath.

His hands lowered with hers, and she broke the kiss to look into his eyes.

Tears tracked down her face, trailing through the blood on her cheeks from where she kissed him. "Don't leave me," she whispered .

Aiden surged forward, yanking her into his arms, clinging to her as he sobbed against her neck.

For months, he'd kept the emotions over what happened to him trapped inside. He thought his only problem came from having nightmares because he felt nothing in the waking world, but he had suppressed the trauma. When he first told Charlotte about what happened, and a tear slipped, he thought nothing of it. But it marked the first crack in a fissure that formed and splintered at the worst moment. In the middle of combat with his Korrena in danger.

He released her and took her face in his hands.

He yearned to tell her how much he loved her, but now wasn't the time. With his defenses shaken, would she believe him? Instead, he brushed his lips over hers once, trying to convey everything he felt without words in the tender move.

She was the first stitch in the wound of his psyche.

He shook his head and exhaled a breathy laugh when they parted after his emotions were under control. "I can't believe you kissed me after I threw up." His amusement dispersed when he took in her grim expression.

"Aiden, it's Blaire," she whispered.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the events of the last hour filtered back into his consciousness. The fight. Charlotte's supposed father. Blaire. The bite.

He pulled Charlotte to her feet and turned, taking in the sight of Lukas kneeling on the ground, cradling Blaire in his arms. Dominic had joined Noah in fighting rogues who tried to get to Blaire, while farther away, Riley and Seth struggled against their own opponents.

Both Charlotte and Aiden rushed over and lowered next to Lukas and Blaire.

"Is she alive?" Charlotte asked, her voice breaking .

Lukas held his hand against Blaire's cheek. "She's fine. I think she passed out from the shock of it all." He turned her head to allow them to see her neck.

Two obvious, but shallow, puncture wounds branded her neck, along with a tear in the skin where Aiden had pulled the rogue away from her before he inflicted fatal damage. She didn't show any signs of pain, and her breathing remained calm and stable.

Lukas met Aiden's eyes. "You saved her life."

Aiden fell back from his crouched position onto his backside, burying his face in his hands.

Charlotte leaned against him, her small hands clutching his bicep. "She saved mine." She sniffed and swiped her cheeks. "Blaire?"

He lowered his hands as Blaire's eyelids fluttered open.

"Thank fuck," Lukas murmured before pulling her against his chest. "I love you so much. Don't do that to me."

Blaire groaned and put her hand on her neck. "Shit, that stings. I forgot how much it hurts when it's not you."

Lukas growled. "You shouldn't know what it feels like from another to begin with."

"I'm okay." She touched his face. "It probably looks worse than it feels. He didn't drink anything. Aiden pulled him off me too fast." She looked up at Aiden. "I guess we're even?"

Her laugh sounded weak, but he understood it as an attempt to lighten the mood. Lukas seemed tense. She needed to defuse the situation so they could help the others.

Sounds at the edge of the forest stole their attention. They looked up as Blackthorn Security, decked out in black tactical clothing, filed out of the trees with weapons drawn.

One man made hand signals and barked orders so fast Aiden couldn't understand. Bodies fanned around them, converging on the few remaining rogues and the reinforcements that arrived from the other side of the clearing.

Had security arrived later, their small group wouldn't have survived the battle. Before, only a few outnumbered them, and it already proved difficult to hold the rogues off because students weren't trained in combat, but their reinforcements tripled those numbers.

Where had James disappeared to?

A man crouched next to them, eyes scanning the surroundings as he spoke. "Is she okay? Do you need medical?"

"Yes," Lukas said at the same time Blaire said, "No."

The security guard looked between them.

"I'm fine. I got bit, but I'm good."

The security guard waved over another man who carried a bag. "To be on the safe side, since you're human, let him look you over." He looked at Aiden and Charlotte, his eyes focusing on Aiden, nodding to the blood that saturated his shirt, coating his hands, arms, and face. "You injured?"

"No, this is his," Aiden said, motioning to the rogue on the ground.

He lay on his back with his leather jacket open and a huge red stain coating the chest of his white T-shirt. If he hadn't recovered by now, the likelihood of the shot penetrating his heart or lung was high.

"Once you're cleared with the medic, I want you all to get to the administration building. We'll meet on the ground floor for a debriefing." With those last words, the man stood and moved to join the rest of security, who were rounding up the rogues who hadn't fled at the sight of them.

"I need a medic!" Riley called out.

Aiden turned toward his sister, several yards away. He rushed toward her as she struggled to walk with Seth, who appeared on the brink of collapse. When he reached them, Riley collapsed to her knees, letting Seth fall into Aiden's arms.

"What the hell happened?"

Riley looked up from her place on the ground as Charlotte came up to her side, kneeling as well. "He'd already taken a beating. A bat to his stomach and ribs. But this asshole tried to snap his neck, and when I got them separated, two more jumped on him while I was occupied. They bit him and tore into him and, and…" Riley started sobbing. "One of them had a knife!"

"What the fuck? Did he get stabbed?" He looked down at Seth, who hadn't opened his eyes or said anything. Determining his injuries proved difficult because of the numerous tattoos adorning his arms and the blood soaking his torn T-shirt.

"Yes!" Riley screamed at him. She scrambled forward on her knees, jerking up Seth's shirt. Next to his Korrena mark along his Adonis belt, a stab wound poured blood down over his jeans.

Charlotte gasped.

Aiden quickly moved Seth to the ground, putting pressure on the wound. They only needed to stabilize him until his preternatural healing took over.

The area wasn't near a vital organ, but he didn't know for sure. He wasn't a medical major. He'd already changed majors twice. Considering what kept happening with his friends, maybe medicine would be worth switching to.

Lukas and Blaire approached with the medic from before and another woman who carried a similar bag.

"He's been stabbed," he told them. Riley couldn't provide the information they needed fast enough. "Several bite wounds. He's also taken several hits with a bat to his torso."

Charlotte struggled to pull Riley away from Seth's body, so Aiden helped pull his sister away as she fought against them, weeping and cursing.

"Wake up, Seth! You have to wake up! You can't leave me!"

Blaire made a strangled noise, and Lukas pulled her into his arms as they moved away from the medics surrounding Seth.

Riley trembled in Aiden's arms as he kept them tight around her, stroking the back of her head.

This year hadn't been fair to her.

She not only had to watch her brother die, but now she had to watch her Korrena—the man she loved since before she even knew the meaning of the word—lay broken and battered, life hinging on how quickly his healing abilities could compete against the natural progression of death.

They stood there for so long the security teams had time to clear the field, leaving them standing around the medics working on Seth. Dominic went with them, likely to inform the headmistress and the Blackthorn Clan of what happened. Two additional medics joined them to help tend to Seth's injuries.

With his shirt cut from his body, and the blood wiped away, they could see the bruises marring his skin. His ribs had to be broken; the entire area was black and purple. His abdomen sported mottled splotches of purple, blue, and yellow. Bite marks from where the rogues had tried to tear chunks out of him branded his arms and upper body. Two nasty gashes on his collarbone displayed how they tried to rip his throat out, but Seth must have moved too fast for them to make their mark.

Aiden's eyes burned.

The locations and nature of the markings and wounds left no doubt in his mind that Seth had narrowly escaped death several times during the fight. He fought like hell, and he deserved to live for that alone.

He needed to live. Not only for himself, but because he couldn't leave Riley. He'd never forgive himself if he died, leaving her behind. Whatever waited for them after death beyond that space of floating purgatory Aiden found himself in, Seth wouldn't enjoy it. Not knowing he left Riley behind like this.

Noah joined them, and Aiden nodded at him.

The area brightened. Dew glittered under the rays of the morning sun as it rose in the east. Light blue and purple ivyleaf morning glories littered the field, their trumpet-shaped blooms opening wide, gracing the world with their beauty even as blood stained the ground around them.

As the first direct rays of the sun broke over the forest surrounding the clearing, Seth groaned.

"Two hours and fourteen minutes," one medic said.

"What does that mean?" Charlotte asked Blaire.

The female medic closest to them turned. "We attempted to keep him stabilized without moving him until his body's healing capabilities kicked in. It took him that long. We record things like this for future emergencies."

Aiden hoped there wouldn't be a need for that information, but if something this severe happened to Seth again, if more than the recorded time passed, it could mean he wouldn't recover.

Riley broke from Aiden's hold and tried to push through the medics, but they held her back.

"He's still injured. His body has to recover or you risk opening his wounds and refracturing what we suspect are several broken ribs."

"Firecracker," Seth croaked.

Riley sobbed; her body slumped in the arms of the medic. "You asshole! "

Seth's laughter turned into a cough as he clutched his side.

"You all need to get to the administration building now that he's stable," the woman said, passing Riley to Aiden when he stepped forward, meeting Seth's eyes. "We will take him to the medical wing for a thorough examination now that he is no longer in danger if we move him."

He nodded, still looking at the man he considered his brother.

Seth's eyes were glistening, but he said nothing. He didn't have to. Aiden knew enough about Seth to know he recognized he'd almost died. Seth swallowed and blinked, the tears gathered in his eyes spilling over his temples. "I love you, Firecracker," he said, voice rough as Aiden led her away to join the others.