Chapter Twenty-Three

Pain burned across my back as I felt the darkness begin to fade. My body felt so stiff, as if I hadn't moved for days.

‘That's because you haven't,'my wolf said with a growl. ‘It took longer than normal for me to heal you. There was something in the griffin's claws that slowed our healing. Had you been a normal human you would have bled out and died.'

I fought a dark chuckle at his words. ‘Well thank the gods that I have you then.'

"Ayden?"

My eyes opened slightly at the sound of Sasha's voice. My wolf pressed forward to see her himself. Both of us were eager to see what damage to our mate we might find as we looked up at her.

To both our relief, she was unharmed. Not even a speck of dirt sat on her skin as she smiled with her own relief back at me. But then came the question.

Why hadn't she fought back?

She had frozen there. I could see her hand twitch with the desire to react, but she didn't. She may as well have been a statue alongside the fountain figure in the square. The only time she moved was when the damned griffin took a step towards her.

I was about to ask her what had happened, but a large male frame from the corner of my eye appeared then and smiled down at me as he saw my eyes opened.

"Well, there you are, Buddy," Baer said. "I was wondering if you'd ever open those pretty moonbeam eyes of yours."

I growled at him, though there wasn't as much of a bite to it as I had wanted. My wolf had grown soft on the other alpha king.

‘So have you,'my wolf inserted.

I rolled my eyes and groaned as I tried to sit up.

"Not so fast!" Aurora called out as she joined the others in the cramped room they had laid me down in. "You may be awake, but you are not healed enough for that. Sit still while I check your bandages."

As Aurora unwrapped my back, the sting of the injury made my skin heat up and I clenched my jaw. My eyes were set on Sasha as the other two worked together.

They would ask me what hurt occasionally, and I'd answer honestly, but my gaze stayed on my mate's. The question burning in my eyes as she stared right back at me with a flash of the stubborn girl I had always loved.

"What's the final consensus?" Sasha asked as she continued to hold my stare.

"Two more days," Aurora answered. "He should be good to resume travel by then. I'll admit, we were wrong about how long it would take him to wake up, but I'm pretty sure his wolf has it from here. Whatever was keeping him from healing is gone now."

I watched the relief wash over Sasha's face at her cousin's words.

"Wait! Just how long was I out?" I asked then, suddenly curious as to exactly how long it had taken my wolf to get this far into healing my wounds from the griffin.

Everyone stood silently as they exchanged glances. Each seeming to question the others who was going to answer this simple question.

Baer sighed then and shook his head. "You were unconscious for a little over a week."

I growled again and pushed myself against the bed to try to sit up.

"What?" I demanded. "How in the hell can that be? What about the witch? Why did nobody continue chasing after her?"

Sasha pushed me back down against the bed and pointed her finger at me. "If you think for one second that any of us would have been willing to leave you behind to chase after Minerva then you're a gods damned idiot, Ayden Fairchild!"

"Hey," Baer said as he put himself between myself and Sasha. "Go easy on him, will ya. I'd be reacting the same way in his place, and so would you."

She folded her arms over her chest as she stared back at me.

"The point is, we couldn't just leave you behind. For one, my wolf would have lost her mind had I even thought to do it. For two, you are the only one of us who fully understands how your uncle's magic works. It's come in handy plenty of times already in this place. It's far more likely we would have gotten lost without you and never found Minerva ever."

I felt my wolf huff in the back of my head with agreement to what she said. Even if they continued on the path, there was no guarantee that the ground wouldn't suddenly shift. Not without the grounding magic I used to track our location and check for nearby monsters.

Though, a lot of good it does me with the flying beasts.

"Fine," I growled. "Is it really necessary to wait any longer?"

"If you think you can move then you have another thing coming," Aurora piped in at that. "One wrong move and you are popping that wound right back open. Two days was not an over exaggeration, Ayden."

I rolled my eyes as I slumped back against the bed, ignoring the obvious sting of pain that proved Aurora correct.

"Where is that book that I found?" I asked. "If I'm going to be stuck here in this bed for a couple of days, I'd like to make use of them and be somewhat productive."

Sasha stood and retrieved my bag from the other room. I watched as she unzipped the main zipper compartment and pulled the book out.

"Here," she said as she offered it out to me.

I nodded to the table beside me, then looked over at Baer and Aurora.

"If you two are done playing doctor on me, I'd like to talk to my mate for a moment. Privately."

Baer grinned at Aurora before snatching her by the waist and leaping towards the doorway. "Playing doctor sounds a lot more fun with just the two of us. You two take your time."

I could hear the both of them laughing as they left the building to give us space to talk. Sasha shifted in her seat, her jaw setting in a defiant line as she seemed to know exactly what I was about to get at.

"I know what you're going to say," she blurted out.

"Oh?" I asked. "Well then go ahead and say it so I don't have to."

"I froze. I didn't react at all like the warrior princess you say I am. And because of that, you got hurt. But you don't know what was going through my head!"

"You don't think I didn't get a good sense of the fear you were paralyzed from?" I demanded. "You really think that I didn't know exactly what was running through your head as that griffin was closing in on you. Who's the idiot now then, Rigel?"

She let out a growl that came more as a whimper from her lips. "It was targeting me, and that gods damned voice was in my head telling me to kill it like I did the kelpie."

"And?" I asked, her lips tightening into the straight line as she stared back at me.

"And nothing, I didn't know what to do."

"You fight," I said firmly. "You fight that voice, and you fight the monster that is threatening your life. You don't just sit there and take it!"

She stood up with enough force to knock her chair over, her eyes glaring down her nose at me.

"You make it sound so fucking easy," she accused. "I'd like to see how you react to being frozen like that."

She stormed out of the room before I could respond. I gritted my teeth together to keep from yelling after her out of anger, because it wasn't really anger.

It was my own fear for her.

It wasn't that I wanted her to feel bad for freezing up in fear. I could understand that level of fear. I've faced that kind of fear myself as a child up on the hill with my uncle during the full moon ritual. But that kind of reaction to fear only gets you hurt. Or worse.

That was where my fear came from. That was the fear that powered me forward to fight the griffin and save her. It was a fear of losing her to the darkness.

‘Her wolf told me something before they ran off,'my wolf told me.

"What's that?" I asked.

‘The voice spoke to her as well. It wasn't quite in their mind anymore, but it was close enough to speak to them both and to tempt Sasha into the darkness of that magic.'

I tapped my finger on the cover of the book as I took in that information.

The voice was close. Not inside her mind, but close enough to establish a small connection to her to speak.

"The voice has a body then," I surmised.

‘It would seem so,'my wolf agreed. ‘I must rest now. I plan to have you healed by tomorrow just so that we can prove the other two wrong.'

I smirked at that and picked up the book from the table. I opened it as my wolf nestled into the back of my mind to rest before he continued healing me. It was the perfect opportunity to really take in this translated book and try to figure out what help it might offer us.

The first few pages were filled with descriptions of the technology of what I had seen in the library. The use of the crystals and the canals that I had noticed along the roads.

This place, as it turned out, had a similar layout to the modern-day Venice. Both walkways and canals were used to travel throughout the entire city. Still, I had yet to find the name of the city.

I flipped a few more pages and frowned as I saw the mention of beings with magical powers living within the city limits. Beings who came from all around the world to meet and trade within this mystery city.

Witches, shifters, and gods.

"Interesting."