Chapter 18 Mira
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Mira
It happened too fast. One moment, we were in the town celebration.
Suddenly, there’s blood on my hands.
And Hudson, dragging me here in the woods followed by the wolf, massive and black-furred, tearing him apart with a violence that should have sent me running.
Instead, I’d looked into those storm-gray eyes and known.
Lucian.
The wolf was Lucian. And I wasn’t afraid. That probably said more about my mental state than I wanted to examine, but there wasn’t time for a breakdown.
Percy was bleeding.
“I’m sorry, Percy.”
My hands pressed against Percy’s shoulder, slick with blood that wouldn’t stop coming, and every time I tried to hold the cloth tighter, the red soaked through and found my fingers again.
“Hey.” Percy’s voice was strained but warm. Even now. Even bleeding on a forest floor with a dart in his shoulder and gold burning through his eyes. “I’m fine. Barely a scratch.”
“You were hurt because you came to save me.”
“That’s my job.” He grinned up at me, and the grin was so absurdly, infuriatingly Percy that I wanted to slap him and hug him at the same time. “Besides, Solomon owes me one now. I plan to collect.”
“Shut up. Shut up and stop talking and let me...”
I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know what I was trying to do.
I wasn’t a doctor and I wasn’t even a lycan.
I was a woman in a ruined blue dress with blood on her hands and a dead man somewhere behind her in the woods, and the only useful thing I’d managed was to keep pressure on a wound I couldn’t heal.
Lucian appeared beside me as a wolf. His muzzle is still dark with Hudson’s blood. He lowered his head and nudged my arm with his nose, a gesture so gentle from a creature that had just ripped a heart from a man’s chest that my brain couldn’t reconcile the two realities.
He dropped to his front legs. An invitation.
Solomon lifted Percy with one arm, keeping the cloth pressed against the wound, and helped him onto Lucian’s back. I climbed on after, wrapping my arms around Percy from behind, holding him upright against the wolf’s broad frame.
We moved through the woods in silence. Far from the streets and the town.
Lucian carried us through the trees using paths no human would find, moving with a speed that blurred the forest into streaks of black and silver.
Solomon ran alongside us, his footsteps inhumanly quiet, scanning the darkness for threats that might follow.
The cabin materialized through the trees.
Solomon held the door while Lucian padded inside and lowered himself so Percy could slide off. I helped guide him to the couch, my hands refusing to leave his arm, his shoulder, any part of him I could reach.
“I’ll tend to him first, then clean up the body before morning.” Solomon was already pulling supplies from a cabinet I hadn’t known existed. Bandages, bottles of liquid that smelled of herbs and metal, cloths, a pair of surgical-looking pliers. “The dart needs to come out.”
There was a rustle of movement behind me. I turned and found Lucian in the hallway, human again, buttoning his shirt messily. He must have shifted back while I was focused on Percy. His clothes were wrinkled, half-buttoned, his hair falling across his forehead in a dark mess.
He crossed the room and crouched beside the couch, his eyes scanning Percy’s face.
“How are you feeling?” His voice was low. But I caught the tension beneath it.
“Like I got shot.” Percy’s grin was strained. “So, you know. Tuesday.”
Lucian didn’t smile. His jaw tightened, and he gave a single nod before rising and stepping back to give Solomon room to work. He didn’t leave, though. He stood against the wall, arms crossed, watching.
Our eyes met. He held my gaze for a beat, his expression unreadable, then shifted his attention back to Percy.
Solomon worked with the quiet efficiency of a man who’d patched battlefield wounds for centuries.
He gripped the dart with the pliers and pulled.
Percy hissed through his teeth, his fingers digging into the couch cushions, gold flashing through his irises.
The dart came free with a wet sound that turned my stomach.
“Burns. Whatever’s on it burns,” Percy managed.
Solomon examined the tip. His jaw tightened and he set it aside without comment and began cleaning the wound.
“Is he going to be okay?” The words came out harsh. “What was on that dart? Why did it burn?”
Solomon didn’t answer. His focus stayed on the wound.
“I’m a lycan, Mira.” Percy turned his head toward me. His face was pale but his voice held steady. “We heal. Faster than you’d believe. This will be closed in a bit.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No but it means you have nothing to worry about.”
I looked at the wound. The bleeding had slowed already. In the time it had taken Solomon to remove the dart, the edges of the puncture had begun knitting together, new tissue forming over raw muscle.
It should have been impossible and it was still terrifying.
“That’s...” I leaned closer, watching skin stitch itself back together in real time. “How is that possible?”
“Told you.” Percy’s smile was tired. “Lycan.”
“Percival, I want you to be honest with the pain.” Solomon pressed a bandage over the wound. “The celebration has humans outside. They could find Hudson’s body before I get to it so I need to know if you’re okay.”
Percy pushed himself upright against the couch arm. “Yeah, I keep telling you guys. Go. Deal with it. I just need to sleep this off.”
Solomon studied him for a moment, then lifted him off the couch in one fluid motion. Percy protested but Solomon was already carrying him up the stairs. I followed, hovering at their heels, my hands reaching for Percy’s arm every few steps.
Solomon set him on his bed, pulling the blanket over his chest and checked the bandage one final time.
“I’ll stay with him.” I didn’t realize I’d said it until the words were already out. “You can go. I’m not leaving until I know he’s okay.”
“Mira.” Percy caught my hand and squeezed. His grip was weaker than usual but his eyes were clear and focused. “You should rest too. You’re probably scared.”
“I’m not scared.” My voice cracked on the lie. “I’m pissed. You got hurt because of me. Because Hudson was after me. So don’t tell me to rest when you’re lying here with a hole in your shoulder.”
He blinked at me. A slow smile spread across his face, soft and wondering.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing. Just... you’re kind of amazing when you’re angry.”
“Shut up and heal.”
His eyes were drooping. The gold fading back to hazel as his body surrendered to whatever healing process lycans used to knit themselves back together. His hand went slack in mine.
I didn’t let go.
“I’ll be back shortly.” Solomon left to handle the body.
The cabin went quiet.
I sat on the floor beside his bed, Percy’s hand still in mine, and watched him breathe.
This is my fault.
Hours passed. Dawn crept through the windows in gray stripes. Percy slept, I didn’t.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
“Mira.”
Lucian stood behind me. His shirt was wrinkled, half-tucked, the top buttons open. He looked as wrecked as I felt.
“Come with me. You need to eat, and I need to check your wrist where he grabbed you.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“You’ve been on this floor for four hours. He’s healing. Solomon confirmed it before he left. And Percy is strong. He’s one of my warriors. This is nothing to him.”
“I’m not...”
“Mira.” His voice softened. Just barely. “Please.”
The “please” did it. Lucian Valdris didn’t say please. The word sounded foreign in his mouth, and the fact that he’d used it on me made my resistance crumble.
I pressed my lips to Percy’s knuckles. Set his hand on his chest and stood on legs that ached from sitting on hardwood for hours. Lucian’s hand hovered at the small of my back as he steered me to his office where the first aid kit sat on his desk beside a glass of water he’d already poured.
He prepared this while I’d been sitting with Percy, knowing I wouldn’t leave willingly, knowing he’d have to give me a practical reason instead of telling me to rest.
The room was dim.
Dawn light filtered through the curtained window. He closed the door behind us.
It felt too small for the silence. My dress was ruined. Blood on the hem, the shoulder torn where Hudson had grabbed me, dirt ground into the fabric from the forest floor. My hands were still shaking. Clenching them into fists didn’t help.
The trembling migrated to my arms, my shoulders, my jaw.
A wolf.
Tonight I’d seen a wolf. A massive black wolf with storm gray eyes that I recognized from the memory fragment from before.
I knew that wolf. I’d touched his fur, cleaned his wounds.
“Are you hurt?” Lucian leaned against his desk, arms crossed. He nodded toward the first aid kit. “Sit. Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“The bruises on your throat say otherwise.”
I touched my neck and flinched. The skin was tender where Hudson’s fingers had dug in, and I knew without looking that the marks would be purple by noon.
“Sit down, Mira.” He says with a patient but exhausted voice.
“I don’t need to sit.”
He opened the first aid kit, pulling out an antiseptic and gauze. Set them on the desk with careful, deliberate movements. “Your wrist is swelling. Let me wrap it.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You flinched when you touched your own neck. Let me see.”
“I said I’m fine, Lucian.”
He held the gauze out to me. I didn’t take it.
The shaking in my hands had spread to my whole body now, a constant vibration that I couldn’t will away, and reaching for that gauze meant admitting I was hurt and admitting I was hurt meant admitting that my plan had been reckless and stupid and could have gotten Percy killed.
“Drink the water, then.” He pushed the glass toward me.
I didn’t touch it.