Chapter 41
forty-one
-Serena-
I can barely piece things together and realize this isn’t a hallucination, or even a nightmare.
This is really happening. Tearing through his shirt, I stare at the round bleeding wound in the center of his chest. Panic floods me.
I know it’s supposed to heal, just like last time. But this one isn’t healing.
“Ma’am,” one of the club guards drops to his knees beside me, his eyes growing wide, recognizing Set.
“No police,” I order, knowing well enough this has to stay private. He can’t be taken to a hospital. That will get the FBI on our backs and probably half a dozen other government agencies we’ve never even heard of.
“On it,” the guard nods, rushing off to deal with the witnesses.
I can’t focus on what’s going on around me anymore. Set’s breath is getting uneven, and the screams of the people running around us blur into background noise as I desperately stare at the wound, praying for his body to reject the bullet.
But then Set’s lips move, and I hear the words I dread most. “Something’s wrong.” My world stops in that instant. Dark thoughts cloud my mind, but I fight them with everything I’ve got. I’m not giving up on him.
“Tell me what to do. Anything,” I nearly scream between tears, still processing how we ended up here. He doesn’t even seem to hear me for a few seconds. Still, my cries are louder than the oblivion swallowing him. “Set.”
His hand barely reaches into his pocket. The effort’s too much for him to bear, but his phone slips from his fingers, his breath shallow and fading. “W… Whiro.”
I instantly grab the phone, my bloodied fingers sliding uselessly over the screen that won’t recognize me. I wipe them on my skirt along with the screen, then type in my name—his password—and hit call when I get to Whiro’s contact.
Every second waiting for him to pick up feels like a year, every breath a nightmare, just to realize he’s not answering. But I’m not giving up. I call again, this time finally getting through to him.
“What the fuck is it?” he answers, his voice raw and I’m pretty sure I hear moaning in the background.
But I don’t have time for this. And neither does he. “Set,” I murmur, unable to explain what happened. “It’s serious.”
“Where are you?” he asks, his voice much more tight.
“At The Inferna,” I choke. “In the alley.” The words stumble out, my thoughts all over the place.
“I’ll be there in three,” Whiro says before hanging up on me, and somehow I wish he were still on the other end, because there’s an eerie silence settling around me, despite the pounding music still coming from the club and the few startled voices of the people who saw what happened.
The club guards quickly form a line, strong enough to block any prying eyes, managing the few eyewitnesses so we won’t end up with the police on our hands.
Set’s breathing grows so shallow that I fear each one might be the last. I can’t help but feel responsible for all the times I wished for this. When I saw this as the solution to all of my problems. Because him gone would mean my freedom.
But now… now it feels like someone’s draining the air out of my lungs.
My own body is jerking uncontrollably from the shock, and in the time it takes Whiro to get here, memories of me and Set together play in the back of my mind.
The bad ones seem to have vanished completely.
Only the good ones remain, and that’s all that matters.
All that matters is that he survives this.
But as much as I keep staring at the bullet wound and expect his body to reject the bullet, all I see is more blood pooling from the injury.
“Set, please,” I beg as if it’s in his power to stop it. I keep doing it anyway, praying he’ll find the strength to fight this.
Strange to pray to God for the devil’s son, but it doesn’t stop me. At this point, I’d do anything not to lose him. “Please… please… please,” I repeat so many times, it feels like it’s the only word I’ve got left in my vocabulary.
“What the fuck happened here?” Whiro emerges from the shadows, his voice almost ragged.
“He… he got shot.” I manage to say, trying to pull myself back together and come up with a plan. “He’s not healing,” I murmur, looking at Whiro, silently begging him to come up with a solution.
The only thing he gives me is a confused look in return. He probably just realized I know about them. But we don’t have time to go into the polemics. Set needs us. I just pray Whiro knows what to do, because I have no idea where to go from here.
He starts searching Set’s pockets for his car keys, and as soon as he finds them, he hits the alarm so he can see where Set’s car is parked.
The sound echoes from somewhere behind us, deeper in the alley.
I didn’t even notice it with all the commotion around us.
He probably parked there so I wouldn’t see him.
That certainly didn’t turn out as he planned.
Without warning, Whiro shifts under Set’s arm, lifting him off the ground to drag him to the car. I try to help him, but one of the guards pushes me aside and helps Whiro carry him.
The second, we’re all in the car, Whiro drives off in a hurry, phone already in hand. I’m not sure where we’re heading, but it doesn’t feel like a hospital.
He fires off call after call, and I realize we’re heading to the airport—L.A.
, more specifically. He doesn’t get off the phone before we reach the airport—which only takes us a couple of minutes since Whiro speeds like a madman.
A private jet’s already waiting for us there, and he just leaves the car on the tarmac as if he doesn’t give a damn if it would bother anyone else.
We get Set on board. He’s still unconscious when we lay him across a reclined seat, and Whiro doesn’t wait for the plane to take off before ripping Set’s shirt open to inspect the wound.
“It’s too risky to take the bullet out with my knife,” he says with the weird stillness—so uncharacteristic of him.
He’s usually either volcanic or flat-out insane.
The fact that he’s so serious about things only sends a cool chill down my spine.
I wrap my hand over Set’s, bringing his fingers to rest on my cheek, hoping to still feel any trace of warmth. He’s barely alive. And a wave of desperation sweeps through me.
“Why did you get him on this plane? Couldn’t you have found someone here to help him?” I ask Whiro for an explanation. It’s not his judgment I’m questioning. It’s my own sanity.
“We can’t exactly take him to a hospital. But we can take him to someone who might know what this is, and why this is happening?”
“One of your brothers?” I ask, suspecting we’re about to meet another one of the gods. I can’t even believe I’m saying this. It sounds insane, but one look at Whiro, and I realize it’s very much real. Because he looks unearthly.
“Yeah... Draco. Or Apep, as you mortals used to call him.”
“God of Chaos, if I remember correctly,” I chime in, dragging up an old history lesson.
“We’re all Gods of Chaos, one way or the other. Set just needs to be the god of self-healing today,” Whiro says in the same serious tone right before he leaves to check Set's vital signs again. Then he looks at his watch. “It’s an hour flight. Let’s just hope he makes it that long.”
We exchange glances, but no other words for a while, letting morbid silence settle over us for more than half of the ride.
“I didn’t even get to ask who shot him,” Whiro finally breaks the silence, while all I could hear for the last minute was Set breathing. It’s like I’m getting addicted to it, impatiently waiting for each breath.
“A guy jumped out of a car and pulled a gun. Set shot him back, but someone else dragged the guy’s body back in the car.” I pause because my mind is so blurred that I can’t even remember what happened clearly. “We… we were having an argument.”
“Yeah, I know he wanted to crash your night out. We were at a bar, having drinks. I guess he’s lucky the girl I hooked up with lived so close to the club.”
“Oh, so that’s what you were doing.” Or more exactly, that’s who he was doing. I suspected he was in the middle of something when I called him, judging by his ragged voice.
“Maybe I should’ve gone with him to the club,” Whiro says with a hint of regret in his voice.
“Don’t fucking talk as if he’s going to die,” my gaze shoots at him, refusing to hear his regrets. He won’t have a reason to present them.
“He’s not gonna fucking die. We’re gods.
Bullets won’t kill us.” Whiro says, but I can hear the uncertainty in his words.
He’s only saying it to make me feel better and probably calm me down.
But there’s no calming me down until I get to see Set’s eyes opening again.
Until I get to hear him calling out my name.
“Don’t leave me. Don’t you fucking dare leave me,” I murmur into his ear, eyes fixed on the slow rise of his chest. And then I whisper it again and again and again, hoping the message gets through to him loud and clear.
I want him.
I want to be with him.
I accept him into my life.
I’m starting to believe he is my life.
The moment the plane lowers the stairs, a large figure makes its way inside.
A man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, strides straight to Set, a serious look etched on his face as he checks his wound for almost a minute.
“Let’s get him to my house,” he says to Whiro, and I think it’s only then that he notices I’m in the plane too, because he stops to look at me.
And I can see he gets the family genes. Short black hair slicked back, sides shaved; eyes dark as night and piercing as well; a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, and a body sculpted like he lives at the gym. A god’s physique for sure.