7. Best Friends & Burning Houses
Chapter seven
Best Friends & Burning Houses
ETHAN
I ’m in a pretty foul mood today. Kadi went and stayed with the witch last night and called about twenty minutes ago saying he’s on his way with news. He sounds pissy though so I can only imagine what happened there after the hoodie guy melted himself.
I still can’t figure out why I’m feeling the way I am about her and the more I stew on it, the more confused and angry I get.
Slamming the door to my office, I sit down at my desk and lower my head to my hands. Joaquin came back late last night and gave me a rundown of what happened. The very last thing I want to deal with is black magic or the Society. It has all the memories of my parents coming up and it’s making me extra pissy.
I was supposed to take the morning shift watching over the witch’s shop, but Joaquin asked to do it instead for some reason. My senses are tingling that something big is about to happen and I’m not going to like whatever it is.
Kadi steps into my office. He has a funny look on his face, and he stands there for a second just staring at me. After a moment, I catch his scent.
What the actual fuck?
“What the hell is going on?” I demand. “Start talking.”
“If the reason you’re yelling is because I smell like Shasta then you’re about to hear some news you’re not going to like.” He crosses his arms over his chest in defiance. “She’s my mate.”
“Your what?” He can’t be serious right now.
No way. He can’t be mated to a witch. Flashes of my burning house, my parents screaming, the smell of smoke and charred flesh, all run through my mind while he stands there waiting for a response. Also, why am I so jealous at his words?
Roaring, I stand and flip my desk. Pushing past Kadi I go to head out the door when he grabs my arm. “No. We are going to talk about this, and you aren’t running.”
I shake his hand off my arm and snort, continuing out the door. Pushing the button to open the garage, I swing my leg over my bike and make it before the door even opens all the way, ducking under it on my way out. Kadi is only a few seconds behind me.
Well, he’s gonna have to wait a while because I’m not stopping till I’m damn good and ready. I didn’t put my helmet on before I left but I don’t care. At this point if I wrecked and cracked my head open it would probably be a good thing. There haven’t been many times in my life that I thought my dying would just be better for everyone around me. But there have been a few.
I used to cut myself as a teenager. Kadi’s mom caught me one day. I’ll never forget the look of pain in her eyes when she realized what I was doing. They had me admitted for a few days to talk to someone. Though it really did no good. No one will ever make me think what happened to my parents was out of my control.
I still have scars on my arms but I’ve covered them with tattoos over the years.
They shoved me into the crawl space under the floor. We had prepared for this, so I knew what to do. But they were always supposed to go with me. I watched them until I couldn’t watch anymore, until it was too dangerous to stay, and I crawled the rest of the way out and ran to Kadi’s house.
I should have run and got help, but all I could do was watch them fight for their lives just to die anyway. All to make sure I was safe. They were true mates too. Fated love.
I’m just so tired.
Tired of being alone, tired of hating myself for not being able to protect my parents or being able to save them. Now my best friend is mated to one of the people I hate the most in the world. But do I really hate her?
My body shakes with rage, hurt, and pain and I feel tears on my face as I ride.
I’m crying?
Anger boils inside of me and I pick up the pace, going close to a hundred, while Kadi tries to catch up behind me. The wind whips my long curly hair around, having come out of the tie a way back. A large chunk of my hair suddenly sticks to my face where it's wet and I miss the corner and my bike starts flipping.
KADI
I watch, helpless, as Ethan’s bike begins to flip end over end. Racing toward him, I park my bike and run to where he lands, taking my helmet off as I go.
He isn’t moving.
Whipping my phone out I call for an ambulance and kneel on the ground next to him. He looks broken. There’s a large gash on the front of his head. Blood is everywhere. One of his arms is broken and I don’t like the way his leg looks. No road rash thankfully, as he bit it at the curve in the road, but there are large boulders here and he hit a couple of them when he was flipping.
“Hello, nine-one-one what’s your emergency?”
The operator’s voice sounds tinny in my ear, like they are far away, or maybe I’m just in shock seeing my best friend like this.
Clearing my throat I say, “There's been an accident. Highway 74 West, just a couple miles out on the right hand side, mile marker 17. One motorcycle. He flipped about five times and is still unconscious. Head wound, broken arm, and possibly leg. Lion shifter.”
“I’ll get someone right out to you, just stay on the line with me until they get there, okay?”
We have a special unit that comes for supes with healers instead of paramedics. Their healing powers don’t work on humans. Only other supernaturals. So, they get the paramedics and we get the healers.
Each race of supes has their own type of healers. They’re the same race but separate offshoots. Witch healers can work on anyone. Shifter healers can only work on other shifters.
I swipe his hair out of his face, unsticking the chunk from over his eye. Was he crying? Is that how this happened? Ethan, Ethan, what the hell man? I knew this was all going to be hard on him, but it kinda seems like he may have spent all night stewing on this. Me telling him Shasta is my mate was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.
Great. This is basically my fault, though it’s his fault in a way too. He knows better than to ride with no helmet. That’s why he always grabs one. The one time he doesn’t, this happens. Something isn’t adding up here.
“ Sir, they’re about five minutes away, just hang tight. How’s his pulse?”
Putting the phone on speaker I lay it on the ground next to me. I very gently turn Ethan onto his back so that I can check his pulse. Being a shifter, something like this usually won’t kill us, but we can be knocked unconscious just like anyone else, though it doesn’t last long.
Gods dammit, what the hell was he thinking? His pulse isn’t very strong but it’s not super weak either so I can breathe a little easier.
“It’s midrange, I guess. Not strong but not weak. He just isn’t waking up.”
“ What’s his name? I’m going to let the unit know so they can try to get him talking after they get there.”
“Ethan Lejon.” I make sure to spell and pronounce it correctly so that they aren’t calling him Le John. “It’s pronounced Le-yon,” I tell her. I hear a gasp on the other end of the line. She must know who he is then.
“ O-okay, got it. They’re almost there sir. I’ll let you go now and relay this over to them.”
“Thank you,” I say, ending the call. As I do, I hear the sirens on the emergency unit just down the road.
“Okay, brother, here they come. When you wake up, me and you are gonna have a talk,” I say softly. They pull in and a couple healers get out and start working on him, pushing me out of the way. I stand next to them and the driver comes over and gets my statement for the medical form. I tell him everything from him leaving without a helmet on to the crash. Leaving nothing out.
It doesn’t make sense that he hasn’t woken up by now. Shifters have faster healing, so it’s not normal for one of us to be out this long for a bump on the head. It could be something magical. I won’t rule that out. I shoot Joaquin a text to let him know what happened and to tell him to pay attention to what’s going on around Shasta.
He sends me a message back saying to keep him posted and a picture of Shasta, in a chair in the shop, eating a banana and reading a book. Well, all good there, for now. I can focus on Ethan.
The tow company will take the bike back to the garage. Everyone knows better than to take one of our bikes anywhere but the garage. The club house is attached and one of the other guys will grab it when it gets there and take it inside.
Hopping on my bike, I strap my helmet on and follow the emergency unit to Supe General. Since it’s very, very rare, if ever, anyone in the supe community needs to be on life support of any kind, we have our own hospital. The human doctors don’t know anything about how to take care of us anyway. The ones that do care only want to do experiments. So, they stick to patching up other humans and leave us alone. There are laws protecting us, though some things still do happen.
When we arrive, they get Ethan settled into a room. The two healers are still working on him. It looks like his arm and leg are healed, and so is the outside wound on his head. Both have their hands hovering over his face as if they are trying to do an assessment.
“I can’t figure it out,” one of them finally says. “He should be awake, but I don’t sense any reason why he isn’t. I’m going to go call a witch friend of mine to see if she can help. She’s a very strong witch and may be able to sense if there’s some kind of magic blocking his healing.”
I nod.
She steps out of the room. The other healer, a man, continues to monitor Ethan. He fluffs his pillow, tucks the blanket around him, and straightens his arms out beside him. He just looks like he’s sleeping.
Bracing my elbows on my knees, I steeple my fingers and lean my forehead against them. In the back of my mind I wonder if the witch the healer was talking about is Shasta. Honestly it doesn’t matter what witch it is, Ethan is still going to freak out.
I’m going to have to let them know so they can take precautions.
I stand and walk out to the hallway to let her know. She is still on the phone and holds up a finger for me. So now I wait.