Chapter 33 #2
The sound makes my stomach turn. Claws tearing through muscle, scraping against bone. Chase howls and wheels around, snapping at Knox's legs. His teeth catch empty air as Knox dances back, then forward again in a blur of grey fur.
Knox's jaws close on Chase's ear. He wrenches his head sideways and the ear tears free with a wet ripping sound. He spits it on the ground between them.
Chase staggers. Blood pours from where his ear used to be, running down his neck to mix with the throat wound. He's breathing hard now, sides heaving, disoriented and bleeding from multiple injuries.
But Knox isn't trying to drive him off. Every move is calculated for maximum damage, every strike aimed at vital areas. This isn't a dominance fight. This is an execution.
Chase's body tenses. His haunches bunch and for a second I think he's going to lunge again. Instead he pivots toward the tree line.
Knox is faster.
He lunges before Chase takes a full step, jaws closing on Chase's hind leg and yanking hard.
Chase goes down in a tumble of brown fur and flailing limbs.
They roll together, a tangle of teeth and claws and snarling fury, staying within my view as they grapple across the blood-stained ground.
When they separate, Knox is on top with his jaws locked around Chase's throat.
Chase thrashes beneath him. His claws rake Knox's chest and belly, tearing through fur and flesh, trying desperately to break free. Blood wells up from the wounds but Knox doesn't let go. His jaws tighten and I hear the wet crunch of cartilage collapsing.
Chase's struggling grows weaker. His paws scrabble uselessly at the ground, claws leaving furrows in the dirt as his air runs out. A horrible gurgling sound comes from his ruined throat.
Knox's eyes are ice-cold as he watches Chase die. When the brown wolf finally goes still beneath him, Knox holds the bite for another full minute. Waiting. Making certain there's no heartbeat, no breath, no chance of survival.
Only then does he release Chase's torn throat and step back.
More wolves burst through the trees. Julian's dark grey wolf reaches me first, positioning himself over my silver form.
His tongue rasps across my muzzle in quick, anxious strokes as he checks me for injuries.
Caspian's massive amber wolf and Nico's brown wolf form a protective wall between me and Chase's corpse.
Knox stands over the body, sides heaving, blood dripping from his muzzle and the wounds on his chest and shoulder. He lifts his head and lets out a long, victorious howl that echoes through the forest.
The howl fades. Silence falls except for our breathing and the drip of blood hitting leaves.
I try to stand but my legs won't hold me. The poison is still in my system, burning through my veins and preventing my wolf from healing the cuts properly. Even in wolf form, the wounds remain open and weeping, the black edges spreading slowly beneath my silver fur.
Knox shifts first. Bones crack and reshape until he's human again, covered in blood but the wounds already healing, his shifter metabolism working to close the gashes.
Julian shifts next, kneeling beside me with gentle hands running over my silver fur.
"Nova, can you shift back?" His voice is soft and careful.
I manage it, the shift back to human leaving me dressed but shaking on the ground.
My clothes are torn and bloodstained, the poisoned cuts still burning even in human form, angry and black-edged and refusing to close.
Julian helps me sit up. Every muscle screams in protest, my face throbbing where Chase hit me, the taste of blood still thick in my mouth.
Caspian crouches in front of me and his expression goes completely still when he sees my arm.
The black veining under the skin has spread since the forest floor, threading outward from the cuts in thin dark lines that reach toward my elbow.
He takes my wrist carefully and turns it toward the moonlight.
"Julian." His voice is quiet but there's an edge under it that makes my stomach drop.
Julian is already beside him, already looking. His jaw tightens. "Wolfsbane compound. The nightshade is slowing her metabolism, which is why the wolf couldn't burn it out."
"How long does she have before it reaches her bloodstream properly?"
"Not long enough to get her to a healer without someone seeing." Julian looks at me. His eyes move across my face, cataloguing damage, and whatever he finds there makes him make a decision. "I can draw it out. It's going to hurt."
"More than it already does?"
"Yes."
I look at the dark lines crawling up my arm and then back at him. "Do it."
Julian pulls his jacket off and folds it under my arm, lifting it to a flat surface across his knee. Knox appears at the edge of the group, still bloodied from the fight, and takes up a position behind me without being asked, his hands coming to my shoulders to brace me.
"Hold her still," Julian says. Not to Knox specifically. To all of them.
Caspian moves to my other side. Nico crouches at my feet, one hand wrapping around my ankle, steadying me against the ground.
Julian presses both thumbs to either side of the cut on my forearm, and the pressure alone makes my vision white at the edges.
Then something changes in his hands, a heat building under the skin where he's pressing, something that isn't physical in any way I understand, and I feel it moving through the wound like a current running the wrong direction.
The sound I make isn't a scream. It's too involuntary for that, punched out of me before I can stop it. Knox's grip on my shoulders tightens. He says nothing but his body is solid behind mine and I focus on that instead of what Julian's hands are doing.
Dark fluid wells up from the cut, too thick to be blood, the color of oil in the moonlight.
Julian works methodically, pressing and drawing, his face set in focused lines, and each pass pulls more of it out until the edges of the wound stop being black and start being red, ordinary angry red, the kind that means my body can handle it from here.
He moves to the cut on my stomach and I close my eyes.
By the time he finishes the last wound on my thigh I'm shaking so hard my teeth are clicking together, cold sweat on my face and neck. Caspian pulls me against him without a word. I press my forehead against his shoulder and just breathe.
"It's out," Julian says. His voice is tired. "Her healing will take over now. She needs warmth and sleep and she needs to stay still."
"What about him?" Nico's voice, quiet, toward where Chase's body lies.
Knox is already moving, back to the work only he seems able to approach without hesitation.
Chase has shifted back to human form the way all wolves do at the moment of death, the animal retreating and leaving only the man behind.
Knox crouches over him without pause, and the first thing he does isn't reach for the body.
It's reach for the camera lying in the dirt where Chase dropped it when the fight started.
He picks it up, examines it for a moment, then sets it on a flat rock and brings his boot down on it.
Once. The casing splinters. He crouches again, pulls the wreckage apart with his hands, finds the memory card inside and snaps it in half.
Then he snaps each half again. He drops the pieces into separate pockets.
Only then does he look up at us.
"I'll handle the rest." He says it with the same flatness he uses for everything, fact without feeling. "Get her inside. I'll find you when it's done."
Caspian gets me to my feet and I lean into him more than I want to, my legs unreliable under me, the wounds aching with a deep bone-level throb that tells me the poison did damage even if Julian got most of it.
We move back through the trees toward campus in silence, Caspian's arm around my waist, Julian close on my other side.
I look back once. Knox is crouched beside the body with his back to us and the trees are already closing around him in the dark.
"Don't look," Julian says quietly.
I face forward.
We reach the edge of campus and Caspian slows. "I'm walking you up."
"No." My voice comes out steadier than I expect. "Someone sees you outside my room at this hour and it becomes a story. I go alone."
He doesn't argue, but his hand stays on my waist until the last possible moment, fingers pressing once before releasing. Julian catches my chin gently and tilts my face up, checking my eyes in the low light.
"If the black veining comes back, you come to me immediately. Don't wait. Don't decide it's fine." His thumb brushes just below the bruise on my cheekbone, barely any pressure, and his expression does something complicated that he pulls back before I can name it. "Immediately. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Nico hasn't moved from the edge of the group. He's been quiet since the forest and he stays quiet for another moment before he speaks. "The Council will send someone when Chase is reported missing. We need to be ready for that." He meets my eyes. "All of us."
The weight of it settles into my bones alongside the ache of the wounds. A man is dead. There is blood on the forest floor that Knox is dealing with right now in the dark. The Council will come and we will have to lie and hold the lie together and hope it holds.
"Tomorrow," Julian says. "We deal with all of it tomorrow. Tonight you sleep."
I nod and go.
The stairs take longer than they should. My thigh pulls with every step and I keep one hand on the wall, moving slowly. By the time I reach my floor I'm breathing through my teeth. Lily is asleep when I slip inside, facing the wall, her breathing deep and even.
I make it to the bathroom. I run the tap cold and press a wet cloth against my face and look at myself in the mirror for a long moment. The bruising across my cheekbone is already purpling. My lip is split. My eyes look like someone who has been awake for too long and felt too much.
But the cuts, when I check them, are closing. Slowly, the edges pulling together now that the poison is gone, the ugly black fading to pink. By morning they might be nothing but raised lines. My wolf is working, finally, doing what she was always meant to do.
I change into sleep clothes with movements that are careful and small, every muscle reminding me what it cost tonight. Then I get into bed and lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.
The bonds hum in my chest. Julian's is taut, still alert, still watching across whatever distance separates us.
Caspian's is fierce and wound tight, the feeling of a person who has put something down they didn't want to put down.
I can feel their worry moving through both threads like something with a pulse.
Through the window the forest is dark and quiet.
Somewhere in it, Knox is still working.
I close my eyes. The throb in my wounds slows with my heartbeat, steadying as my body finally gets to do what it needs to do, and exhaustion pulls at me from somewhere so deep it doesn't have a bottom.
Chase Valemont came to Everpine Academy to expose me.
Now he'll never leave.
I let myself go under, knowing morning will bring the questions and the Council and all the weight of what happened in that forest. Tonight we held it together. That has to be enough.
The hunt isn't over.
It's just beginning.