2. CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
Noa
Voices, raised. Scraping metal… chairs being moved. The beeping machine was singing with alarms. My legs were trembling. Spasms worked through my body hard enough to rock the bed. Hands pressed against me. The heat in my veins turned scorching as I thrashed.
Someone screamed, “Get her alpha!”
My heart lurched. Grayson!
Was he coming? I wanted him to come, but I didn’t at the same time. Didn’t want to face him with what I’d done. How I’d let his friend die, helped fulfill the prophecy—all those around him, people he loved, would die while protecting him.
The cry rising in my throat was garbled, frantic, barely croaking around the obstruction. My back arched like a breaking bow.
“More ice.” The female’s voice, followed by the crisp, wet clattering against metal as cubed ice avalanched over my hands and wrists. Water oozed, trickled. I shivered beneath the frigid onslaught.
“It’s cold, Noa, but we’re trying to help you. No, don’t talk. Leo’s here.”
LeoLeoLeoLeo!
Euphoria made me giddy. Terrified. I forced my eyes open, a mad woman searching for sanity.
“Noa.” Leo’s hands were gentle. His beloved face, his old eyes still bright as his gaze locked on mine. “You have a breathing tube, but I’m going to take it out. Can you cough for me, sweet girl? Yes, like that.”
I gagged on the saliva that flooded faster than I swallowed. Pain rasped in my throat. Leo cupped my face and turned my head to the side while someone raised the head of the bed. Small details registered. I was in a clinic. Perhaps a hospital. The scents were acrid, other than Leo’s familiar spicy aftershave.
LeoLeoLeoLeo!
He wasn’t dead. Amal hadn’t killed him when she destroyed Azul.
I wanted to grip his hand, but all I did was clench at the dripping, icy sheets.
The beeping machine went crazy before the sudden silence; thank the gods that someone flipped the switch, muting the pinging. But the jagged white line still bounced across the black screen. Red numbers flashed.
Leo ran his calloused thumbs across my forehead. The numbers slowed. He cupped my nape, probing gently, then pressed against my throat, the hollow between my collarbones. His jaw tightened. Although his eyes never left mine, his voice was low and threatening. “Remove those restraints.”
The woman gripped her hands. “I have no authority.”
“I do.” Fallon’s voice, her Alpha voice, a tone that demanded obedience. Joy crashed through me.
Fallon was alive. She was here, standing in the doorway, her weight supported by crutches, her right leg encased in a white cast. “Get that shit off her. What the hell?”
“We had no option.” The male who wanted me put under—I recognized his voice. His expression was pinched as he pushed past Fallon. When his shoulder punched hers, she punched back with more strength than he expected.
He stumbled, and while I don’t think I smiled, I might have. My face was still too numb to know.
“Where’s Caerwen?” Fallon demanded. “Effa?”
“Nymphs are tied to their home environment,” the woman explained. The tag on her blue scrubs said Valeria. “They can’t stay away for extended periods without going back to recharge. We expect them back tomorrow, but Noa had an… episode yesterday.”
Fallon narrowed her scary-bitch gaze on the male. “Explain.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “She was singeing the sheets. We had to restrain her before she caught the room on fire.”
“Why drug her? Hook her up to a breathing tube?”
“She… resisted. We did it for her own safety.”
Fallon swung herself forward, using the crutches with threatening ease. “We’ve been trying to wake her up, and you took it upon yourself to send her back into that black hell?”
“I told him to do it.” Someone new—great. Anson Salas was joining the party. Leo patted my hand, angling his body slightly, while the Alpha of Carmag glowered at Fallon, then at the pinched man who I swore had turned a shade paler than he’d been.
“My specific order was to make sure she didn’t harm herself.”
“She was… unaware and out of control,” the man blustered. “A risk to everyone.”
“What are you—barbaric?” Fallon challenged. “She’s a faille . She burned herself out trying to save wolves.”
His chest puffed out. “She burned the sheets. She’s a danger, a hazard—”
“Get those restraints off her,” Fallon ordered. “Now.”
The man curled his upper lip, pure wolf in his disdain, but not aggressive enough to defy an alpha openly, even one who technically had no power in the Carmag. No, this healer would find reasons to shove breathing tubes down my throat and pump me full of drugs whenever he could.
Leo’s grip on my hand tightened while he glanced at Fallon. She nodded and glared at Anson Salas. “You offered protection—by tying her to a bed and pouring ice water all over her?”
A muscle ticked near Anson’s left eye. “Gunther’s one of our best healers.”
“You’re defending him?”
Anson’s canines flashed while Fallon leaned into his irritation, alpha-to-alpha, certainly unfriendly and unwilling to be pacified. I filed the man’s name away—Gunther—along with the understanding that Carmag was no different from Sentinel Falls. Not every wolf was comfortable around failles . The nature of wolves might be social within their pack, but to outsiders, or those they deemed a threat, they were viciously unforgiving.
Valeria seemed torn between loyalties.
But Leo—Leo was here. Alive. And Fallon. Healing.
Anson was the one I worried about, if he was still an ally despite our lies and the subsequent disasters.
Fallon snapped, “Your healer lacks in judgement.”
A sharp nod from Anson, and Valeria removed the gauze and leather restraints from my ankles, waist, wrists amid murmured apologies. Leo helped me sit up, a hand on my shoulder as he coached me through breathing.
Fallon readjusted her weight on the crutches. “She can’t stay in a wet bed, wearing wet clothes.”
Anson stepped forward. Light caught in his auburn hair as he scooped me into his arms. His strength brushed protectively, although I didn’t trust it, even when his warmth comforted after the ice. No doubt, he was an attractive man, with an alpha’s power. Dangerous in his own right, a wolf beneath the veneer. I gritted my teeth. Wanted to walk on my own, but my legs would never make it to wherever we were going.
Not far, as it turned out. Anson strode down the hall and into a lavish space more like a luxury hotel suite than a sterile hospital room—the Alpha Suite, according to the gold inscription mounted above the door. Plush furniture surrounded a plush bed. Wide windows covered one wall, but heavy, navy-blue draperies concealed the view. Fresh flowers filled a crystal vase. The polished wooden table sat against the window, flanked by chairs. A wall-mounted television displayed rotating nature photographs with the sound muted.
Not everyone followed us, thank the gods. Gunther disappeared, along with the other medics who’d come running when the shouting began. Leo and Fallon stayed close. Valeria hurried forward with a clean gown that tied in the back, helping me change in the attached bathroom, and within minutes I was curled beneath fresh warm sheets, pulling up a blanket and trying to hide how badly I trembled.
Leo helped Fallon to a chair before Anson thought to do it. He frowned and looked away.
“Noa,” Leo said as he took my hand, pressed his fingers to the pulse in my wrist, just below the ruined wolf sigil. The cuts had healed. On my arm, the runes were scarred; the lines were faintly pink. The vampires had done a good job of obliterating the designs.
“How long?” My voice was croaky from disuse.
“You’ve been sleeping—”
Not sleeping—lost in the dark. The writhing grays. Burned out. A ruined faille . “How long?”
“Two weeks.”
“And Azul?”
“Anson was gracious enough to offer sanctuary. This is Westvale, Noa.” Leo’s tone was gentle. “In the Carmag territory. You’re safe here.”
“No place… safe.”
“Anson has powerful wards,” Fallon explained, while the Alpha of Carmag shifted his weight. “Layers of protection surround Westvale. His men helped evacuate survivors from Azul. They came within an hour of the attack, and the Carmag have opened their doors to those who want to stay.” She leaned close enough to put her hand on mine. “We were lucky, Noa.”
“Lucky?” I remembered my vision of houses, exploding in flames. Black smoke roiling. And Amal, striding down a ruined street with a smile on her face.
“Gray—” Fallon sucked in a breath. “Last summer, he added more wards around Azul. Amal triggered the alarms. People had time to get away, hide. Hattie and Oscar. Leo. They were in Sentinel Falls that day. Amal never went beyond Azul. She was only interested in the archive, in retrieving her book. She burned buildings. Destroyed part of the town. We had casualties, but not as bad as it might have been.”
“How… many?”
Leo grunted. “Save it for another time.”
I stared at my hands, one held by Leo, the other by Fallon—shackles of a different sort. It was Fallon who asked Anson, “When will Caerwen and Effa return?”
“I’ve already sent word.” He’d crossed his arms, rocked on his heels while glaring at me. “Are you able to control the syphoning?”
I nodded, the mess of my hair tumbling around my face. My fingers trembled. Fallon tucked my hand beneath the blanket and levered herself to her feet, braced awkwardly on the crutches but resolute and commanding. Without Grayson, Fallon was Alpha for the pack. She was their protector, a defender against all other alphas. Respect was owed to the Alpha of Carmag, gratitude for the guest status. But Anson either respected Fallon, standing between him and her wolves, or she would explain it to him the way powerful, arrogant alphas explained everything.
With aggression.
Her upper lip wrinkled. I imagined her wolf growling when she asked, “What about Gray?”
“What about him?”
“Have you changed the wards?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” Anson’s expression hardened. “He doesn’t deserve safe passage.”
“Says the arrogant ass who still has his feelings hurt.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Under duress.”
“You.” he snapped, so sharply he could have bitten off the word. “Need me. You need my protection. My wards. My generosity. Would you prefer a human medical facility? With your metabolism, they’ll prod until you’re bruised. And what about Noa—burning sheets? That’d be a shit-show for you.”
I’d never heard Anson so formal. Stern, like a lecturing father. Was he ever going to throw fecking into the mix? Or his trademark, “man?”
Anything would make me feel easier.
Fallon’s canines flashed. “Gray’s the best healer you’ve ever known.”
“And he can’t be here.”
“Why?”
“You know why.” Anson glared at Fallon. A long-standing argument, then. One neither had won. “He agreed to it.”
“Agreed to what?” I asked, my voice raspy but stronger.
Anson leveled that deadly gaze on me, and the flash of electricity, the aggression in him, skimmed across my skin. A wolf with a bite strength one hundred times more destructive than any natural predator, and evident in his tone as he said, “I’ve warded Westvale against intruders. That includes the Alpha of Sentinel Falls. He won’t cross the wards unless he wants a problem with me, something he won’t do while his people are under my protection.”
“Hostages.” I couldn’t help myself.
“Semantics. The enemy we’re fighting is fixated on specific people. You,” he added. “Him.”
“The enemy is fixated on every wolf who refuses to acknowledge her as queen,” I croaked back. “Including you, Anson.”
When Leo’s grip tightened, I questioned whether I should have used Alpha instead of Anson, but it was too late now, and I wasn’t in an appeasing mood. He’d ordered his best healer to make sure I didn’t harm myself, and then ignored the decisions Gunther made.
“Amal is an original queen,” I pointed out. “Turned into a monster by the vampires—who are not impartial observers. They have factions fighting against and for Amal. Vamps who were infesting your northern territory right beneath your nose, turning abducted wolves into hybrids. All your outposts and settlements are at risk—what about Sutter? Being in Alpen territory didn’t save them.”
“Sutter fell because you were there,” Anson—or his wolf—snarled. “Destroying a witch cave.”
“And now I’m here.” I shrugged, even though my heart was pounding. “Better let me go before the big bad queen finds out where I’m hiding.”
“Noa,” Fallon cautioned.
I studied her strained expression. “Can we leave here if we want?”
“Yes, but it means going to the settlements that are already overburdened, where the medical care isn’t what you need. Where the defenses are not as solid as Westvale. And Gray wants you here. Anson’s wards will shield you from Amal.”
What she was saying hit like a frigid blow. “While he diverts her attention to himself?”
Fallon’s gaze held steady.
Realization hit a second time. “Is Mace with him?”
“Yes.”
My pulse thudded, and for an instant, I wanted to climb from the bed, walk to her. Wrap my arms around her thin shoulders.
Instead, I asked, “Where are they?”
“Hunting in the north,” was all she said.