Chapter 87 – Quinton
QUINTON
We barely had time to blink before the wolf ran. I didn’t waste a second—I ran after him, the rest of the squad following.
“Fuck, he’s fast,” I heard Zephyr mumble, but I didn’t care. Azaria was hurt, and I wasn’t there.
My Light. My Love. My Soul. She was hurt, and I wasn’t there.
I fucking promised her I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and I’d failed again.
My magic writhed under my skin, brutally severed from her, and it was roaring to kill.
For once—I agreed. I would kill them all—spill their brains, let them drown in their own blood and agony.
I would have no fucking mercy for anyone who laid a single finger on her.
We ran and ran, and still nothing. My magic poured out of me, and I let it. Find her, I commanded. It tried—tried so fucking hard—but there was nothing. Not a flicker.
Then I felt it—a faint pulse. The familiar sensation of Azaria’s aura.
“She’s close,” I managed, and ran even faster.
I finally saw them. Azaria.
Gods.
She was sprawled in the dirt, her body half-curled on her side beneath a tree.
Her face was battered, blood slick on her temple where her scalp had torn open.
Her uniform was torn. Blood—so much blood—had pooled beneath her head, soaking into the ground.
Her ribs looked wrong, shifted under the fabric. And beside her?—
Kalias.
He was kneeling, naked, covered in blood, which I suspected wasn’t all his. The silver-furred beast was gone, but the primal fury still clung to his skin like smoke after a fire. He didn’t look at me.
His hand hovered over Azaria’s chest, not touching but close.
Ancient shifter magic thrummed faintly in the air around her.
I dropped to my knees beside them, hands already reaching for her.
The rest of the squad stopped farther back, giving us space to work.
I heard Lyra sob and clenched my teeth. Focus, Quin.
“What about Dain?” Kael’s voice cut through, rough with worry. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Dain can handle himself,” Thorne rumbled. “He’ll find us.”
Kalias didn’t flinch. He spoke, voice low. “I did not move her. Her ribs… her head… I could not risk it.”
His eyes met mine. “I only kept her steady.”
Fuck.
I gently touched the skin of her cheek, my other hand on the blood-slick fabric over her ribs. Her skin was cold—too cold.
She didn’t stir, but I felt it. The faintest flicker in her veins. And my blood ignited. The magic inside me roared to life—not like it does in battle, cold and brutal, but wild and hot, angry. It surged up my spine, curling through my shoulders, gathering at my fingertips. I felt everything.
Her shattered ribs.
The internal bleeding near her lungs.
The hairline fracture at the base of her skull.
The torn scalp, bleeding heavily.
The bruised muscle in her thigh.
My heart broke into a million fucking pieces. There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t covered in blood.
Who did this?
I glanced around. The bodies were shredded, mauled, and torn apart in a way only Kalias’s beast could manage.
It wasn’t enough. A part of me wanted to scream.
To burn the forest down. To drown the earth in my rage.
Because she was alone. Because I wasn’t there.
Because this should’ve been me. But instead?—
I breathed. I pressed my palm flat against her sternum, closed my eyes, and focused. The blood spoke to me. Not just hers, but mine, thrumming through my hands now, slipping beneath the surface of her skin, finding what was broken, and slowly, gently mending.
It was delicate work. Far more delicate than I was used to. But I’d learned. I’d trained. And now, all of it—all of that control—was being poured into her.
I barely felt Kalias shift beside me. He was watching silently. I let him. I didn’t fucking care who saw me like this—not when it was her, lying broken in front of me.
Inside my head, the only sound was my heartbeat, slamming in rhythm with hers.
Stay with me.
Please.
My thumb brushed over the back of her hand. I kept working.
My hands were soaked. Her blood coated my fingers, but beneath the surface her pulse began to steady. I felt the torn vessels knitting. The cracked rib aligning. The internal hemorrhaging slowing. But there was so much damage. I needed help.
Then—something shifted. I didn’t hear it. I felt it. Like roots threading beneath the soil. A current that didn’t belong to me wound its way through the clearing, slipping into the space between my fingers and hers, curling low and slow into her body.
My head jerked up. Kalias was still kneeling beside me—one hand pressed to the dirt, the other outstretched just barely, like he was feeding something invisible toward us. And his eyes were glowing. Not blinding, but lit from within—an ancient gold that flickered like wildfire through forest smoke.
I felt it—his magic. It wasn’t like mine, hot and sharp. It was deep and grounding. It was earth. It was forest and breath and soil and life. It flowed into me, or maybe around me—I couldn’t fucking tell. A raw, primal pulse that filled in the edges of my blood magic like moss around stone.
What the hells?—
My hands twitched, the warmth growing in my veins.
My blood responded to his magic not like it was intruding, but like it was answering.
And then I felt her heartbeat again. Stronger.
My focus sharpened. I pressed deeper, guiding the magic with even more precision now, drawing on his rhythm and mine. But something else caught my eye.
A smear of red ran down Kalias’s side—one of the gashes from earlier. It was closing. Right in front of me.
My gaze flicked to him. “Did I?—?”
Kalias exhaled, his jaw still tight with effort. “No. You did not heal me.”
My hands stilled for a second.
He glanced at me, his expression calm, but that feral edge was showing. “Shifters heal fast,” he said. “It is nature. Our magic draws on it when we need it. Especially when…” His gaze dropped to Azaria. “When something important is at stake.”
That raw energy throbbed again, and suddenly I understood. That’s what this strange current was. What he was feeding into her body. Not magic in the way we knew it. Not spells. Not incantations. This was forest. This was roots and blood and bone. This was life.
It clicked in a way that nothing else ever had.
This was why his magic felt different. Because where mine was made to manipulate blood, his was made to preserve.
And together we were balancing on the edge between destruction and healing.
I glanced down at Azaria again, her chest lifting with breath. Shaky, but steady.
Alive.
I exhaled. “Keep giving it,” I murmured. “Whatever this is.”
Kalias nodded once. My hands were starting to shake from exhaustion. The blood magic was burning through me now, licking at every nerve, turning my bones inside out. My breaths were shallow, coming in ragged drags like my lungs had forgotten how to expand.
Even with Kalias feeding his magic into mine—this strange, raw forest magic that pulsed like roots growing through my veins—the work was overwhelming.
Azaria’s wounds were severe. So much was broken. Every vessel I stitched and every rib I aligned only revealed another injury demanding attention. I was racing against exhaustion, against the sheer scope of the damage. But I wouldn’t stop.
My hands stayed pressed to her, steady even as my vision blurred around the edges. Kalias shifted beside me, grounded as ever. He hadn’t said a word. He was still giving—pumping that wild magic into the link we’d created.
I was barely holding on when it happened. A small sound. A catch of breath. I froze. Her lashes fluttered just once. Then again. And slowly—so slowly—her eyes cracked open. Bloodied, dazed, unfocused. But awake. My breath stuttered.
“Azaria,” I whispered.
Her lips parted, dry and crusted with blood.
She tried to speak, and what came out was barely audible.
A wet rasp, straight from her lungs. My chest broke wide open.
She tried to speak, but couldn’t. I leaned closer, brushing hair from her forehead with trembling fingers.
My voice came low, thick with everything I couldn’t say.
“I know, Sweetheart,” I murmured. “I know. We’ve got you.”
My thumb grazed her cheek, the only thing that was unbruised. Her gaze barely held mine before it slipped, her eyes fluttering shut again.
I sat back on my heels, arms trembling, breath ragged. The clearing was quiet. No more snarls. No more screams. The soft crackle of leaves and the raspy rise and fall of her chest beneath my hands. She was stable. But she needed more than I could give her here.
Kalias shifted beside me, his voice low. “We need to move her.”
I didn’t answer at first. I knew he was right, but the idea of shifting her—even slightly—made every muscle in my body coil with dread.
“She won’t make the ride,” I said.
“She won’t make the night if we stay here,” a familiar voice cut in.
I looked up. Dain.
He stepped into the clearing, moving carefully through the trees. His face was bruised—one eye swelling, a split lip, blood on his jaw—but he was upright. Functional.
“Dain,” Kael breathed, the tension cracking in his voice.
Thorne just nodded, as if he’d known all along.
Dain’s eyes swept the scene—Kalias, me, Azaria between us—and his jaw tightened. But his voice stayed steady.
“The trap dropped me into three of them,” he said, short and clipped. “They got a few hits in before I slipped into the Undercurrent. It was over quickly after that.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. The blood on his knuckles said enough.
“This forest isn’t safe. We don’t know if others are close. We have to go. Now.”
I looked down at her. Blood had dried around her temples. Her face was pale—ashen, really—but there was still heat in her skin. A pulse in her neck.
I cursed under my breath and leaned in again. “Azaria,” I whispered, brushing a hand over her brow. “We’re going to move you. I need you to hold on, all right? Just a little longer.”
No response.
Kalias was already moving. “I will carry her,” he said.
“No,” I snapped. Then softened. “She can’t be jostled.”
“I would not run with her,” he replied, calm and grounded, like always. “I will take her in my wolf form. She is safest on my back. The warmth will keep her stable, and I can move faster than any of you.”
Dain glanced between us. “I’ll go ahead. Alert the palace healers. Myrin will be waiting by the time we get there.”
“I’ll ride with you—stay together, remember?” Reyna added. Dain squeezed her shoulder in response.
I nodded. “Go.”
They disappeared a heartbeat later, melting into the trees. I looked down at her again. And for a brief moment, I let my fingers tangle gently with hers.
“You’re going to make it,” I murmured. “I’ve got you.”
I pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Beside me, Kalias shifted. Silver fur flooded over him in a blink, his form stretching into that massive beast of his. He lowered himself to the ground with surprising gentleness.
“Help me with her!” I called to the squad. Elias, Thorne, and Kael moved forward instantly. “Keep her as steady as you can.”
Elias shrugged off his cloak. “Wrap her in this. It’ll help keep her still.”
We scooped her up with care—so much care—bundled her in the cloak and placed her across Kalias’s broad back, securing her with every bit of leftover cloth we could manage. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t stirred, hadn’t twitched. I stepped back, teeth clenched.
I hated this. But it was the only way.
“Run,” I said.
And Kalias took off, silver flashing into the trees.
We followed on foot, toward our mounts, burning what little magic I had left to push faster.
We were getting her home.
No matter what it took.