Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
ARYELLA
I slowly dressed before dragging myself to Abram the healer’s door. I stood, fist midair, poised but unwilling to knock. Unwilling to admit to myself or anyone what had happened.
“Abram?” I called. “Please open the door. It’s Fera.”
“Fera?” The door flew open. “It’s the middle of the n?—”
His face took on an ashen hue at the sight of me . I hadn’t looked in a mirror, but my vision was blurred in my swelling eye. I couldn’t possibly look okay .
“I need help,” I rushed out before I could turn and run.
Abram gestured for me to come inside. He stared for a moment, horrified, then cleared his throat and moved toward a cabinet I knew held his remedies for pain.
“Please sit,” he called over his shoulder. “What happened?”
I carefully lowered myself into a chair near an examination table, unable to lift myself up with my injured wrist. I winced at the pain in my ribs, as my sliced-up thighs ached and pulled with each movement.
While I waited for Abram to return, I covered my legs with my jacket to hide the blood staining my pants as best I could, then picked mindlessly at my cuticles until one started bleeding.
That pain helped distract me from the pain everywhere else.
“Hey.” Abram approached me carefully, like he feared I might snap. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” He rested his hand on my knee. I flinched, even though I didn’t think he could harm a mouse.
“I’m sorry.” He jerked back, horrified, like he had just touched molten iron. “I was just trying to… I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I answered meekly. And his attempt to comfort me was okay. But I wasn’t okay. Angry tears flooded my eyes. I breathed steadily, deeply, like Gavin had taught me back when he was?—
No. Not gone.
“Fera?” Abram’s gently imploring tone nudged me back to the present.
I stared down at my hands. “Sometimes I’ll go to the showers in the middle of the night. It’s nice to be alone. Quiet,” I added. “They must have followed me or known I was there.”
I focused on the bruise forming on my right wrist. Colors I knew would turn bright by tomorrow splayed across the back of my hand, nearly up to my knuckles. I flinched, pain radiating up my arm as I remembered that particular blow.
“Who’s they ?” questioned Abram. His cheeks grew pale, his knuckles white. “Who, Fera?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, then paused. “Would it matter?”
“Of course!” he insisted, eyes widening. “Fera, of course it matters.”
Did I want others to know that they had seen all of me? Did I want them wondering what else had transpired? I needed to warn everyone about those four men being traitors, but the rest?
“Please, Fera,” Abram urged softly. “I want to help you.”
I looked up and met his gaze. I could only imagine how helpless and broken I looked to him. He was so very kind.
“Let me help you,” said Abram.
The sound of those words broke something inside of me. Suddenly, I was back in Warrich with a wolf bite on my arm, sitting in an armchair in front of a fire, terrified and hungry. I was staring into a pair of hickory eyes filled with a longing I hadn’t yet understood.
I’d let a man help me then. In return, he’d brought me back to life.
This wasn’t the same man, but…
“Alec Gerard,” I whispered.
“Shit.” Abram unfastened a clear jar filled with small white tablets. “I’ve never been able to stand that piece of?—”
“And Otis Stoll. And Hendrix and Micah Sharpe.”
His eyes snapped up from the jar, but he didn’t look me directly in the eye. If I were him, I would be afraid of what I’d find, too.
“Gods,” he choked. “Fera, I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t have it in me to respond, but I let him carefully assess my limbs, neck, face, and back.
My ribs were bruised where they’d kicked me, possibly broken.
I was too drained to heal myself at the moment, so there wasn’t much to be done for me other than be careful and manage the pain.
He suspected a fracture beneath my left eye, but no broken bones in my arms.
I knew my legs were fine enough given I could walk, so I didn’t let him test those. I kept my thighs sealed shut and hoped he didn’t notice the blood seeping through my clothing.
“Do you have something to apply to flesh wounds?” I asked quietly.
Abram paled yet another shade. “What kind of flesh wounds?”
I trained my expression to reveal nothing. “Knife.” His face twisted with worry. “Will you tell me where?”
I shook my head. Abram released a strained sigh, rose from his chair, and walked back to one of the large cabinets of medicine. Every time something bumped or banged as he shifted items, I had to make a conscious effort not to flinch. My nerves were shredded.
“This should help prevent infection.” Abram handed me a glass vial of a gold-tinted, jellylike substance before turning back to the cabinet and sifting some more.
He pulled out a bottle of clear liquid with some words I recognized from a book about healing.
“The taste is bitter, but this should help with the pain. It’s stronger than the pills.
You can take both.” Along with the bottle, he gave me a wooden cup small enough to fit in my palm.
“Fill it to the top and drink one every six hours as needed.”
I had my own bandages, so the salve and the pills to help with the pain should have been all I needed from him. Only I didn’t get up, and Abram didn’t turn away.
I knew I should go, but it was warm and dry in Abram’s cabin, and the thought of going anywhere else alone tonight made my heart palpitate in fear. Abram began to speak.
“Please let someone help you…”
He kept talking, but his words started to fade in and out.
“Someone you trust? Because…”
I stared at the rings in the wood grains of the floor and wondered how old the wood was. One century? Two?
Four?
“Mina Reed, maybe, because you shouldn’t be alone and…”
Alone.
He had been alone. For four centuries, he had been alone, searching for me. And then once he finally found me and confessed his devoted, unwavering love, I had… sent him away.
“Fera, shit!” Abram’s fingers locked around my uninjured wrist. He jerked my hands apart, and I saw that the fingernails of my left hand were bloody. My right palm was also stained crimson. I’d pressed my fingers there with enough force that I broke my skin.
“Stay here, Fera,” Abram ordered before abruptly turning around and making for the door.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“To get Commander Winterton.”
“No! No, Abram!” I shifted in my seat, and I sucked in a sharp breath at the pain the movement caused. I’d sat for too long, and my body was paying for it. “Just please give me what I need and let me go. I’ll talk to him.”
Abram shook his head. “I’m not sure there’s much I can do by myself to hold Gerard and the others accountable for this, but he can.”
I silently watched him leave, because maybe he was right. Eli had his flaws, but he was a good man. He was my friend, and he needed to know about Gerard and the others working for Molochai.
Eli would care. I needed him to care .
But my hope diminished the moment he arrived with Abram.
It took me seconds to realize what he must have been doing all night. Mussed hair. White shirt wrinkled like it had been thrown on in a rush. There were bags under his eyes, and his mouth was red from kissing and biting. He had clearly been celebrating tonight.
Eli stared at me in horror while taking a wary step toward me. He winced, like he was afraid to touch me. Like whatever he saw was too painful to acknowledge.
“Are you all right?” he said hoarsely.
I refused to dignify that question with a response. He ran his hands over his face, through his sex-mussed hair.
“Eli.” I cleared my throat. “I have to tell you that Gerard and his friends?—”
“Fera, wait,” he sighed, dropping his hands to his sides. “What the hell were you doing alone in the showers in the middle of the night?”
My stomach lurched . Something splintered behind my sternum. Something small, warm, and delicate that had started to grow for Elias Winterton. Not love, but friendship. With that one question, it cracked and turned to dust.
I stared at him. At his perfect, symmetrical face. Cheekbones that could cut glass. Flawless, deep blue-gray eyes. Still objectively the most beautiful man I had ever seen, without a doubt.
But suddenly, he looked and felt different. Unsafe .
“Shit,” sighed Eli, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “You have to be smarter than that.”
“I can’t take a shower ?” My voice broke.
“Fera.” He sighed and pinched his nose. “You must know better. You must . You’re small, and you’re beautiful. ” It sounded like a confession he didn’t want to make. “You have to protect yourself.”
I stared at my hands, bruised and still a little shaky. Sure, I could have been more careful. There were situations and places I could avoid going to alone to prevent what had happened. Perhaps I had failed to protect myself.
Or perhaps they had it out for me and would have found me anywhere.
“Did they… Did they fuck you?”
I inhaled raggedly and looked up at Elias. Had I heard that correctly?
“What?” I breathed. “Why are you asking me that?”
Elias shifted uncomfortably. His once-beautiful gaze swept over me like I was dirty. “Did they fuck you, Fera?”
That’s what he wanted to know? If I’d been tainted ?
Not what I was about to say about four men in his forces he’d recently been doubting?
He wouldn’t ask what I needed from him, or what I wanted him to do, or what they’d said or why I was bruised and bleeding or crying or anything other than if they’d stuck their filthy cocks in me?
I refused to discuss details. I only wanted to make sure he knew the truth about Gerard and the others. That had been my priority. But now ?
His question taunted me.
Did they fuck you?
He couldn’t even say rape .
“What if they did?” I sputtered out, eyes wide in disbelief.