Chapter 8 #3
“I see it, shut up,” Eris snapped. He leaned over me, taking my face between his hands. His touch was firm, steadying my lolling head. He stared intently into my eyes, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.
“Shit,” Eris hissed. “She has severe head trauma. One of her pupils is completely blown out. We need to stabilize her neck.”
I felt the edges of my vision darkening, the noise of the concourse fading into a muted buzz. I was going to pass out. The weight of the Nightfall bond pressing against my weakened mind, combined with the physical trauma, was too much.
Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over us.
Before I could even blink, Phoenix’s colossal hands clamped onto Aiden’s shoulders. With a roar, Phoenix hauled Aiden off his feet and hurled him backward. Aiden crashed into a row of metal benches, shattering them.
At the exact same moment, Lucas appeared like an avenging storm. His glowing blue eyes were deadly. He grabbed Eris by the tactical vest and physically launched him away from me, sending him skidding across the blood-slicked tiles.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Lucas snarled, his voice echoing over the din of the dying battle.
Aiden was back on his feet in a microsecond, his golden magic flaring like a miniature sun. He lunged at Phoenix, and the two massive warriors collided with a sickening crunch of bone and magic.
“She is our mate!” Aiden roared. “We aren’t leaving her!”
“You lost that right when you broke her!” Phoenix bellowed back, his bronze skin glistening with sweat and blood and ash as he drove a fist into Aiden’s jaw.
Eris scrambled up, drawing a blade, but Lucas was already on him, parrying the strike with a brutal counter that sent Eris stumbling. “She doesn’t want you here!” Lucas shouted, delivering a punishing kick to Eris’s ribs.
The four men descended into a bloody brawl right in the middle of the concourse, their respective magic clashing in bursts of water, fire, earth, and air.
I turned my head weakly, the movement sending a fresh wave of nausea rolling through me.
The battle across the station was winding down.
The Class Three bane were mostly piles of ash now, and the other shield teams, including Theo, Jamie, and Rowan, were systematically hunting down the remaining stragglers.
Medical personnel, now free from the immediate threat, were rushing to tend to the unconscious and terrified humans.
A cool, familiar presence settled beside me. Draco.
He knelt gracefully amidst the debris, his pale hazel eyes filled with so much genuine concern that it made my chest ache.
He didn’t join the fight. His analytical mind had clearly prioritized assessing my state over brawling with Stardust. His movements were careful, his touch gentle as he reached out, hovering his hand over the side of my face.
“Jupiter,” Draco said softly. “Are you okay?”
I stared at him, feeling the phantom weight of the past weeks crashing down on me. The isolation, the tears, the agony of regret.
“Yes,” I rasped, finding just enough strength to lift my arm. I knocked his hand away from my cheek.
Draco flinched. His hand dropped to his side, his expression crumbling for a fraction of a second before he masked it. But through the bond, the tether that they had forced wide open the moment they stepped into the station, I felt his absolute devastation.
“Don’t touch me—”
“We came for you,” Draco said. “We left Dominion, Jupiter. We left the Assembly. We came to London for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” I tried to push myself up on my elbows, but my ribs flared with white-hot agony, and I collapsed back onto the broken wood with a groan.
“Don’t move,” Draco urged, his hands hovering again but not daring to make contact. “You’re healing, but your ribs need time to set properly. Please, just stay still.”
Over his shoulder, the fight between my former shield and my new friends was escalating.
Percy had finished obliterating the last of the bane near the south entrance and was now sprinting across the concourse, his magic painting the air crimson.
He saw Lucas standing over Eris—or who I thought was Eris, given the fact that there were five copies of him—and he didn’t hesitate.
Percy tackled Lucas, sending them both crashing through the remains of a ticketing booth.
Rowan and Theo materialized from the fray, instantly joining the melee. It was a full-blown war between Nightfall and Stardust, right in the middle of the carnage of a bane incursion.
“Enough!” I tried to shout, but it came out as a pathetic wheeze.
Draco looked back at the fighting, his jaw clenching. He knew as well as I did that shield warriors fighting each other was a massive violation of Assembly law. But right now, none of them cared.
I closed my eyes, the dizziness threatening to pull me under. The concourse spun around me, the sounds of shouting, the clash of magic and steel, the wailing of sirens outside the station. It all blended together.
“Jupiter, stay with me. Don’t close your eyes.”
I forced them open, glaring at him. “Make them stop.”
Draco hesitated, looking between me and his shield brothers, then nodded slowly, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. “I am so fucking sorry.”
He stood up and turned toward the chaotic brawl tearing the station’s concourse apart.
“Enough! All of you, stand the fuck down!” Draco roared, stepping between the two divided lines of warriors.
He glared at his own shield brothers, his chest heaving.
“Look at what you’re doing. Look at where we are.
You’re acting like feral animals while she’s bleeding on the floor! ”
That snapped them out of it. Aiden’s head whipped toward me, but before he could take a single step in my direction, Draco threw up a kinetic barrier of violet hued magic that stopped him cold. He wasn’t fucking around.
By now, the other two Imperium shield teams had finished sweeping the perimeter. They marched past the wreckage of the ticketing kiosk, their armor covered in darkmatter ash and their expressions dripping with absolute disdain.
“Get your shit under control, Nightfall,” one of the upperclassmen muttered as he walked past Percy, not even bothering to hide his disgust. “You’re embarrassing yourselves and endangering the rest of us. This is a combat zone, not a bloody soap opera.”
Percy’s jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter, but he didn’t retaliate. He couldn’t. The shame radiating through our bond was suffocating.
“Jupiter!”
Theo and Jamie, the only two not fighting, rushed to my side. Theo dropped to his knees. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Jamie, help me lift her. On three. One, two, three.”
I bit back a scream as they hauled me to my feet.
My ribs ground together with a sickening crunch, the bone scraping against tissue.
But the moment I was upright, the intense, burning itch of Aelari healing kicked into overdrive.
I could literally feel the bones knitting themselves back together, the torn muscle fibers weaving shut beneath my skin.
It was exhausting and nauseating, but it was fast.
“I’m okay,” I gasped, leaning heavily against Theo’s solid frame. I coughed, spitting a glob of blood onto the ruined floor. “I’m healing. Just get me out of here.”
“Transports are waiting at the north exit,” Jamie said, his vivid green eyes darting toward the Nightfall Shield, who were currently being held back by Lucas, Phoenix, Rowan, and Draco’s kinetic wall. “Let’s move.”
We bypassed the standoff entirely, heading for the shattered glass doors that led out into the damp, freezing London night.
The air outside was thick with the wail of mundane police sirens and ambulances, held at bay by the Assembly’s localized illusion wards.
The rain had started to fall, a steady, icy drizzle that washed the ash and blood from my boots.
“Jupiter, wait! Please!”
The desperate shout echoed over the rain. I didn’t need to look back to know they had broken through Draco’s barrier, or that Draco had let it drop once we were moving. The heavy thud of their combat boots slapped against the wet pavement as the Nightfall Shield rushed out of the station after us.
Theo and Jamie immediately stopped, pivoting to shield me, but I pushed past them. The physical pain of my healing ribs was nothing compared to the absolute, volcanic rage erupting in my soul.
I turned around, my boots splashing in a puddle, and marched straight toward them. I didn’t stop until I was inches away from Percy’s face, staring up into the dark eyes of the man who had once been so safe.
“Fuck off back to America.” Percy flinched, but I didn’t stop.
I got right up in his face, then turned my furious glare on Aiden, Eris, and Draco too.
“I don’t want you here! Do you understand me?
You ruined any chance you ever had with me.
There is a fucking reason I left! I crossed an ocean to get away from you!
I wasn’t playing some silly game. I loved you.
And you disrespected me in the most disgusting, degrading way imaginable.
You threw me away like I was garbage, and you cheated on me!
I don’t care if in your fucked up head you thought we were broken up.
We never even talked about it! I never got to defend myself before you went off and fucked someone else! ”
“We didn’t fuck anyone!” Percy practically begged, reaching for me. He stopped himself just short of touching my arms, his hands trembling in the air between us. “Jupiter, I swear to God, we never slept with any of those women.”
“I felt you!” I roared back, the memory of those agonizing nights flashing behind my eyes.