Chapter 42
SADIE
Deja vu. That was the first thing that struck me, less like a hit than a slow curl of unease. I’d been here before. Waking up, surrounded by the scent of marshmallow, black coffee, and a roaring wood fire. I’d been here before.
I tried to blink. My lashes clung to each other, sleep hesitant to release me even as I fought my way through.
“Sadie?”
Verne. I exhaled in a rush, the unease lifting from my chest. I scrubbed at my eyes, frowning when fabric met my delicate eyelids instead of skin.
“Why am I bandaged?” I asked, so hoarse I sounded like an old woman. Oh, god. “How long?”
“How long have you been unconscious?” That was Leander, the words barrelling from him in a rush of emotion.
Mostly panic, but relief too. I could feel them, pressing on my chest, along with something fractured.
Like the surface of a serene lake littered with tiny cracks.
“Five days,” he answered, and I heard it there in his voice too—the fractures.
Five days. Not sixty years. I hadn’t slept through my whole life.
When I finally opened my eyes and they focused on Leander, his smile was like wallpaper over a fissure. My heart suffocated, balled up tight. He cared this much, after mere weeks…?
“We didn’t think you’d wake up,” he said, keeping that smile on his face until it looked painful. “Lainsz says your heart stopped for a moment two nights ago.”
“Because he had a pillow pressed over my face?” I joked.
“Hilarious,” the dick himself drawled. I found him leaning against the wall beside the door, watching me with dead, shadow-ringed eyes that sent a shock of alarm through my chest.
I quickly looked away, focusing on Verne. He and Leander sat on my bed—well, Verne’s bed—utterly fixated on me. “I died again?”
“Almost,” Verne replied, a shadow chasing through his eyes.
He didn’t fake a smile like Leander, and I found myself glad for it.
I wasn’t sure I could handle the alpha pretending everything was sunshine and daisies.
“If it wasn’t for your sheer stubbornness and Leander’s sister healing you, we’d have lost you. ”
“Leander’s sister…?” I glanced at him, startled again by the sight of him.
His green eyes were dark with bags beneath, his stubble more of a beard.
Brown and cerulean hair fell around his face, wild and unruly.
His shirt was equally rumpled; I chose to be kind and not let my eyes linger on the stain down the middle. 1
“Lucira,” he said, gravelly. That smile made a reappearance, painful enough that I leaned over and touched his hand without thought. “My parents were here, too. They’re all worried about you, but they had to go home. Lucira’s coming back tomorrow to check on you.”
Oh. Well, a double stabbing was one way to get out of the meet-the-parents thing.
“What happened to the hag? And Beaufort?” I rubbed my head, my temple pounding when I tried to recall the events in detail. “I have memories, but they’re hazy.”
“The slayer leech killed Beaufort,” Lainsz filled in when an awkward silence fell. “The hag escaped. We were a little busy with you bleeding out all over us to hunt her down, so fuck knows where she ended up.”
She was free? My stomach dropped.
“You’re safe here,” Verne promised, clasping my free hand. “I promise you, Sadie. Nothing bad will happen to you again.”
“Seems unrealistic given everything else that’s happened since I got to this shithole. No offense,” I added since they lived here. It was their shithole.
“What about my friends?” I asked after a moment of quietude, ignoring the spike of pain through my fragile heart. I’d get over it. It wasn’t the first time I’d lost friends. “Did they get hurt?”
Lainsz made a throaty noise from the door. “Unfortunately not.”
“They’ve been here everyday,” Verne told me, brushing a lock of hair out of my wide eyes. “We refuse to let a slayer into our home on principle—”
Lainsz made another noise. I was in agreement with this one, and raised an eyebrow to echo his point.
“Except our beloved mate,” Verne corrected.
He looked tired, lines cut around his mouth, his eyes drooping.
I didn’t let the beloved word affect me, batting it away like a ping pong ball.
No good would come of thinking these men cared about me.
Even if they had cared if I lived or died.
And had gone to such lengths to save me. Again.
I sighed. “Some badass fighter I am. This is twice you’ve had to save me.”
“Never again,” Leander said, firmly enough that I fumbled to find the place where I could sense his emotions, to see if the ice on the lake had shattered. It was still intact, but it was whittling away. “This is the last time we’ll save you.”
“I’ll just die next time, then?” I quipped. Lainsz laughed; Leander recoiled like I’d slapped him. “Shit, sorry, that was insensitive.”
I was only just getting to grips with what this whole mate thing meant, but I knew it meant everything to Leander.
“Sadie,” Verne said, squeezing my hand. “We should talk about—that academy.” I blinked, waiting for him to continue, his tone already getting my hackles up. “It’s not safe. You can’t go back.”
Wanna know a surefire way to make me do something? Tell me I can’t. Forbid me from doing it.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you telling me what I can and can’t do, Verne?”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You already died once, and came so close to dying permanently because of that place,” he argued.
I was wrong. There were cracks in Verne, too. Just hidden so deep I couldn’t even sense them. I saw them, though, and heard them in his voice when he added, so firm there was no room for compromise, “You need to stay here.”
Beside the door, Lainsz shook his head, black hair spilling over his shoulders like a tempting waterfall.
No. Not tempting. That was the two stab wounds talking.
“I want to talk to my friends,” I said, pulling my hands from theirs and ignoring the deluge of cold that hit me without them touching me.
“Sadie—” Verne began, a flare of something like worry, closer to panic in his expression.
“Are you my jailor?” I challenged. “Are you god, to command me?”
“I’m your alpha,” he replied, but without any real heat.
“Not my god, then,” I remarked, climbing out of bed and dodging Leander’s attempt to throw his arms around me. Or cage me.
“I’ll go with her,” Lainsz said before anyone else could speak. “She won’t get away from me.”
I fixed my jaw and looked him dead in the eyes. “Is that a threat?” I breathed, as soft as a whisper, as quiet as an arrow.
He leaned closer, a cruel smile tightening his face. “Yes.”
I looked down my nose at him. “Poor timing, Lainsz. My dance card for murder attempts is all filled up.”
“Your friends are outside,” he said, not acknowledging my retort. “I’ll supervise your conversation.”
My nostrils flared. “I don’t need to be supervised.”
“Killer,” he laughed, so patronising. “You’re a hazard to your own health, the health of others around you, and your mates. You can’t be trusted to handle a cactus without impaling yourself on its spikes.”
I gave him my middle finger. “Shame. I know just where to shove a cactus.”
A riotous banging came from downstairs, and Lainsz pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Is that them?” I asked, not sure if I believed it. Paige, maybe. We were both human, from a realm where wolves weren’t the enemy. But Elix, who’d been born and raised here?
I chewed my bottom lip, glancing back at Verne and Leander before I could catch myself. I didn’t need their approval or advice. I didn’t need them as safety blankets, either. I could pull up my big girl pants and face my friends without their moral support.
Even if I had no idea how to prepare myself for their rejection and hatred when it felt like I’d been run over by a JCB.
I made myself leave the room, and swallowed a grunt, grabbing the railing as Lainsz led me downstairs.
It hurt to walk away, a tension in my middle winding tighter the further I went.
“What?” Lainsz snapped when I stopped three steps from the bottom, my teeth gritted against the crack of pain across my middle.
“I was just stabbed, you soggy tampon.”
He blinked. Flattened his mouth into a line, but not before I saw the glimmer of a smile. The bastard almost laughed. This piece of shit thought I was funny.2
“What happened to Serendipity?” I blurted, pausing with my hand on the back of the sofa, my stomach tangled in knots at the thought of facing Paige and Elix. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brave enough to look them in the eye after lying every moment for weeks.
Lainsz crossed his arms over his chest, not quite looking at me. “Who?”
“Rogue’s sister.” At his blank look, I remembered he had no idea who any of my friends were. They were separate by necessity, as I would be separate from now on.
I sighed. I refused to follow Verne’s orders on principle, but he had a point. “The woman who was bound. The unconscious one.”
Lainsz shrugged. “How the fuck should I know?”
I gritted my teeth. “We went into the forest that night to find her. I risked my life and almost died again to get her away from Beaufort. So it would be nice to know if she’s dead or alive.”
Lainsz shrugged. “Can’t say I paid any attention.” I was about to lay into him when he added, “My attention was on the slayer dying in my arms. As you can imagine, it was a little distracting.”
I blinked. “Right.” When I lost my grip with consciousness, he’d been holding me, keeping me upright. It must have been Lainsz who got me to safety. Heat prickled the tops of my ears. “Thanks for that.”
“No problem,” he replied, flippant. Then, out of nowhere: “Don’t bullshit us, killer. If you’re in pain, just say so. Lying is a coward’s game, and it’s insulting to your mates. Don’t be a hero.”
I rolled my eyes, my attention jumping to the door when a fist hammered against it again. Paige; I’d put money on it. “No one could ever accuse me of that.”
“Didn’t you just say you went into the forest to rescue a girl? Seems suicidally heroic to me.”
I scoffed, ignoring his narrowed blue eyes. I doubted my actions that night would be chronicled with a description so positive. The academy would paint me as a villain. Maybe they’d let people believe I was the killer instead of Beaufort to save face.
“Killer,” Lainsz said. “You’re stalling.”
“No?” I gasped. “Do you think so?”
“Open the door,” he said in a flat tone. “Or are you a coward?”
“Yes,” I agreed emphatically. “Unapologetically, yes.”
But my gaze slid to the door against my will. It was less a door than a bogey man, monster under your bed situation. Fear of the unknown, because the unknown had teeth, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes.
“Don’t make me open the fucking door,” Lainsz muttered. “They’re not gonna hurt you,” he added, strained, as if it cost him to speak the words.
“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I said under my breath, and—there was a light in Lainsz’s eyes, there and gone. As if for a moment, he understood me completely.
I liked that far less, feared that far more, than the inevitable hatred from my friends. So I hurried to the door and flung it open.