Chapter 43
SADIE
“I’m telling you,” Paige was in the middle of saying, harried and hectic. “They’ve killed her, and they’re keeping her body away from us so we won’t know she’s—”
She whipped around green-streaked dark hair when my shadow fell over the cottage path.
I grunted when she threw herself at me, colliding hard enough to make pain explode through both stab wounds, plus some fun extras I hadn’t noticed before.
Tears sprang to my eyes, the pain intense and rapid, and I blamed that for how long it took me to realise she wasn’t fighting me; she was hugging me.
By the time my mind caught up, there were two people hugging me, and I was sobbing.
“I’ll kill them,” Paige hissed, glaring over my shoulder at Lainsz. “You hear that, wolf dick? I’m going to kill you for keeping her from us, and for every bruise you’ve left on my bestie’s body.”
“I’m still your bestie?” I choked out, emotion strangling my voice, gripping my throat.
“Well, obviously,” Paige replied, as if that was a foregone conclusion. She patted my head, flattening my frizz and flyaways.
“Aren’t you scared I’m going to shift and… and… eat you?” I couldn’t think of anything else right now. I’d take it up with my frazzled, overheated brain later.
“Well, now I am,” she quipped, but didn’t stop hugging me.
Elix fumbled in her pocket for a sheet of paper that had been folded, refolded, and folded again. She turned it to a side that said, have they hurt you?
Only when Verne refused to bite me, was my automatic response. I gave Wolfie Sadie my middle finger. She had to get over that already.
“No,” I begrudgingly admitted. “They helped me, actually. I’d be dead without them.”
“Twice,” Lainsz remarked behind me.
“Yes, thank you,” I huffed. Paige met my eyes.
Elix hurriedly scribbled, Are you sure that one didn’t hurt you?
“He’s a dick,” I said with a shrug. Air hissed through my teeth at the sudden tear of pain through my middle.1 “But I’m starting to think his bark is worse than his bite.”2
Paige hugged me tighter, but drew back at my next grunt, her eyes teary. “The serious one said you were stabbed twice. We should never have left.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically. But these women had waited outside this door for days. They were true friends, not whatever temporary bonds I’d had before. “Okay, I’m not fine. I’m in so much pain, I want to cry.”
“What happened to pain relief, asshole?” Paige yelled over my shoulder. “My girl could use some morphine, or at best a fucking paracetamol—”
Lainsz’s eyebrow was arched on his head; I could sense it. Could hear it, too, when he spoke. “We’re in Lunova, slayer.”
“No fucking way?” Paige demanded, teeth bared like she was the wolf shifter. “Since when?”
“Serendipity,” I said suddenly, grabbing Elix’s arm and stifling a cry at how the movement stretched both stab wounds. “Is she—okay?”
Elix bit her lip and flipped her folded paper to a prepared sheet. Serendipity’s in a coma, but the healer says she’ll live. We don’t know what Beaufort did to her, or how much the hag drained.
I read it once, then again to be sure I hadn’t missed out a word. “How much what?” I asked, interrupting whatever elaborate threat Paige was about to deliver to my—uh, to the wolf. Not my mate. Not my anything.
“It’s not just limbs and eyes the hag took,” Paige explained, dragging her death glare from Lainsz, her eyes softening on me.
I wasn’t sure I deserved it; the kindness of that look.
I’d been lying to her and Elix, and while it was out of necessity, it was still a bitterness I’d tasted everyday.
“She drains life. Her victims get weak and—”
“She gets stronger,” I guessed. Pretty sure I’d seen this Buffy episode. Or was it Doctor Who?
Rogue’s sister was in a coma. God. “Is Rogue—okay?”
Elix sighed, her chest rising and falling hard. She didn’t have a prepared reply for that, it seemed. Even Paige shifted on her feet, reluctant to answer.
“Who the fuck’s Rogue?” Lainsz demanded, suddenly right behind me. Something corrosive burned my middle. I might have thought it was acid reflux if I hadn’t felt this before from Lainsz. Jealousy. I turned enough to give him an affronted look. What right did this wanker have to jealousy?
“None of your business,” I took great pleasure in replying.
“She’s not going to tell anyone you’re a wolf,” Paige said eventually, chewing her bottom lip. “That’s all she said.”
Well, that was something. At least my species hadn’t been exposed, but I didn’t know how I’d go back to the academy now. Maybe something to think about when I didn’t have two furious stab wounds.
“Rogue may not expose your species,” a cool, female voice said from the trees to our left. All four of us startled, Lainsz racing outside with a knife already in his pale hand as a figure peeled away from a tree.
Mortem. Shit. Double, triple, quadruple shit. “But the same cannot be said of Lawrence Montgomery-Sutherland.”
Cold raced through me, blood draining from my face until I felt dizzy. “He told you.”
“The moment he arrived back at the academy,” she confirmed, coming one step closer.
Only one. She was dressed in tactical black, her outfit all leather from her trousers, boots, and sleeveless jacket, to the gloves she always wore.
“It seems Mr. Montgomery-Sutherland was watching as Beaufort attempted to feed Serendipity to his grandmother.”
“And ran to snitch at the first opportunity,” Paige snarled, taking a protective stance in front of me. Elix did the same.
“Precisely. He was sitting in my office waiting for me,” Mortem confirmed.
“You can’t fight Mortem for me,” I hissed at my friends.
Elix held her paper over her shoulder. Watch us.
I groaned. I was going to get my two best friends killed and—my mind ground to a halt. Jumped back a few steps. Honed in on her wording.
“I’ll kill you—” Lainsz began, but I surged forward to grab the back of his shirt, thankful he was actually wearing one. The neckline cut into his throat, and he whipped around to growl at me.
“Yes, yes, you’re very impressive, very scary. Could you do me a favour and shut up for a minute?”
“Excuse me?” Lainsz demanded, nostrils flaring.
“Go back inside,” I said slowly. “The grownups are talking.”
Pure murder shone in his icy eyes for a moment before they caught on something behind me and victory replaced it. Which meant Leander and Verne were here, and I didn’t have much time before this became a bloodbath.
“He was sitting in your office waiting for you,” I repeated Mortem’s words, catching Verne’s eye and silently pleading for him to trust me, to give me a minute.
He shook his head, he and Leander moving past us, so I spoke at a thousand miles an hour.
“That meant you weren’t in your office. Because you were in the forest, fighting the hag, weren’t you? You’re the other wolf.”
Leander and Verne paused only a few feet away, and I exhaled a rough breath. Lainsz was allowing me to hold him back, which was odd, but I didn’t let go.
“You’re a wolf?” Paige blurted, staring at our headmistress. “Seriously? You’re the head of an academy of wolf killers, and you’re hiding in plain sight?”
“That’s preposterous,” Mortem said crisply, about to argue her way out of it. But she didn’t miss the way I stared at her gloves. Her jaw clenched. The wolf in the forest had black markings on all four legs, as if they’d been charred, blackened.
“Show us your arms, then,” I challenged. “If you’re not the wolf who helped us, you won’t mind removing your gloves.”
“I do not take orders from—”
“Not an order,” I cut in mildly. “Just a test. If you’re not the wolf, you won’t have similar marks on your arms.” I glanced at Verne. “I’m guessing scars in human form show up in wolf fur.”
“They do,” he confirmed, a furrow between his brows as he faced Mortem. “If it’s true, your secret is safe with us. You are safe with us, your own kind.”
“I am not your kind,” Mortem snarled, not even reaching for a glove. Her hands curled into fists. “I want nothing to do with you, except to cut you down like stalks of wheat—”
“I wouldn’t,” I advised her with a cruel smile. “I wouldn’t threaten us.”
Mortem laughed, her eyes flashing. “And why is that? You think you, an amateur slayer with less than a month’s training, are a match for me?”
“No,” I agreed, and wasn’t sure why I smiled when I said, “But this man right here would happily slash you into ribbons with his claws. I bet he’d use your bones to decorate this lovely little garden. I think they’d make a nice border fence, don’t you?”
“I fucking love you,” Paige said under her breath. That… was not the expected response.
I met Mortem’s enraged stare and added, “The only thing holding him back is me. So be careful what threats you throw around.” Whatever she saw on Lainsz’s face made the blood drain from hers. “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to Lunova Academy, but I’d be damned if I had the choice ripped from me by a woman who was an even bigger hypocrite than me.
Not just a slayer, but the headmistress of all slayers.
It sounded like she had some baggage when it came to wolves, but that wasn’t my problem.
It was my advantage, though, because I could use it.
“Let me keep my place in the academy, and I won’t tell anyone you’re a fraud.”
“Same goes for me,” Paige said loudly. “Let Sadie stay, or I’ll tell everyone.”
Elix nodded, jabbing her thumb at her chest.
“You want to go back?” Leander’s small voice cut through my chest, making a lump swell in my throat.
I hoped he could read the response in my stare—I don’t know—but we barely knew each other. We weren’t at the reading each other’s thoughts stage yet.
Yet? I was getting way too carried away.
But a part of me wanted to get carried away. I wanted to properly get to know these men who’d saved me, who cared in a way I’d never known, who I was beginning to accept were woven into my soul like oxygen threaded through blood.
One thing was clear—it wasn’t a one-time thing. And that terrified me. I could never be casual and carefree about relationships. I would always be afraid to open up, to reveal my hidden fears and secret dreams, to be seen.
Mortem was backed into a corner. She could kill the three of us to keep us quiet, but we had a whole pack as backup, and the headteacher hesitated. “Fine,” she bit out. “But one more toe out of line, Sadie, and you’re out.”
“She’ll need an extended leave of absence, of course,” Verne said smoothly. “To recover from the near-death assault from one of your staff members.”
Mortem’s expression twisted, but she bit out, “Fine.”
This hadn’t gone the way she planned, I sensed. She’d come here to deliver her winning hand, probably to issue threats of her own. She might have helped us with the hag and Beaufort, but it was clear she wasn’t on our side.
Oh god, now there were sides. And I’d drawn myself on the wolf end? A long sigh escaped me, and I watched Mortem melt back into the shadows.
“She’s going to be a problem,” Paige grumbled.
“If I’d been allowed to kill her,” Lainsz snarled. “There wouldn’t be a problem at all.”
Lainsz didn’t strike me as the sort of man to allow someone else to forbid him from doing anything, yet I was still holding him back. Why?