‘Rage?’I called through our bond, my heart thundering against my ribs.‘Rage!’
Honor took off at a sprint, and I followed, weaving through the library shelves, I ran as fast as my two legs could go.
‘Are you close?’Rage suddenly asked, his mental voice sounding breathless. Strained.
‘Yes. Where are you? What’s wrong?’ I ran out the door and down the hall, exiting the building, and still … I saw no one.
My mind raced, and the fear I’d felt intensified—mine mixing with Rage’s. And…‘WHY WEREN’T YOU ANSWERING?’
‘Come to the castle infirmary; Justice is hurt bad,’he said.‘I was busy helping him.’
I skidded to a stop in the middle of the quad, only then realizing that Honor wasn’t anywhere near me, he was way far up ahead.
‘Hurry, Nai … please,’ Rage said.
Mother Mage.
‘Run!’ I commanded my wolf—because the sooner I could get to Rage, the better. She surged to the surface and my clothes shredded as muscle and bone and sinew snapped and shifted in the blink of an eye … and then I was running.
As I approached the castle, shifters appeared, their forms a blur in the periphery as I raced to my target.
‘Justice better not be dead,’ I snarled to Rage, his brothers, and even the universe. Now that I knew what it took to bargain with the Keeper of the Dead… ‘Nobody better be even close!’
I sprinted into the infirmary, and my wolf receded. Boom. Gone. And … totally naked, I strode into the room, pausing to scan the inhabitants. Every single bed was occupied. All of them. There had clearly been some type of attack.
The metallic tang of copper hung in the air, but it was the heavy weight of dread that pressed in around me. A half-dozen shifters dressed in white attended to the other patients, but there was only one bed with several people hovering around it. I recognized the broad shoulders of two of the Midnight brothers. I yanked a blanket from a twin mattress, wrapping it around me like a toga, and beelined for the brothers and their mother.
“What’s going on?” I asked, stepping between Honor’s wolf form and Rage, who was nearest to the twin bed. “How is—?”
The question died on my lips as I stared down at Justice.
Strong, loyal, watchful Justice … just lay there, nearly as white as the hem of the blood-soaked sheet over him. His chest rose and fell in short, shallow breaths, but his emerald eyes were closed.
“Blood mages attacked his patrol squad,” Noble said from the other side of the bed.
Jerking my chin up, I looked at Noble and then turned my attention to Rage, my jaw dropping at his gruesome appearance.
Blood mage… Kian had mentioned them in the library. If he was behind this, I’d skin him alive.
Rage’s black leather armor was dark, wet with blood in several places and caked with mud in others. The two sheaths strapped to his thighs were empty, but he had one dagger at his waist and a broadsword fastened to his back.
“Blood mage?” I squeaked. Just because I’d heard of them once didn’t mean I knew who or what they were.
“Vampires,” Rage clarified.
WHAT THE WHAT?
Three deep gashes marred the molded leather across his chest, the congealed blood on his skin a testament to how close he’d come to occupying a space next to his brother. Additional scratches and scrapes were in various stages of healing on his neck and face, and his eyes glistened as he watched his brother struggle to breathe.
I reached out to my mate, and my heart squeezed with pain when he flinched.‘Rage?’
‘It’s my fault.’ He blinked, and two tears spilled … one down each cheek. When he looked at me, his eyes still swam with guilt and pain. ‘I sent him out there to investigate.’
Shaking my head, I pushed past my mate’s guilt to deal with the most pressing issue. “Why isn’t he healing?” I asked.
Rage said nothing.
Noble cleared his throat. “I’ve poured several bottles of healing elixir—”
