Pack.
Home.
But I couldn’t find the will to open my eyes. My eyelids were too heavy, the weight of some unknown force pulling me back under, my mind already fading as someone called my name.
I drifted in and out of barely there consciousness, the surface always just that bit too far out of reach. I wasn’t alone though. I knew it with a soul-deep certainty, felt the steady throb of another heartbeat alongside mine.
I clung to it, lost myself in its comforting rhythm, knowing there was nothing to be scared of because I was safe.
Safe and loved.
I smiled as gentle fingers brushed across my forehead, soft words pulling me out of what felt like the deepest sleep. My eyes fluttered open, blinking rapidly in the dim light.
“Fucking finally.” Sasha sat staring back at me, her voice teasing, but the worry in her eyes told a different story.
“What happened?” I croaked, voice scratchy.
“Here.” She passed me a glass of water and helped me sit up enough to drink it.
“Thank you.”
Setting the glass back down, she asked, “What do you remember?”
“Um…” Memories flooded back in a jumbled rush, but the overwhelming feeling of panic had me sitting bolt upright. “Axel!” The sudden movement made the room spin and I swayed, scrunching my eyes shut as a wave of nausea washed through me.
“Easy.” Sasha gently pushed me to lie back down. “And he’s okay,” she added quickly, just as Rys burst into the room.
“You’re awake,” Rys said, walking over to sit on the end of the bed.
“Where’s Axel?” I grit out, still fighting the urge to throw up. “And Melhak?Fuck—”I felt over my chest and stomach where I remembered being shot with fucking crossbow bolts. The skin was smooth under my fingers.
Healed.
I opened my eyes, meeting Rys’s brown ones. “Tell me what happened. And where the fuck is Axel?” Sasha said he was okay, but where was he?
A flash of black caught my eye, and I slowly turned my arm over to see the dark ink covering it from my inner wrist all the way down to almost the crease of my elbow.
I knew what it was.
Recognised it from Dathal and Nick.
But the significance of seeing it on my arm took a good few seconds to register. “Why?” It was all I could think to ask. Why do something of this magnitude when I was unconscious and couldn’t even consent or take part? One thought came to mind and I grabbed Rys’s hand. “Was he dying? Did that fucker try and kill him?” It was the only thing that made sense. If Axel needed access to my shifter healing, I would’ve offered it up in a heartbeat, and Rys knew it.
His fingers wrapped around mine. “Axel wasn’t dying,” he said, voice catching. “You were.”
“What?”
“You were poisoned.”
The second bolt. I remembered now. My hand automatically went to my stomach.
His eyes darkened, grip tightening to almost painful. “By the time we got there, it’d been in your system too long. Lady Sarhin gave you something to counteract it, but you needed a little help staying alive long enough for it to work.”
“Axel,” I breathed, remembering the sense of not being alone while I was unconscious.
Of being loved.
My chest tightened when I remembered his refusal to do this very thing. I let go of Rys and traced the ink that now joined us together. “No.” I blinked back tears at the realisation that he’d been forced into this to save my life. I felt sick all over again. “He didn’t want this, he—”
