“Let her in.”
Xinyi’s shoulders bunched around her ears at the gravelly voice. Slowly, she backed up, taking the door with her until it was wide open. Light from the hallway poured into the room barely, showing a figure on the bed.
The bedside light clicked on, and it took everything in me not to gasp at the sight before me.
The gorgeous Greek goddess that had once been Iris was gone. Her face and skin had slashes crossing over her olive skin in a pattern that I recognized as one of the hunters that had been at the club with us.
What wasn’t from a dagger was the large chunk missing from her throat, exposing the muscle and tendons there. She wore a long-sleeved shirt that sat strangely along her form, leading me to believe there were more chunks taken out.
“Enjoying your boyfriend’s handy work?” Iris croaked, her voice cracking with each word. “While you were saving your hunter, your wolf decided to snack on me.”
I swallowed, not sure what to say to that. She had just tried to shoot Tate and then ended up shooting Julian instead. Did I say sorry? Or that she deserved it? I wasn’t sure anyone deserved this?
“Why aren’t you healing?” I swallowed the bile that tried to come up. Most vampires would have healed within the first twenty-four hours, more if they’d fed well.
Iris tilted her head to the side. “A gift from your hunter friend, after your boyfriend mauled me. I tried to feed to heal. They fought back. I barely escaped without losing my heart, only to realize they’d put something on their daggers. Now, not even blood will heal me.”
Xinyi whimpered, trembling in the corner of the room, her hand going to the bandage on her neck.
“Xinyi,” I said softly, coming to her side, “it’s okay. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said through sobs. “I didn’t know. I would have told you. But she… then… I thought she loved me.”
Xinyi sank to the floor, her face buried in her knees as she cried.
“Useless, pathetic cow,” Iris snarled. “All she had to do was befriend you, and she couldn’t even do that right.”
I thought she’d done a good job. At least, I was fooled. Still, it made something lighten in my heart to know that Xinyi hadn’t been in on the whole plan to kill me what not.
Xinyi sniffed, lifting her head. “Are they going to kill her?”
My lips twisted to the side. “I… uh… don’t know. That’s up to the council to decide. Usually, yes.”
“I’m going to die.” A chorus of ugly sobs came from Xinyi.
“Oh, shhhh,” I tried to reassure her, wrapping my arms around the smaller woman. “We’ll figure something out. I won’t let you die, I promise.”
Iris snorted. “Don’t make promises you cannot keep. Your council will want to use me as an example no doubt and, once I’m gone, your little friend will be gone too. How sad.”
Her words showed no genuine sympathy for Xinyi’s position. She didn’t even care that she was probably going to die herself. Only that she was going to hurt me in the process.
I shot her a glare. “I’m sure we can make some kind of exception. How does being buried in concrete for the rest of eternity sound to you? Then Xinyi lives, and you become nothing but a dried-up husk.”
Iris hissed at me, but it seemed she was too injured to do much more than glower at me.
“We could break their bond.”
My head whipped toward the open doorway where Tate stood. “What? I thought that wasn’t possible.”
Tate kept his gaze on Iris while he spoke. “There have been a few cases. Kyren told me about before. It doesn’t always work.and I’m not sure the process. but I’m sure we can find a witch willing to try.”
“Did you hear that, Xinyi?” I rubbed her back soothingly. “We’re going to find a way to get you out of this. I promise.”
While I watched Julian and another hunter come in and cuff Iris, leading her out into the hallway where students gasped and cried out in terror at the mess that Iris had become, I stroked Xinyi’s head, hoping that for once everything I was promising her would come true.
Chapter twenty-eight
Jack
