Fucking Vicente and his shit timing.
“Go,” she tells me. “I have class to get to anyway. Wouldn’t want big brother to spank me for being late.”
His lip curls. “You wish.”
Haide winks and I’m out the door.
Every step away from her feels like tearing muscle from bone. The bond below screams in protest like never before, a physical ache that starts in my chest and spreads like poison through my veins. By the time I reach the corridor, my hands are shaking with the effort of not turning back.
Soon, little mate. I’ll be back soon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Haide
The hallway dims as I leave class, draping me in that creepy darkness the walls of this place love to trap you in. My codex is in hand and my jacket dangles from my satchel instead of on my shoulders where the instructors insist it belongs. It’s too stiff, too polished, tooRathe. Right now, the only thing I care about is the warm line of blood sliding from the gashes along my forearm, dripping past my wrist like it has somewhere urgent to be.
Warcraft games. I won. Mostly.
The other guy had to be portalled out, so I’m calling that even.
A smirk forms at my lips as I catch a familiar sight.
London LeCroix—or maybe it’s Deveraux now—leans against the stone wall, and the sight of her stops me for half a breath before I force my feet to keep moving.
White hair spills down her back, sleek as satin, eyes already flicking black as her Ethos comes to the surface, likely searching for a threat in me.
I saved her ass when I knew nothing about her, the reason she stands here at all, but I get it.
Bros before hos and all that.
She clocks the steady flow of blood running down my arm, her gaze dragging from my face to the mess dripping down my wrist, then back up again. The look she gives me is a sharp mix offrustration, annoyance…and something that feels too much like concern to sit right in my chest.
I hate that it reaches a small, stupid corner of me. I also hate that she’s the only person besides Legend who bothers to track me this closely.
“Well, well,” I drawl as she pushes off the wall with a lazy grace I will never have. “Look who it is. The newest queen of Rathe. How’s it feel to be the only queen in a pile of kings?”
She lifts a brow. “Missed you too, Haids.” Her eyes soften—barely—but it’s enough to sting my ego. “Got a bad habit of bleeding.”
Course she heard about the bullshit from the other day. “Yeah, well at least this time it was fair.”
“Come on.” She sighs. “Let’s go see Silver. Let him fix you up.”
“I’m fine.” I slide the jacket onto my arm, covering the blood like that solves anything. The warm liquid instantly seeps into the fabric.
London hums, unimpressed. “I’ll feed you after.”
That earns the smallest twitch at the corner of my mouth. “Lead the way then, your highness.”
She laughs once, half-annoyed and half-amused, and we fall into step together, trading light conversation that feels almost…normal. If anything in Rathe could be considered that.
Silver’s infirmary is half clinic and half battlefield. He’s already bent over someone when we step inside.
London presses closer first, looking over the male.
Her mouth falls open. “What the hell happened to him?”
The gifted glances toward us. Those yellow eyes linger on me; and he smirks like getting disemboweled is flirtation. “Exile girl.”
