Misty
I follow Cole through his… apartment, I guess. The layout of these suites is remarkably like the Firestone castle in Moonrise where my family has their own apartments within the castle. But this place is practically empty. Dusty and stale. If he has personal objects, they’re not here.
I creep behind him, careful to keep at least a few feet of distance between us as he leads me into a bedroom that… smells like him.
I hadn’t noticed before–his scent. It’s very clean and brisk. It’s hard to describe. I don’t dwell on it. Instead, I’m looking at his perfectly made bed–so perfect I wonder if he’s ever even slept in it.
“Sit down,” he commands… gently, at least.
“Why?”
“Because you need stitches, and you’re very short. I don’t want to have to bend down the whole time.”
“I’ll be completely healed in a few hours.”
“That’s long enough to catch an infection,” he grumbles as he pulls open the top drawer of a dresser.
“Why do you even care?”
“Because I’d have to find another breeder, and that sounds like a hassle.” He pulls a metal box out of the dresser and shuts the drawer, turning back to me. “Sit down, Mystica.”
“No one calls me that,” I grumble, walking to the edge of the bed and flopping down.
“It’s your name.”
“Yeah, but no one ever calls me that.”
“Why not?” Alpha King Cole kneels beside the bed and takes my right arm. Shock flutters up my spine as he pushes his hood back and lets his cloak fall to the floor behind him in a tangle of black fabric. His hair is very short, like he doesn’t want to fuss with it. It’s blonde, a little darker than mine, and curly. In fact, I bet if he wore his hair long, spiral curls would dance around his ears and neck. It would take me hours with a curling iron to get the same effect.
“Is there something on the top of my head that you find fascinating?” he asks under his breath.
I look away from him, crossing my legs and staring through the window at the endless desert. I hear him open the metal box and start moving things around, then he grips my arm again, twisting it into position. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“You’re wasting your time and effort,” I argue, but the words come out as a hiss as he starts cleaning the jagged, shredded teeth marks the wolf left. “Do you even know how to do stitches?”
“Yes,” he says, his eyes focused on the wounds as he cleans my arm.
“How?”
His jaw tenses for a few seconds before he says quietly, “I’m a physician.”
I snort a laugh. “Oh, please.”
He arches a brow but doesn’t look at me. “Is it that hard to believe?”
“Uh, yeah. You’re an evil, kidnapping dictator. You’re not a doctor.”
“You were abducted, not kidnapped, but believe what you want,” he breathes, rising to start laying out surgical thread and all kinds of other instruments I can’t name. He does have a lot of medical equipment, I’ll give him that. The box is the fanciest first aid kit I’ve ever seen.
“If you’re a doctor, then why are you allowing members of your order to kill each other?”
He kneels again, sighing as he adjusts the placement of my arm. “This is going to hurt.”
“What? The stitches or the truth? You’re a monster.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“You’re being so casual about this–OW! That hurt–” I swat at him away right as he places the first suture, but he grabs my free hand I just sent flying for his head. Calmly, he presses my hand to my thigh.
“I can sedate you if that would make this more comfortable for you,” he says, looking up into my eyes. “It’s your choice.”
“You’re not sedating me.”
“Okay, then.” He looks away and starts stitching up the bite marks, one by one, while I squirm and curse his name over, and over again.
Declan appears carrying a plastic bag full of rolled up bandages, but glares at me, looking slightly smug that I’m the one sweating and almost in tears this time, not him. He has a bruise shaped like my teeth on the side of his jaw–black and blue.
“Make it hurt,” he tells Cole. “For me.”
“Go away, Declan,” Cole murmurs, hyper focused as he works.
Declan tosses the bag on the bed and swaggers out of the room.
Cole murmurs something under his breath before rising up on his knees to reach for the bag in the center of the bed, his chest pressing into my knees. Our proximity is totally inappropriate and equally as overwhelming. I rear back, trying to lean out of his touch. He doesn’t seem to realize how close we are. I’m just his patient right now, and one quick glance at the perfectly placed sutures has my mouth moving before I can stop it.
“Are you really a doctor?”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.” He doesn’t look at me as he rifles through the bag.
“You were going to grow up to be Alpha King, though?”
“When my older brother passed away, yeah, I became the heir.”
I didn’t know that. I honestly don’t know much about his family at all, other than the fact his father was the King of Tarsian. “You had an older brother?”
“Yeah, Adam.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t see how that’s your business–”
“Did you kill him, too?”
Wrong thing to say, Misty.
Cole exhales deeply, looking furious for a moment, but not toward me. His eyes fix on the far wall just above the headboard. They’re a pale gray. Not dark, steely silver like Kenna’s eyes. Softer than that.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s a valid question to ask a man who killed his father, I guess.”
I chew my lip as he wraps a bandage around my arm. Minutes pass. He’s meticulous, double checking everything he does. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“My wrists hurt.”
“It’s the silver. There isn’t anything I can do about that. The barrier is enough to stop it from burning you, but it weakens the bones.” He rises, taking his kit with him to discard the needles he used, but he takes several moments to check his supplies.
I sit awkwardly at the edge of his bed, unsure what to do next.
“Adam was in an accident when he was sixteen. He broke into one of the temples that came out of the sand when your aunt took her throne. It hadn’t been explored yet, and the floor gave way. He fell, as did the friend that was with him. Broke his neck.” He shuts the kit with a snap.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It’s not like you pushed him.”
I frown at him as he tucks the box back in the dresser. He hesitates for several seconds before turning to me, tucking his hands in his pockets. “The stitches are dissolvable. They fade in a few days, maybe sooner if your healing powers catch up to the injury before then.”
“Why don’t you call yourself a healer?”
He chews the inside of his lower lip. “It’s what they called me when I graduated from medical school. A physician.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you a witch, then?”
“No. Why would that matter?”
“The only medical school here is in Moonrise…” My eyes go wide. “You went to college in Crescent Falls?”
“For my medical degree, yes. I studied biology at TU first.” He turns away again, fishing in another drawer for something.
Confusion blurs my senses. This can’t be the same man who abducted me, blew up my college, and is going to use me as a breeder.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because the likelihood that wolf had a clean mouth is low.”
“Not the stitches.” My voice sounds like gravel. “Why are you doing this?”
He grips the dresser with one hand, hanging his head.
“Cole?” I ask, forgoing his royal title… because I don’t think he’s in the habit of really using it.
I don’t think he wants it.
“You need to stop asking questions. The less you know, the better.”
“No,” I say, standing, edging toward him. “No… you just killed so many people. You’re keeping me, and several other students, here captive! You–you want to use me as a breeder! What’s the reason? To go to war against my family? To try to take over Eastonia? If that’s the case, then why bother helping me at all? Why bother keeping me alive?”
I reach for him, my fingertips grazing his back and he winces, flinching away from me. I barelytouched him.
I draw my hand back, those same alarm bells I’d heard the other night ringing through my skull. He’s wearing a black shirt, having discarded his cloak some time ago before he started mending my arm, but I see the fabric going damp and the smell of blood rising between us.
“What–What happened to you? You’re bleeding!”
“You need to leave.”
“Cole, your back is bleeding a lot,” I grind out, shocked, my voice shaking.
“Declan!” he shouts, his eyes closed as he grips the dresser so hard it groans and cracks.
I ignore the rush of Declan’s footsteps and step closer, reaching for him again. “Cole, what’s the matter?”
Declan races into the room, panting.
“Cole!” I shout, watching the blood drain from his face.
“Get her out of here, right now,” he pants, and Declan grabs my arm.
I allow him to yank me out of the room. Cole doesn’t even shut the door, but I hear the dresser topple over. “Wait–stop–he’s really hurt! What happened to him? Did he duel like those order members were doing today?”
Declan marches me through the suite, but his face is pale, too, his eyes wide with worry.
“Declan!” I wrench my arm from his iron grip. “What the fuck is going on around here?”
He grabs me again, shaking his head and murmuring curses under his breath. Finally, once the door to Cole’s suite closes behind us, he whirls me to face him, pinning me against the wall.
“Listen to me,” he whispers, looking around before continuing, “What else can you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Powers wise. You can heal; you can shoot light out of your fingers. What else?”
“I don’t know!” I shove him away, but he grabs me and pulls me down the hallway.
“Things are really bad right now, Misty. I’m not going to lie to you about that.”
“Fucking obviously!”
“Shhh!” he growls, looking over his shoulder like we might be followed, or overheard.
“What’s going on? What powers does Richard have? What’s Cole’s part in all of this?”
He chews his lips, his eyes frantic, like he’s internally debating something.
“Declan!”
“Okay, fine. Fuck it!” He rips us to the side, through a door, and into a small, dusty, dark room that might be a coat closet.
I choke on the dust, wheezing painfully. He slaps a hand over my mouth. “Be very, very quiet.”
Voices and footsteps sound beyond the door. I freeze.
He waits for the voices to recede, then says, “He’s not letting anyone help him, but you have to. He’s going to die if his injuries aren’t treated.”
“He’s a doctor, right? Why doesn’t he heal himself?”
“He won’t. I don’t think he can.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I sneer up at him. “He deserves to die for everything he’s done.”
Declan looks down at me, searching my eyes. His expression softens, filling with grief. “You have no idea what he’s had to do, Misty.”
“Then tell me,” I beg.
He opens his mouth, surrendering, but then promptly snaps his lips closed. “I’m being summoned.”
“By Cole?”
He shakes his head. “The Umbra Mortis. Hurry, I need to get you back to your room. Something’s happening.”
We run through the castle–well, he’s dragging me, and I’m doing my best to keep up with him–and he practically tosses me into my suite before slamming the door closed and fumbling with the lock.
“What’s going on?” Georgia asks from behind me, rushing into the room.
But I’m barely paying attention to her hurried questions when she notices my bandaged arm.
Declan jammed the door. It didn’t lock properly.
I can get out.