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Silence filled the cave as Warol also began to work earnestly on their brother. His body was taut with tension, but he bent himself to his task without allowing any distraction. Not even to speak further on how they might find Arie, as he was certain plagued Warol’s mind. Instead, between the two of them they worked in unison, carefully cleaning every wound they came across. Ragoru healed fast but they were still susceptible to infection. In any case, the healing element within their saliva would speed the process along as it had before.
When he finally cleaned the last of the blood from around Kyx’s eyes, Rager sighed in relief. The red male’s eyes somehow remained whole and untouched despite the terrible wounds that ran around and between them that had bled so freely. Still, he couldn’t help but wince. The entire left side of his brother’s face was a network of wounds that had already begun to heal into thick scars. The fur would eventually regrow around his eyes and down the side of his face, but for now it hurt him just to see Kyx’s face in such a state. Even Warol whined in the back of his throat.
“Kyx will not take this well,” Warol said.
Rager narrowed his eyes at his second. “At least he is alive, and his wounds are healing swiftly. That is something we should all celebrate.”
“How long do you think it will take him to wake?”
Rager shifted his shoulders forward with uncertainty. “I am not certain. He could be unconscious all day, or for several days.”
“Let us hope for the former,” Warol said. He leaned close to a red ear and hissed loudly. “All the times you sat by when I was hurt saying I needed to toughen up—it is your turn now. Mend quickly and wake up. Our mate needs us.”
Rager thought he saw a shiver run through Kyx’s body, but he couldn’t be certain. It seemed more likely to be a figment of his desperate imagination needing Kyx to awaken and prove to him that he would be well. Despite the wounds slowly sealing together under the influence of their saliva, Rager knew that there was no guarantee that their brother would wake. He’d lost a lot of blood. They could still have been too late to save his life.
As the hours slipped by without any sign of recovery, Rager’s sorrow deepened as he began to lose faith that their brother would recover. He had to prepare himself for the worst. Kyx was possibly dying even now. It was with great pain that he foresaw himself burying Kyx there in the soft earth outside of the cave.
“Do not start looking maudlin,” Warol snapped. “Kyx will not give up. He may call me stubborn, but he is the most persistent male I’ve ever met. All that cheerfulness would be hard to maintain if he wasn’t. Who is that happy all the time?”
“He is certainly that,” Rager admitted, a soft chuff escaping him. “He was determined from the beginning not to let go of Arie. Even though I didn’t see it then, in retrospect I recall that he never wasted a moment to remind us that he was set on keeping her despite our intentions and agreement with her.”
“We should have let him have his way from the beginning. It would have saved us a lot of trouble,” Warol commentary wryly as he scratched behind his ear.
“Yes, and I will remind you of that next time you don’t want to listen to me,” a weak voice hissed out at them.
Rager and Warol pulled back to stare down at their third. Warol laughed weakly as Warol pulled the injured male up against him, eliciting a pained groan from Kyx. Rager shoved their over-enthused brother away and clasped Kyx’s arm in a gentle yet firm hold of solidarity.
The male blinked several times, the amber eyes glazed over with pain. Kyx looked around, his brow drawing lone with confusion.
“Where is Arie? Did you find the huntsmen?”
Rager pulled back in alarm. “Huntsmen? Are you certain? We didn’t sense any presence of them.”
Kyx shook his head weakly. “They took us by surprise. I didn’t scent them either. Suddenly they were just there. I tried.” He groaned. “I tried to fight them away and keep Arie safe. But I failed.”
“You did as much as you could. No one could expect more, especially not when taken by surprise such as you were. You fought for our mate and our family. That is not failure.”
“How are we going to track them without being able to follow their scent?” Kyx protested. “I couldn’t smell them until they were trying to pull me away from our mate.”
“If they somehow managed to hide their scent, it wouldn’t have a lasting effect. We will begin by searching every inch of this area for any sign of humans,” Rager replied. “All we need is a place to begin and things will come together.”
“And then we will make them suffer,” Warol growled.
Rager’s blood boiled in agreement. He would make sure that any he found would suffer like no other. He and Warol both lost family to the huntsmen—and now their mate.
Such transgressions would no longer be allowed to pass unanswered. He would not grieve and slink away. He didn’t care if he had to enter the Citadel itself and destroy it one piece at a time. He would find their mate, one way or another.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Arie had been drugged. She didn’t remember eating or drinking anything, but somehow, they managed to do it anyway. She woke with this knowledge as she blinked up at a pristine, elegantly molded white ceiling, trying to pull her thoughts together into some form of coherence. She recalled vague impressions of being seated on a horse, riding double with a huntsman as they left the woods and passed over the mountains, but remembered little else of the journey.
Her mind still hazy, she attempted to put together where she was. It was obvious that she was in the Citadel. Not only because Merik said as much regarding their destination, but because nothing in the village resembled anything as elegant as the ceiling above her. She turned her head, her stomach rebelling at the movement as she became lightheaded. Arie closed her eyes and breathed through it until her stomach settled once more.
Even through the fog of the drugs, she couldn’t’ escape the pain that seemed sharper and more terrible amidst all the luxury surrounding her. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she recalled the final moments with Kyx. She knew Warol and Rager would take his loss heavily and would be grieving as much as her. She hoped they would find some comfort in each other, wherever they now were.
A door creaked, and Arie’s eyes cracked open just enough to see a tall, forbidding woman enter the room. Clearly, this was a lady belonging to an influential family. Whoever she was, there was nothing friendly or welcoming about her. The lines of her face were set in firm disapproval, not one laugh line in sight bracketing her mouth or crinkling the corners of her eyes. With her pale, powdered skin and her iron-gray hair pulled into a tight bun, she resembled a wraith, reinforced by the ebony dress hanging from her lean frame. It was the only the rouge on her cheeks and lips that gave her any semblance of color. The woman’s lips tightened severely, making her thin face somewhat resemble an angry bird as she drew up to the side of Arie’s bed, her eyes narrowing shrewdly.
