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Breathing hard through clenched teeth, she bent over, bracing her hands on her knees. Those pesky stars were drifting across her vision again, and her arm was burning, her tattoo shouting a distress signal.
Darien made his way over to her, kicking aside rock, singed wood, and what looked like body parts. She tried not to focus on those. There was a slight limp in his step, but aside from that, he appeared unharmed.
“Loren.” That rich voice had her knees weakening in a whole different way. “Sweetheart, are you alright?” He helped her straighten and drew her into his arms, holding her tight, loving her the same way he always did, as if she hadn’t run out on him last weekend, as if nothing had changed between them at all, as if she hadn’t stomped on his heart by grabbing her things and leaving the home he’d provided for her. “Are you hurt?” Strong hands rubbed her back in comforting circles. “Tell me what hurts, sweetheart.” Oh, how she missed this.
“I’m okay,” she said around chattering teeth. Tears burned her eyes as she wrapped her arms around him, fingers digging into his muscular back through his leather jacket, not realizing until now how badly she’d needed to be held by him, how badly she’d needed to know that he didn’t hate her for the distance that had been wedged between them. She greedily breathed in the scent of his skin, his clothes, that masculine cologne he always wore, the fragrance momentarily transporting her back to the very first time she’d ever sat in his car. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t you worry about me.” He ran a hand over her hair, his face buried in the strands. He was breathing her in, just as she was breathing him in, as if he’d thought he would never get the chance to again. “Don’t you worry about me.”
He held her for a long time as Jack and Max checked in on Dallas and Sabrine. With Darien’s body pressed solidly against hers, it didn’t take long for her heart to slow. That sick feeling in her stomach went away, and she melted in his arms, all her worry of the night’s events disappearing into the past, exactly where it belonged.
But then Darien’s arms loosened. “Loren.” His voice had that deep and dangerous tone that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. It was the kind of voice he reserved for specific people and situations. “Why are you wet?” He caught a strand of her hair between his fingers and lifted it to his nose, inhaling the chlorine. She didn’t need to be a hellseher to know there were other smells he was picking up on, too. The look of brutal murder that washed over his face told her that he recognized the metallic scent of blood, some of which was not her own, and the salt of sweat. Sweat that belonged to a guy—three of them. Her heart broke into a fresh sprint as Darien bit out, “What happened here?”
“It’s nothing.” But she said it too quickly, and that was when he spotted the rip in her cardigan.
He grabbed her wrist and pushed her sleeve up to her elbow.
There were bruises dotting her ivory skin. Big purple bruises and cuts snaking all the way around her arm.
She tried to pull away, but he held firm. “I fell, Darien,” she spluttered. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“These aren’t bruises from falling, Loren, they’re fucking handprints.” Steel-blue eyes blazed down at her, the look on his face sharp enough to cut. “Where are the fuckers that did this to you?”
But he didn’t have a chance to find out, because a male voice boomed against the walls. “You!”
Loren turned to see Headmaster Miles Osborn storming into the room. Two other teachers were with him, murmuring in horror and astonishment as they took in the wreckage of the library and the three slayers standing in the middle of it, covered in dust and blood.
Osborn pointed between them. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Later,” Darien told Loren, that fire in his eyes still kindling. He let go of her in a way that suggested he was reluctant to do so, and turned to face the headmaster. “I think a thank-you is in order.”
Osborn scoffed. “For breaking into the school?” He pointed again between Darien, Jack, and Max. “You boys are nothing but glorified criminals—”
“Who just saved your worthless balls!” Jack exclaimed, arms thrown out at his sides.
“Look around you,” Darien berated. “If we hadn’t shown up, these three students would be dead right now, do you understand me? They would be dead, and your school would be answering to the MPU, who would more than likely conduct an investigation to figure out why the fuck you locked your students outside the shelters.”
When the echo of Darien’s words rolled away, what remained was silence, the sudden absence of sound thick enough to feel.
Osborn’s next words fluttered with pathetic weakness. “They operate on a timer—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck. If any of your students are in trouble, you have an obligation as headmaster to escort them to safety, even if it means putting your own life on the line. Not hiding like cowards in your fucking bunker while some demon goes to town on your premises.”
Loren could see the ice thawing from Osborn’s face as the reality of his mistake set in. A detrimental mistake made by a new headmaster, the kind that could cost him his job.
Darien concluded, deadly gaze sweeping over the teachers, “And I see no one here who followed through with their responsibilities by protecting them. No one but us—the men you call glorified criminals.”
Silence resumed.
Professor Griffith was the first to step forward. “Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.”
Max snarled, “I’ll fucking say.”
Despite Max’s tone, Griffith spoke softly. “Is there anything we can do to thank you?”
“We don’t want your money,” Darien said. “What we want is for you to swear to never let this happen again.”
“Of course.” Griffith nodded, the other professor—a man who taught incantations—nodding as well.
