“Beth.” I snap my head in Jayden’s direction as I hear his voice.
Shadows wrap around me, and I’m hauled into a muscled chest. Jayden’s lips crash down on mine, and I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him impossibly closer. My fingers thread through his hair as he deepens the kiss.
“I missed you so much,” I breathe against his lips.
“You’ve only been gone a few days.” He chuckles. “But yeah, that was torture. Never again. You go into battle, I’m at your side.”
“No arguments here.” I bury my face in his neck.
“I’m glad to see you in one piece. I swear you scared a few decades off my life calling me while you were bleeding and shit.” Jayden’s arms tighten around me.
“You look like you fared better than I did. You’re not injured after fighting all those monsters?” I glance down his body, and from what I can see, he’s in one piece.
“I’m fine but we’re running low on the elixir. The Gorgons ran amok through our front line before we could take them out, and that’s the only thing that can heal the stone.” Jayden sets me on my feet.
“Yeah, we have a bottle we haven’t used a lot of it because we can’t use it too much. Day one I had to take it.” I wince.
“I’m gonna find out how much of that was necessity and how much was you being reckless,” Jayden whispers in my ear, making me shiver.
“It was all necessary. I don’t want to talk about this now. Where did you put the statues?” I glance away from him.
“What happened? Why don’t you want to talk about it?” He grips my arms.
“Not now, Jayden. We need to help our friends. We can talk about this later.” I turn away from him, not wanting to discussthe shifter incident but knowing it’s going to weigh on me forever.
I grab the medical bag from Greyson and start toward the academic building where the healers’ office is located before Jayden catches up to me. He turns me around and we head for the dorms instead.
“The academic building is toast. They went for that first, probably knowing that’s where our healers were.” Jayden steers me along.
Thad jogs up, yelling, “They fully retreated, and I didn’t see why.”
Jayden tugs me forward into Thad’s line of sight. “Beth brought us an army.”
“Beth, you made it,” Thad shouts and wraps me in a friendly hug. “This guy was insufferable while you were gone.”
“Dax said something similar.” I chuckle. “Where are the students who got turned to stone?”
“We have them on the first floor of the dorm building in the common area. We couldn’t send them to the healers because of the fire.” Thad points back over his shoulder.
“How many of them are there?” I ask.
“Ten demigods and several monsters were hit with the Gorgon’s sight, but we smashed the monsters into pieces.” Jayden squeezes my hand.
“Okay, let’s save our friends from stone and then regroup.” I run a hand through my hair. “Where are the wolves? We’re going to need to check on them.”
“They are camped out on the other side of the wards. They are really sensitive to them and don’t like being inside them unless they’re in battle,” Thad says.
“Okay. We’ll check on them after we heal these guys.” I push through the front doors to the dorm building. “Wow.”
There are more than ten demigods turned to stone. I glance between all of them, spotting Jackson among the statues. I race over to him and pull the bottle out of the bag. I unstop it and press three drops of the red liquid to his lips before taking a step back.
Stone crumbles around Jackson and falls to the floor. Jackson stiffens and lunges for me, but Jayden blocks the blow with his sword.
“Jackson, it’s over. The battle is won. Beth is on our side.” Jayden shoves him back.
“Beth? Shit. That’s fucking disorienting.” Jackson shakes his head.
“All good. Just glad we already figured out the antidote in that first battle all those months ago.” I wipe the dust from his shoulder.
