Page 88 of Call of the Blood

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m…”

“You don’t need to explain to me.”

“It’s so empty,” I whispered.

“…I know.”

I pulled my legs to my chest and held them for the entire ride to the nest after that. I felt stiff for a second when I tried to get out. Alexius didn’t coddle me or help me because I waved him off. Maria was close behind us, only a few minutes. Callahan and the werewolves didn’t show up.

“How’s Lexi?” I asked again. I knew Alexius answered earlier, but I needed to know again since I couldn’t see her.

“She’s home. She’ll see you tomorrow,” Maria said, touching my shoulder. “Callahan and her parents will escort her here. I called runners to get all of your things from the house to bring them here.”

“Thank you,” Alexius said from behind me. “We’ll leave in a day or two.”

I only nodded at that, then I saw vampires pull out a big plastic bag.

A body bag.

“Declan?” I said, taking a step toward it.

“Hold,” Maria said, lifting a hand up in front of me. Not in my face, but at my chest, ready to physically stop me. “He’s being taken to a care room. We don’t have many. There, the eldest in my nest or myself will stay with him for the day and make sure everything is… dealt with correctly as he becomes a vampire.”

“I can do it,” I said, looking at her.

“No, you can’t,” she said, gentle. “Not only do you not know how, but it’s not for someone like you to do.”

“What? An Orphan?” I hissed.

“No, Everly. His sister. He shouldn’t wake up knowing his sister saw everything she would see, like you wouldn’t want your brother to have seen all of it,” Maria said, almost pitying me for thinking she was trying to talk me down. “Very few people are able to be rational and impartial while caring for someone they know. There’s a necessary dissociation from the event that you don’t have yet, and with your brother, you would never have it.”

I looked at Alexius.

“She’s right.”

“He’s one of them, one I would trust if he didn't have you to care for,” she said, nodding at us, then turning to Declan’s rolling body, still in its bag. “Now, I shall go make sure he is settled in and make sure no damage was done to his body. Then I’ll put someone else in charge of him until sunrise and be back.”

“Trust her,” Alexius said softly, “with Declan. Just for the day, for some of the hardest stuff about this.”

“And then we take him home, right?” I asked, staring up at him, feeling something real for the first time since I was taken away from Henry’s corpse.

“We’ll take him to Savannah,” Alexius said, closing his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Going to have to train another Orphan.”

“Yeah…”

“Everly, what if he’s not happy with our living situation? His home is here.”

“He’s my brother. I need to be there for him when he wakes up. I need to…” I felt like collapsing again. I couldn’t say the words yet. I tried to shift my weight and fully lost balance.

“Everly!” Alexius was able to catch me.

Confused, I looked down and remembered.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, looking at my foot. Mangled by a knife through, forcefully healed by quickly drinking blood.

Alexius must have looked down with me.

“How did you do all of that on that foot?” he growled. “Where’s the medical wing?” he said loudly, looking around.