Page 59 of Savage Elites

Male voices muttered outside my door, and an argument broke out. Cormac had probably joined the kings and tried to make them go away. I stuck my head under the blankets and blocked out their voices.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but more voices outside my room broke me from my slumber.

“Are you sure about this, Mr. Brunswick?” asked a nervous, male voice.

“Willow is my girlfriend, and she hasn’t received medical attention for her injuries. What if she’s been bleeding internally since yesterday?”

After a pause, the male voice said, “I’ll call Dr. Forrester.”

“Fine,” said Leopold.

Sometime later, the key turned in the lock, and the doctor shook me awake. He led me through a series of tests where he took my temperature, examined my extremities for frostbite, checked my reflexes, and asked me a bunch of questions to make sure I wasn’t confused. I slurred out my answers, and he deemed me well enough to start classes after a few days of rest.

When he left, Sebastian, Leopold, and Prakash walked in. They stood in a line around my bed, each staring down at me with concerned expressions.

“We need to talk,” said Leopold.

“But not here,” Sebastian said with a warning edge to his voice.

“Someone could be listening,” added Prakash.

Curiosity thrumming in my chest, I nodded. If Sebastian was ready to talk, I was ready to listen.

Sebastian knelt at my feet. “Can you get dressed? I want to take you to the hideout.”

* * *

Leopold held my hand in the back of the jeep and kept offering me sips of hot chocolate from a steaming Thermos flask. It was thick and rich and creamy, as though someone had made it from melting the finest dark chocolate and stirring in just enough full-fat milk for sweetening.

I didn’t look out of the window for the entire journey and instead focused on the love and concern radiating in Leopold’s aquamarine eyes. If anyone had told me the lout who I’d needed to punch in the privates would end up caring so deeply for me, I would never have believed them.

Leopold carried me into the hideout, which they’d already pre-warmed hours ago. He set me on the leather sofa with a pile of blankets and gave Sebastian a significant look.

“If you miss anything out, I’ll take over and tell Willow everything.”

“Fine,” Sebastian growled.

My heart stuttered out several rapid beats, and I looked from Leopold to Sebastian, to Prakash.

Prakash gave me a tight smile. “I’ll see if there’s enough milk for chai.”

Sebastian sank into the sofa next to me and for the first time in weeks, met my eyes with the same kind of heart-melting intensity from when we had first met. “When you didn’t turn up for Advanced Calculus yesterday afternoon, Prakash searched for you around the academy. You weren’t in the usual places, and Miss Claymore suggested that you might have gone home.”

I nodded.

“But you weren’t at your cottage, either.” He took both my hands in his and pressed my knuckles to his lips. “I called the police, who said you would need to be missing for twenty-four hours before they could send out a search party.”

I dipped my head. “No one would have found me. I got knocked out in Mrs. Benazir’s office, then moved to a cave.”

“Did you see your attacker?”

“No.” I repeated what I’d told the police and included my suspicions about Bianca and her father.

Sebastian’s brows drew together, and Leopold paused at the wood-burning stove, which he was currently refueling. Prakash pulled the saucepan of fragrant chai off the hob to listen.

As I told them the whole, confusing story, each boy’s reactions differed. Leopold’s eyes blazed with cold fury, which he directed mostly at Sebastian, Prakash stared ahead and breathed hard, while Sebastian bowed his head.

At the end of the story, Leopold growled, “Tell Willow everything right now, or I will.”