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Our alpha retreated inside the building and we followed. A frail man was stretched across a bench. He was pale and his hair was covered in dirt. Despite looking malnourished and sick he was breathing steadily.
“What am I working with?” Nyx questioned.
“A burn. He says it’s from the magic… but it looks horrible.” Callum peeled away the man’s shirt to reveal a layer of gauze. Nyx gently peeled it away, black skin coming with it.
“What the fuck?” I gasped as the man’s skin healed before our eyes. Wherever charred flesh was moments ago, was swiftly being replaced by fresh, pink skin. It looked irritated still, but it was healing.
“Am I high right now or are you seeing this too?” Nyx asked with a shocked laugh.
“How is this happening?” I questioned.
“He told me he’d heal, I just didn’t believe him. I mean you fucking saw how much damage was done, and this is nothing like it looked last night,” Callum explained frantically. The man must mean something to him because our alpha was partially unhinged in his worry.
The man stirred then. Pale-blue eyes blinked open and then widened at the sight of all of us looking down at him. He relaxed a fraction at the sight of Callum and immediately reached for his hand. My heart froze at the gesture. There was an easy intimacy between them. The kind that only came from years of being together. It didn’t add up. That, paired with the fact Callum wouldn’t meet our eyes, had me panicking internally.
“What’s going on?” the man rasped.
“You’re healing on your own,” I noted, pointing down at his stomach. He looked down and a small smile formed on his lips at the sight of the strips of gauze that still clung to his healing skin.
“Callum, I told you I’d heal.” Jealousy boiled hot in my veins at the teasing between them and Callum’s sheepish grin.
“Yes, I have a lot to learn about witches,” Callum admitted.
“We all do,” Nyx said. “Because that was fucking wild.” Nyx’s words had the man chuckling lightly.
“You must be Callum’s mates.”
“Mate,” I corrected. “I’m his mate and they are mine,” I gestured to the men behind me. I wasn’t sure why I needed the distinction but I didn’t like whatever was happening here. And that was for sure the pot calling the kettle black.
“So am I,” Torryn said, choosing that fucking moment to chime in. Callum turned to me.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Torryn. My old alpha,” I answered. “And now one of my mates. I had to agree to be his mate to join our packs and save the Bluffs, and eventually to save you. But it seemed you didn’t need saving.”
“Well, look at that. You found a mate and she found one. Small world,” the man joked. His words had Callum even more flustered. My brain stuttered as I processed his words.
“Mate?” I questioned.
Callum finally met my eyes as he silently pleaded with me to listen. “I guess we should sit down and talk.”
“Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea,” Leven finally spoke up. He still didn’t look at me as he sat down. Already I wanted to run off and say fuck this, but I held on. They’d earned that much and I couldn’t run just because things were getting complicated. Especially when I added to that chaos.
“Look,” Nyx said to start us off. “Shit’s getting crazy here and we have to talk. I get that we’re all frustrated and hurt and trying to figure all this out. But let’s keep in mind that for the first fucking time in months, we’re on the precipice of hope of ending this war we’ve had waged against us. So Leven, get your head out of your ass and listen for once. Vanya, process and listen, then move on. Callum, you hear her out then tell your side. We’re all adults and we’re going to fucking act like it.”
If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the situation, I might have laughed at him bossing us all around.
For once no one protested or complained. We all grabbed random chairs and sat down in a cluster. It felt a bit like an intervention but apparently that was the point we’d just reached. I’d had such a quick rollercoaster of emotions that I felt like I could vomit. Jealousy and hurt were at the top right now.
“So who’s going to start?” I questioned.
“Me,” Callum said. “This is Holt. He was my cellmate in captivity. We were close down there; it was impossible not to be. We only had each other for days on end. For him it was months alone. They tried to bond us to witches they held captive. They’d bragged about how strong it made the witches and their spells. The guards weren’t afraid to toss around how much damage they could do to our homes and how strong they were now that they’d had several bonded witches.” Callum took a second to breathe. It wasn’t easy for him to talk about and I wanted to go to him, but couldn’t yet. His mate spoke up then. “So many tortured and so much pain.”
“They couldn’t find matches for us, so in an attempt to make a spectacle of our ‘failures’, they forced us to try and bond to each other. That backfired for them but worked for us. We bonded and the resulting magical explosion knocked them all out. It wouldn’t last long so we escaped while we could.”
“I wanted to find a phone to contact the pack, but he insisted we keep walking and we ended up here,” Callum concluded.
“How the fuck did you end up in the same place that we were going? That seems a bit too much of a coincidence,” I said. My suspicions were rising in light of my own annoyance and petty jealousy.
