Chapter 165: The Girl in Red (IV)

Elara:

I closed my eyes.

I was so tired. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was exhausted beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Every breath hurt. My shoulder burned. My ribs felt like they were being crushed from the inside, my hand throbbed, my temple was burning where a glass hard had cut, and my thigh had become a deep, pulsing ache. Yet somehow, none of it had mattered while Jasper was still behind those doors.

Reign seemed to understand exactly what was happening inside my head. His hands remained against my cheeks as he lowered his voice. "You don’t have to fight anymore."

I opened my eyes again.

"Just for a little while, Frostbite," he whispered. "Let your body rest. Let us take care of you. Jasper is fighting for his life in there. You don’t have to fight everyone else out here too."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that I could stand, that I was fine, that I could wait another hour, another five hours, another entire day if necessary. But then his forehead nearly touched mine, and his voice became softer still.

"Close your eyes, Princess. Just breathe. You know he’s going to wake up. Believe that. And when he does, you need to be strong enough to be there."

My eyelids fluttered. For the first time, I allowed myself to believe the possibility that Jasper would open those doors alive. I took one shaky breath. Then another. My body began to loosen almost imperceptibly, the rigid tension that had held every muscle together finally beginning to disappear.

And the instant I let go, everything came crashing down.

Pain exploded through me so violently that I couldn’t even scream at first. My knees buckled, my vision blurred, and suddenly every injury Esme had named seemed to awaken at once.

My ribs screamed with every breath, my shoulder burned like it had been torn open again, my fractured hand throbbed mercilessly, and my thigh felt as though someone had driven a blade straight through it. Then the hallway tilted beneath my feet.

Reign’s face was the last thing I saw clearly before my body finally gave up, and somewhere around me I heard several voices shouting for the doctors as strong arms caught me before I hit the floor.

Then the nurses rushed forward, and the darkness swallowed everything.

* * *

Alaric:

It had been hours since the doctors had taken care of Elara’s injuries, yet I still couldn’t calm down.

From the outside, I probably looked like a statue someone had forgotten to move. I had been sitting on the same couch in the corner of her private ward for more than an hour, my elbows resting on my knees, my hands loosely clasped together, my gaze fixed on the unconscious woman lying in the bed only a few feet away. But inside, I was anything but still.

My thoughts had been running in circles ever since I watched her collapse. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her standing in that hallway with blood staining her clothes and hands, refusing to leave Jasper, and then I saw her knees buckle the moment she finally allowed herself to stop fighting. The image wouldn’t leave me alone.

Lorien had been pulled into the political mess surrounding the accident, and he had taken Reign with him so our friend would have something useful to do instead of pacing endlessly around this room. Esmeray was currently with the doctors who had just finished attending to Elara, asking questions about every injury and every treatment they had administered.

Kairo had stepped out only minutes ago to get some air because, as he admitted quietly before leaving, sitting in this room while waiting for her to wake up was making it difficult for him to breathe. I understood exactly what he meant. It was the same reason I had barely moved from this couch.

My gaze drifted toward the plastic bag sitting on the coffee table beside me, and something inside my chest tightened. Elara’s clothes were inside it, carefully sealed away by the hospital staff after they had removed them. The white woolen sweater she had been wearing when the accident happened was no longer white. Almost every visible portion of it had been stained red with blood - hers and Jasper’s - and the sight of it had been haunting me ever since I first noticed it.

I remembered seeing her in that sweater when I arrived at the hospital. I remembered how the sight of her had left me breathless, not because she looked beautiful, but because something about seeing that normally stubborn, infuriating woman covered in so much blood had made my stomach drop so violently that I had almost forgotten how to breathe.

I had already known for some time that I was becoming soft toward her. I had started noticing little things I had never cared enough to notice before. Somewhere along the way, my interest in provoking her had slowly changed into wanting to understand her. I wanted to know who Elara was beneath the title, beneath the royal blood, beneath the anger and stubbornness. I wanted to know the woman herself. Then Reign had dropped the bombshell that she was his soulmate, and I had shoved every one of those thoughts somewhere I refused to examine. She was Reign’s. That should have made everything simple.

Except today had proven that nothing about this was simple.

Elara was Reign’s mate. There was no question about that anymore. I had seen what happened to him when he learned about the accident. His wolf had nearly broken through his control, and I had never seen Reign that terrified in my entire life. Yet the strangest part wasn’t Reign’s reaction. It was ours. The rest four of us had sensed something was wrong too. Not only Reign, but all five of us had felt that sudden, inexplicable dread way before Magnus’s call came through. And when we reached the hospital, every one of us had reacted to seeing her hurt as though someone had ripped something vital out of us. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

I still couldn’t explain it. No matter how many times I replayed the moment in my head, I couldn’t find an answer. Even if all of us had developed feelings for her - and I was beginning to suspect that was exactly what had happened - feelings shouldn’t have allowed us to sense her pain from miles away. Attraction didn’t work like that. Affection didn’t work like that. Nothing I knew about magic worked like that. So what the hell was happening between the rest of four of us and Elara?

My gaze returned to the bed. She looked impossibly small beneath the blankets, nothing like the fierce woman who had stood in that hallway and refused to move. Bandages covered parts of her forehead and shoulder, one hand was carefully immobilized, and bruises were scattered across the portions of her skin the doctors hadn’t covered. Her breathing was slow and steady now.

At least she was alive. At least the healers had managed to stabilize her. But somehow, knowing that still didn’t make the fear disappear.

I lowered my gaze to my hands and clenched them slowly. I had spent months telling myself that Elara was trouble. A menace. A walking disaster who had somehow managed to turn our carefully controlled lives upside down in the shortest amount of time imaginable. I had mocked her, challenged her, irritated her, and convinced myself that if I kept enough distance, none of this would matter.

I was wrong.

The truth had become painfully clear today. I might not know what I was supposed to do with these feelings. I might not even understand what they were yet. But as I stared at the woman sleeping in front of me, with her blood still staining the clothes lying inside that plastic bag, one thing had become painfully certain.

I might not survive losing her.