“Thanks for everything you did,” I said quietly. “I don’t think I’d be here if not for you.”
His jaw clenched, and for a fleeting moment, I saw anguish in his eyes. It told me better than words how close I’d come to dying. Even if he didn’t want to be mated, his Mori must have been upset when mine almost died. That couldn’t have been easy on him.
“You don’t have to thank me for that.” He looked a little put out. I didn’t try to understand why; I just accepted it as a Hamid thing.
“Yes, I do. And since I think we can safely say I’m on the mend, you don’t have to stay with me. I’m sure you have more important things to do besides sitting here watching me sleep.”
“I like watching you sleep. It’s the only time I know you won’t argue with me,” he said without missing a beat.
My eyebrows shot up. I’d never heard him joke around like that.
Hamid moved to stand beside my bed. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“I thought I could shower on my own. No big deal.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
I twisted the blanket between my fingers. “They got the jump on me, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight them off.”
He sat on the foot of the bed. “You were outnumbered six to one. It had nothing to do with your strength.”
“You would have been able to fight them.”
His gaze held mine. “A little over eight years ago, my brother Ammon and I were with a team that was cleaning out a big nest in Bolivia. I got separated from the others, and I was ambushed by five mature vampires that were just as fast and as strong as I was. My strength and speed were no advantage against the five of them. If Ammon hadn’t found me, I probably would have died that night.”
“You can’t compare mature vampires to Gulaks,” I argued.
“Yes, I can,” he said. “One-on-one I was a match for those vampires, but not all of them at once. It’s the same for you and the Gulaks. You could easily go up against one or two of them, and they knew it. It’s why they came at you as a group.”
Logically, I knew he was right, but mentally, I felt like I’d failed somehow. I couldn’t help going over the attack in my head and looking for ways I could have changed the outcome.
“It’s normal to doubt yourself after something like this,” he said as if he’d read my mind. “But don’t let doubt weigh you down. You’re one of the finest young warriors I’ve ever met, and I think you know it.”
A smile played at the corners of my mouth. “Can I get that in writing?”
His laugh warmed me all the way to my toes. “No. But I will let you prove how good you are the next time we spar.”
“How generous of you?” I stifled a yawn as a pleasant lethargy swept over me.
He moved to lower the head of my bed. “For now, you need to sleep.”
“But I just woke up,” I protested.
“And you’re still recovering from serious injuries.” He picked up the tray and walked to the door. “Unless you want Xavier to keep you in here for another day, you better get some rest.”
That shut me up. I was so over the whole patient thing. I wanted out of this ward and hospital gown and back into my own clothes.
“Fine,” I called after him. “But no more watching me sleep. It’s creepy.”
Hamid said something I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded suspiciously like, “See you soon.”
* * *
Xavier released me from the medical ward the next morning, but only after I showed him I could stand for five minutes and walk across the room without support. I was still weak, so he offered to take me to my room in a wheelchair. He laughingly rescinded the offer after I not-so-sweetly suggested where he could put his wheelchair.
The building was quiet when I walked slowly to the sleeping quarters, and I was grateful no one was around to see me like this. I’d planned to get a shower, but I was so tired by the time I got to my room that I had to lie down and rest for an hour first. I’d never been sick or badly injured before, and I wasn’t used to my body not doing what I needed it to. It frustrated me to the point I wanted to punch something – if only I had the strength to do it.
Showering was a slow process, but at least I was able to do it without assistance. As I lathered up my hair, I couldn’t help but remember the way Hamid had held me against his hard body, the feel of his hands on me as he’d washed me. I’d been with men before, but that had been the single most erotic experience of my life.
I felt more like myself once I was showered and dressed in my most comfortable jeans and a soft sweater. Leaving my room, I followed the delicious smell of pancakes to the kitchen, where I found Sara and Nikolas eating a late breakfast.
Sara’s face lit up when she saw me. “You’re up!” She started to stand but stopped, her brow furrowing unhappily. “I can’t even hug you.”
We’d been careful to keep a safe distance from each other ever since she discovered it was demon magic attached to me. She wasn’t allowed to come within two feet of me out of fear of her power destroying the magic of the spell.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I told her as I took a seat at the table. “You can make it up by feeding me.”
She and Nikolas laughed, and he went to get a plate for me. He piled pancakes on it and set it in front of me. “Good to see you back on your feet again.”
“Thanks. If I never see the inside of a medical ward again, it will be too soon.” I poured maple syrup over my pancakes and ate a large bite. “Mmmm, this certainly beats the intravenous diet.”
Sara shoved a plate of sausages at me. “Here. You must be starving.”
“I am.” I helped myself to a few sausages. “Where is everyone this morning?”
“I believe Chris and Beth are in the gym,” Nikolas said. “Hamid and the Council team left early to investigate another summoning site.”
“Another site?”
Nikolas nodded. “One of the patrols found it late last night. It’s an older site, and we don’t know yet if it was a normal summoning or an attempt to open the barrier.
I was about to ask if they had any idea who was behind this, when Beth and Chris came in. Beth looked like she’d been running for an hour, and Chris wasn’t even sweating.
“Look who decided to get out of bed,” Chris teased.
Beth’s smile was huge. “You look great.”
“A few days of drug-induced beauty rest does wonders for the body,” I joked. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”
She looked down at her damp clothes. “I’m going to hold off until after my shower to hug the crap out of you. Don’t go anywhere.”
She took Chris by the hand and tugged him after her. He gave me a little wave and let her lead him away. Knowing those two, it would be a long shower.
An image of Hamid in the shower with me came to mind, and I quickly banished it. Gah! I had to stop thinking about him like that.
We finished our breakfast, and Nikolas ordered Sara and me to sit while he made short work of cleaning up.
“There is something incredibly sexy about a big, strong warrior doing dishes,” I said to Sara in a whisper loud enough for him to hear.
Nikolas laughed, and Sara gave me a playful glare. “You checking out my man?”
“Never,” I declared dramatically.
After he’d finished cleaning the kitchen, Nikolas left us to catch up.
Sara kept shooting me glances like she wanted to say something. I didn’t question her about it. I expected my friends to act strange around me for a day or two after what had happened.
We had just moved to the couches when Beth joined us. She hugged me until I begged for mercy.
“Don’t ever scare us like that again,” she ordered as she let me go.
“Trust me, it’s not something I want to repeat.” I thought back to the attack, but everything after I started to black out was a blur. “What happened after I talked to you, Sara?”
Sara hugged a pillow to her chest. “I ran like a bat out of hell to the control room to send out a distress call. Thank God Chris and Beth weren’t too far from you. Hamid was a little farther out, but he actually got to you first.”
“Hamid completely lost it,” Beth said, her eyes wide with the memory. “He cut those Gulaks to pieces, all six of them. We got there as he killed the last one, and it was a gruesome sight. You were lying in the middle of all of it, covered in blood, and I thought…” Her voice hitched. “I thought you were dead. I ran to you, and Chris tried to calm Hamid down before he killed anyone else.”
“Who else was there?” I asked, trying to piece together the bits of my memory from that day.
“Some of the demons from the wrakk came outside when they heard the noise. They were too terrified of Hamid to move. I don’t blame them. I’ve never seen anything as scary as he was that day. His eyes were black, and he was growling like a wild animal.”
She shivered at the memory. “I think he would have leveled the place if I hadn’t yelled that you’d stopped breathing. He pushed me out of the way and did CPR on you, and he wouldn’t let anyone else near you until Xavier got there. At first, he wouldn’t let Xavier touch you, but Chris told him you were in a lot of pain.”
“He wasn’t much better when they got you back here,” Sara said. “I thought Nikolas and Chris were going to have to restrain him while Xavier worked on you. Once Xavier had you stabilized, Hamid went in, and we felt it was best to leave him alone with you. I didn’t go to see you until the next day, but you were still out. He didn’t leave your side for the first two days, not until Xavier said you were past the worst of it.”
I didn’t speak as I processed everything. Hamid had gone into a full rage over me, something only a bonded male would do. Everyone here knew that, which meant my secret wasn’t a secret anymore. I avoided Sara and Beth’s gazes, but I could feel their eyes on me as they waited for me to speak.
I sighed heavily and looked at them. “Go ahead and ask me.”
“How long?” Sara asked softly.
“Since the night we got hit with the spell. It was the first time we touched.”
Their eyes grew round, and Beth said, “But that was a month ago. You didn’t say anything.”
I shrugged. “Neither of us wanted the bond, so I told him I was breaking it and left to come here. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning when I wasn’t going to see him again.”
“Then he came here and…” Sara put a hand to her chest. “He told you about the spell and that you had to stay near each other.”
“Yeah.” I dragged out the word. “It’s actually worse than that. Orias thinks we bonded at the moment the spell hit us and our bond somehow became part of the spell. That means if we break the bond, we break the spell.”