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Chapter 27: Aislin

I

was in such a state of shock that night, I barely registered the questions the police had asked me. 

“What reason were you visiting your parents’ house for?”

I stared ahead and gaped, wordless, with the blanket draped over my shoulders. “We—We made plans for dinner with me and my boyfriend…” It was a lie, but with Everett right beside me, I figured he’d clue in and corroborate on the story.

“Can you identify the people who invaded your parents’ home?”

“No…” Even if David had set out to slaughter our packs, it was an unspoken rule of the shifters not to expose one another to human authorities, lest we risk exposing our entire shifter community and complicating the cover-up for the Mythguard. But I would have loved nothing more than for David to face the consequences of his actions in court, and to waste away in a jail cell.

“Witnesses identified you and Mr. March at a scene several miles away from here where you were engaged in a gunfight with two deceased, unidentified men. Can you explain that?”

My eyes slid slowly over to Everett who replied for me, “We were being attacked and defended ourselves.”

“Before that, witnesses say you stopped at the Grandbay Hotel and spoke with somebody who had been injured in a conflict prior to the event here. Can you explain that?”

“We were on our way to my parents’ for dinner,” I repeated. “Albin, the hotel owner, he’s a friend of ours.”

“He gave us reason to believe Aislin’s parents were in danger,” added Everett.

The fire devouring my parents’ house had dwindled down into smoldering embers beneath a cloud of steam and smoke. The police officers questioning us made notes on their little pads but looked unsatisfied. Minutes ago, I had watched the paramedics load my mother into an ambulance, and my father into a body bag, and I wasn’t capable of processing anything more than feeble half-truths. It was better that I stayed silent. The officers urged Everett and I to come down with them to the police station, but Everett resisted, and as far as they were concerned, they had no grounds to arrest us. The claims from witnesses weren’t enough evidence that we were dangerous. We were victims. Everett argued that, and ultimately, they let us go. If not for our Mythguard connections in the police force, their investigations might have called us into the station for questioning later, but as we sat in Everett’s battered Lexus and drove to the hospital, he assured me that I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

The hospital received my mother in critical condition. We were told to wait while they stabilized her and tended to her burns. In that time, Gavin had appeared as well, all of three of us bleeding and bruised while we sat in the waiting room, holding our breaths. A few nurses had helped me clean up my arms and bandage them, as well as the various other wounds scattered between Everett and Gavin, but none of us could provide any answers when questioned on what happened. I was sure we all looked disastrous, like we’d just crawled out of a landslide. The humans in the waiting room alongside us stared in disbelief at our bloodied bodies. I avoided their eyes and found respite in the droning noise of the television affixed to the corner of the room.

All I could think about was the intense loss I faced. My father was suddenly gone, and now my mother might not even make it through the night. In the blink of an eye, both of my parents had been taken away from me by David. Thinking too much about it nearly sent me into sobs. I bit it all back and just stared until the doctors finally emerged with news of my mother’s condition: she was stable for now.

All three of us were taken into her room. I stood at her bedside and took in the tangle of wires and tubes attached to my mother. An IV bag was stationed beside her, and the heart rate monitor beeped vigilantly beside that. The smell of raw flesh, bitter ointments, and latex hovered over her like a haze. Most of her was covered in bandages, but there was a fraction of her face left visible, the skin red and pebbled, her eye closed. Seeing her like this overwhelmed me. My shoulders shook as I hid quiet cries behind my palm, smothered with terrible guilt and sorrow and pain. I could think over and over again about all the ways I could have protected her and my father, but it would be futile. This was how the night had ended, and there was no going back. I just wished I could have said something to her, to either of my parents, before this had happened to them.

Regaining my composure long enough to speak, I peered up at Everett and Gavin beside me. “I’m going to stay here a while.”

Everett nodded with understanding. He drew me into one last hug, kissing the side of my head. “Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“Me too,” Gavin contributed.

“I will. Thank you.”

They left me sitting in an uncomfortable, blue-cushioned chair beside my mother’s bed. I pulled my feet up and watched her through teary eyes, wishing I could crawl onto the bed beside her and fall asleep. Right then, I felt like a hopeless child whose only comfort were her parents, and without them, I was lost. Nurses in bland green or pink scrubs occasionally came into the room to check on her—and me—but I’d lost all enthusiasm to speak by midday. At some point, I closed my eyes and drifted into dreams, but when I woke again, nothing about the situation had changed. I was afraid this melancholy would haunt me for the rest of my life.

For two days, I traveled between the hospital and Everett’s house. I only went back to Everett’s place to sleep and shower. Fortunately, my job had given me the week off, my other manager having found coworkers to cover my shifts. I wouldn’t have been able to focus, nor would I have been very effective with the jagged wounds on my arms, but they were healing at least. I didn’t eat as much as I should have. It didn’t matter—nothing mattered while my mother was lying there, struggling to survive her burns.

By the third day, she finally stirred. The moment I saw her move, my heart leaped and I sat up, watching as she slowly opened the one eye not hidden beneath bandages. My mother groggily blinked awake and stared at the dimly lit ceiling above, then turned her head ever so slightly, taking in her surroundings. The twist of her neck elicited a small whimper from her. That sound was enough to bring me to my feet, hovering over the edge of the bed. “Mom?”

She adjusted her body to look my direction, at first without recognition. Then her eyebrows furrowed in and her chapped, dry lips parted. “Ais…?”