Chapter 189 The Wounds We Clean

Chapter 189 The Wounds We Clean
The night healer does not last two minutes in the room.

She enters with a tray of silver needles, clean bandages, warm water and dark glass bottles... takes one look at Rhydan’s eyes... takes one look at the pale light still humming under my skin... and sets the tray on the side table with hands that rattle the glass.

"Leave it," Rhydan says.

His voice is low and flat.

"Mr. Valecrest, the Headmistress said..."

"I said leave it."

She does not argue. She backs out of the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind her, and the latch clicks home like a deadbolt.

We are alone again.

The medical room smells like alcohol, dried blood, and the heavy pine-and-ozone heat coming off Rhydan’s body. The exam table is cold beneath my thighs. Rhydan does not sit. He picks up a damp cloth from the tray, dips it into the bowl of warm water, and steps between my knees.

He does not ask permission.

His large hand catches my chin, tilting my head back, and his thumb presses into my jaw to hold me still.

"Rhydan..."

"Be quiet," he says softly.

He presses the warm, wet cloth against the cut on my lip.

I flinch.

The piece of his soul inside my chest twitches in answer, sending a sharp wave of heat straight into his own palms. His breath catches in his throat. His grey eyes darken, but he does not pull back.

He cleans the blood from my mouth with slow, meticulous care.

His fingers are trembling.

"You look at me like you want to tear me apart," I whisper, looking up into his face. "And then you touch me like I am made of glass."

"You are made of bone and blood," Rhydan says, his voice scraped raw. "And half of it was broken on that floor because I was too weak to keep her off you."

"You were not weak."

"I was on my knees, Veyra!" The words burst out of him, low and fierce. He drops the cloth into the bowl, his hands coming up to frame my face, his thumbs pressing hard into my cheekbones. "I was on my knees, dying, and I looked at a girl wearing your face and for two seconds I almost let her touch me because I was so starved for you that my brain took the first lie it was handed!"

My eyes fill with hot tears.

"But you pushed her away," I say, my voice breaking. "The second you felt me in your blood, you pushed her away."

"Because you were inside me!" Rhydan says, his voice shaking with an agonizing intensity that makes my heart slam against my ribs. "Because even when I was furious with you... even when I wanted to drag you into a room and scream at you for lying to me about Zael... my body knew you. My frequency knew you. I could not even betray you... even when I was dying, Veyra!"

The honesty of it guts me.

I reach out, my hands finding the lapels of his torn jacket, pulling him down until his face is right in front of mine.

"I am not going to keep begging for your forgiveness," I whisper into the small space between our mouths. "I lied. I made a mistake. I handled you when I should have trusted you. But I am sitting on this table carrying a piece of your soul, Rhydan, and I am not letting you use that lie as a wall between us forever."

Rhydan’s breath hitches.

His grey eyes bore into mine, dark, wild, and completely bare.

"You think I want a wall?" he whispers.

"You are building one."

"I am trying to survive you!" he rasps, his hand sliding down my neck to press flat against my chest... directly over the place where his frequency lives inside me.

The moment his palm touches my skin, the fragment inside me roars.

It isn't pain... it is a blinding, golden current that surges out of my chest and straight into his arm. Rhydan shuddered violently, his head dropping onto my shoulder, his heavy weight collapsing against me as the link between us locks fully into place.

He does not pull his hand away.

He presses harder, his fingers digging into my torn velvet dress, his forehead pressed into the crook of my neck as he drags in ragged, shuddering breaths.

"I... I cannot take it back," Rhydan murmurs into my skin, his voice thick and broken. "The piece of me inside you... it does not... it does not want to come back to my chest, Veyra. It wants to stay in yours."

Tears run down my face, wetting his hair. "Then let it stay."

"But that means you are tethered to me," he says, lifting his head to look at me, his eyes rimmed with red. "It means wherever I go... whatever my pack asks of me... whatever my father demands... what I do... you feel it. It means if I bleed, you taste copper."

"I do not care," I tell him.

"You should care."

"I don't," I repeat, my hand coming up to cup his jaw, my thumb wiping away the dry blood near his temple. "I chose you since the beginning. I chose you on that Great Hall floor. I am choosing you right now."

Rhydan stares at me for a long, silent moment.

The anger in his face does not disappear, but the cold, distant wall he built outside Corvyn's office crumbles completely. What is left underneath is the boy who looked at me across a coffee shop in October and silently decided I was his whole world.

He leans in and kisses me.

It is not soft.

It is hungry and furious and relieved all at once. His mouth opens against mine like he has been starving for the real taste of me since Sera put her stolen lips near his. My hands fist in his ruined shirt. His arm locks around my waist and drags me to the edge of the table until my legs are forced wider around his hips and there is nowhere left for either of us to pretend this is careful.

The fragment in my chest detonates.

Gold heat floods every nerve I have. I gasp into his mouth and he swallows the sound, kissing me deeper, harder, one hand sliding from my face into my hair to tip my head back so he can take more. His other hand grips my hip through the torn velvet hard enough to bruise.

I feel his anger in the kiss. I feel his fear. I feel the exact second want overtakes both.

"Rhydan..."

"Do not tell me to stop unless you mean it," he growls against my mouth.

"I do not want you to stop."

A broken sound leaves his throat.

His mouth leaves mine and finds my jaw... my throat... the pulse point under my ear... and the link makes every brush of his lips feel like it is happening under my skin as well as on it. My back arches. His hand slides up my side, over my ribs, careful of the bruises and still shaking with how much he wants and how furious he still is that he wants it.

When his palm skims the side of my breast through the dress, we both freeze for half a second... breathing hard... foreheads pressed together... the air between us gone thin and dangerous.

"You are hurt," he rasps.

"So are you."

"If I keep going..."

"Then keep going."

His eyes flash pure gold.

He kisses me again like he is punishing both of us for surviving, for lying, for almost losing each other, for the piece of his soul living under my ribs and refusing to come home.

My fingers find the hem of his shirt and slip beneath it, flat on the hot bare skin of his stomach, and his whole body jolts hard against me. The sound he makes into my mouth is wrecked.

"Vey..."

"Yes?"

"I am still angry."

"Then be angry with your hands on me."

He does.

His hands are everywhere the dress will allow... my waist... my back... the bare skin above the torn neckline... pulling me so tight against him that I can feel how badly he wants this and how hard he is fighting not to take everything in a medical room with blood still on both of us.

The link is a live wire. Every gasp I make hits him. Every growl he makes hits me. It is too much and not enough and exactly what the aftermath of a sealed hall and a stolen face and a broken lie demands.

His mouth is on my throat when his hand finally stills at the fastenings of my dress.

He is shaking.

So am I.

And for one long second I think he is going to rip the rest of the distance away.

Then he makes a low, tortured sound and drops his forehead to my shoulder, both hands gripping the edge of the table hard enough that the wood creaks.

"Not like this," he breathes into my skin. "Not while you still feel like an apology in my blood. Not while I can still taste how close I came to losing you. When I take you again, Veyra... I want it clean. I want it chosen. I want it after you have given me the truth without me having to drag it out of your chest."

My eyes burn.

"Okay."

"Say it."

"When you take me again... it will be clean. Chosen... and ours."

He lifts his head.

Kisses me once more... slower... deeper... a promise sealed against my mouth... and the fragment inside me settles like a creature finally allowed to stop bracing for impact.

That is when the door swings open without a knock.

Petra steps inside, her dark green dress torn at the hem, her hair a wild mess, with Cassian right behind her.

Petra takes one look at the two of us... Rhydan standing between my knees, his hand still on my waist, my arms around his neck, both of us flushed and breathing like we ran through fire... and lets out a long, loud breath.

"Good," Petra says flatly. "You two are done yelling at each other. Now we have actual problems."

Rhydan does not step away from me, but his head turns, his grey eyes narrowing. "What problems?"

Cassian steps up beside Petra, his face pale beneath his usual tan.

"Torren and the Elders just finished sealing the pack documents in the main gallery," Cassian says, his voice dead serious. "Elder Valecrest has officially been stripped. But when Corvyn went back to her office to check the perimeter wards... she found something."

My stomach drops. "What did she find?"

"Marguerite Vance’s working in the Great Hall did not just drain the students," Petra says, her dark eyes locking onto mine with a chilling intensity. "When you broke the Binding Circle, Veyra, the shockwave went straight up through the atmosphere. It lit up the continental frequency grid like a flare."

I sit up straighter on the exam table, Rhydan’s hand tightening on my waist. "What... what does that mean?"

"It means Corvyn’s people know now," Cassian says softly. "The Tradition... the secret council she broke away from fifteen years ago to hide you."

The quiet in the medical room turns to ice.

"How long do we have?" Rhydan demands, his voice dropping into that lethal Alpha register.

"Corvyn says they registered the pulse an hour ago," Petra replies. "They know a Resonant has fully awakened at Northveil. And they know Corvyn lied to them for fifteen years."

Petra takes a step closer to the exam table, her expression grave.

"They aren't sending a courier, Veyra," Petra adds quietly. "The Tradition’s High Council has already crossed the southern border. They will be at the gates of Northveil before the sun comes up."