No!

Her eyes darted from witch to warlock as one by one they pulled out vials of golden liquid and threw it into the air, controlling it with their magik as it descended on the nearest lykan they could find. A girl shuddered back into human form, followed by an older female, followed by Alistair MacLachlan. Stunned, she stood there unable to comprehend that the fluid discovered by Pierre Du Bois had found its way into Midnight hands again and she hadn’t known about it.

A young lykan girl went up in flames. Caia roared in disbelief and threw up her hands, a tidal wave appearing among the battle. Like last time she tried to avoid Daylights but was afraid some were soaked despite it. The wave crashed down on two of the offending Midnights and Caia rushed the water into their mouths. She saved Alistair, and the Alpha began making his change back into wolf – Caia put a shield up around him to let him do so. Once he had transformed she focused on finding magiks with the fluid. A blasting of fire and magik exploded above her head and Caia looked around to see Daylight magiks approaching the battle. Thank goddess. One by one she took out the witches and warlocks with the liquid; her body bruised and bleeding from the hits they had managed to get past her; her throat was dry from oxygen deprivation from having encountered air and water magiks.

Satisfied she made to take on another warlock when her neck began to prickle in warning. A dark feeling crept over her. A sense of unreality descending and Caia turned around slowly.

A flash of black hair on the ground in the distance caught her eye.

No.

Blasting the man in front of her back absentmindedly, Caia stumbled through the fight, her view of the body growing sharper.

No.

Being trampled upon by fighting magiks and lykans, a naked Lucien lay among the sand, bloody and empty. A hole burst through his chest where his heart should be, his silver eyes blank as they stared straight up into the heavens.

No.

Caia fell upon him, her hand knocking away a vial with a tiny drop of golden liquid. Her hands fluttered over the gaping wound uselessly.

“No.” She shook her head and then grasped his cold face in her hands. “No.”

Caia pressed on his shoulders. “Lucien, wake up,” she whispered and then hissed as rocks smacked against her back sending her over him. Sobbing, she lifted her face, now bloody from Lucien’s fatal wound, and moved up his body to gaze into his eyes. He wasn’t in there.

He was gone.

An unbearable pain ripped across her chest.

Something inside her died.

Replacing it was an unforgiving fury.

She screamed with agony as a fire incinerated her insides, travelling from her toes like a snake slivering up her body. It wound its way around her heart and squeezed and seemed to burst the organ into gory pulp. White light blinded her, and the sensation of falling accompanied her scream of death, her soul begging for the destruction of those who had dared to fight them for their right to peace.

33 – Laila

It was the whispering that brought her out of unconsciousness. Followed by the pain. The pain was like a harsh, pounding, mashing wake up call. Her eyes flew open with a gasp and Caia shrunk back from the white of the room.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” a gentle voice soothed her and she felt a cool hand on her forehead.

Caia groaned. This kind of exhausted, ‘been ran over by a truck’, feeling was familiar and yet so intensified it was alien too. One by one faces started popping up in front of her eyes. She blinked. Jaeden. Ryder. Laila. Magnus. Marion.

“Come on now, get back, let her rest,” Ella’s familiar voice called from the bottom of the bed and her pack shuffled backwards.

Her pack.

Lucien.

“No, no, no.” She started struggling violently with her bed covers and then with Jaeden as her friend paled and tried to press her back onto the bed.

“Ryder, help,” Jae screeched and Caia thrashed against them both, too weak to do any serious damage.

“No!” she cried, tears gushing down her cheeks as the image of Lucien lying murdered in the sand flashed through her mind. She didn’t want to be alive if he wasn’t with her. Panic made her hyperventilate and she struggled to draw breath.

“Someone help her,” Jae pleaded.

“Caia, breathe. Caia… Caia.”

Her heart stopped at the voice and she drew in a ragged breath, her chest opening up. Jaeden smiled at her and moved aside so Caia could see past her into the next hospital bed.

Sitting upright, tucked under his own set of covers, was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He wasn’t real. How could he be? Could everyone else see him? Looking up through blurry eyes Caia watched the expressions on the pack’s faces as they glanced from her to Lucien.

“Is he real?” she croaked.

A tear slipped down Jaeden’s cheek and she gave her a wobbly smile. “He’s real.”

There was no stopping her as Caia ripped back the covers and bounded out of the bed and onto Lucien. She pretty much collapsed in his arms as her body seemed to lack any real energy. But she was strong enough to return his mammoth hug and pepper kisses on him whenever she could get around the kisses he peppered her with.

“How, how, how?” she mumbled against him, breathing in his wonderful scent.

Lucien’s arms tightened around her, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Laila,” he breathed.

Caia stiffened and managed to turn in his arms to find Laila by her bed, Vil standing behind her, protective as always.

“How?”

Laila smiled shyly.

“She’s an Asclepian.” Marion squeezed the magik’s slight shoulder.

Through the haze and confusion Caia’s jaw dropped. “An Asclepian? I thought they were extinct?” Little Laila had the power to heal and bring people’s souls back from the Underworld?! Caia shook the moss out of her brain. “I mean… I thought there were none of you left?”

Laila shrugged. “My family kept our gifts hidden because we knew we would become targets. Not only is it against the law to bring someone back from the dead, it is a much coveted gift. My family are gone. I’m the only one left.”

“She risked a lot healing me in front of the Daylights,” Lucien’s voice rumbled against her chest.

“I couldn’t let you die,” Laila retorted but her eyes were on Caia. And Caia understood. She meant she couldn’t let him die for Caia. Tears bubbled up again.

“Thank you so much,” she whispered, more grateful to her than the little magik would ever understand.

“Laila must be protected from now on,” Marion insisted.

Caia bit her lip, trying not to show fear. “No one will harm her for breaking the law?”

“Everything is a mess right now, Caia. There is very little hold for the law.”

“So that’s a no, right?”

“That’s a no. But there will be a lot of people interested in acquiring her.”

Caia felt a primitive growl shudder in her chest, “Then they’ll have to go through me first.”

Laila beamed and Marion grinned at her appreciatively. “Then I think she’ll be fine. Outside the hospital walls there is a world full of very shocked, awed and frightened supernaturals.”

“Frightened of what?”

Lucien huffed, “You.”

Caia’s eyes widened and she gripped onto Lucien tighter. “Me?”

Jaeden rushed at her. “Caia… you’ve been unconscious for five days.”

“W-w-what?” she shook. Five days? What had happened? Who won? Was the pack all alive?

The questions rocketed through her and as she tried to ask them they tumbled out in a jumble of nonsense. Lucien stroked her back soothingly and Marion spoke again, “When you found Lucien…” the witch shook her head in wonder. “I don’t know what happened. I saw you fall across him and then this white light exploded out of you along with this inhuman screaming.” The others nodded seeming to remember. “I was blasted off my feet. I couldn’t hear or see a thing. And then after a few minutes the light faded away and I could see again. And when I got up… there were no Midnights left. Ash blew up into the breeze, whispering by me with Midnight energy. Caia… you killed them all.”

34 – Blood Solstice

A week passed in which Caia and Lucien both tried to rebuild their energy. Caia often wondered how Lucien was feeling. Did he feel different now? Could he remember the Underworld?

“No.” He had seemed amused by the question. “I don’t think I was gone long enough.”

After Caia had killed the Midnights, a feat she still couldn’t get to grips with, she had collapsed unconscious (as per usual after using her ‘gift’). The pack had scrambled over to them, grieving at the sight of Lucien’s dead body, when little Laila had pushed through them all, dropped to her knees, placed her hands upon Lucien’s chest and sang. Marion told her it had been the sweetest, saddest song she had ever heard and as it filled the air, magik the likes of which Marion had never felt before, lit up Lucien’s body, giving off this ethereal warmth that eased everyone’s pain. Marion had watched in awe as Lucien’s flesh began to regenerate, his heart reforming, his gaping wound closing, the color returning to his body. And then he had gasped for breath before his eyelids slammed closed and he fell into unconsciousness.

Caia found a reason every day to see Laila, somehow needing to be near her, to reassure her she was real and that she was OK. In one act of kindness she had become one of the most important people in Caia’s life.

As for the pack they had been incredibly lucky.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Lucien had huffed. “We are an exceptionally wily bunch. I knew we could take ‘em.”

Caia had laughed. It was amazing. Despite some wounds they had all returned in one piece, along with Saffron, Reuben and Vanne. Alistair MacLachlan and his pack hadn’t been so lucky. Three of them were killed, some were wounded, but when Phoebe came to visit Caia she assured her that to them it had been a great death and a victory. Tentatively she had hugged Caia, and Caia had known as the Rogue Hunter left her suite that in Phoebe she had a friend for life. But the loss Caia most felt was that of Nikolai who had fought his way through the crowds to attack Orina Beketov. Caia was unsure of what damage he may have inflicted on Orina, for like the other Midnights fighting against them, she was gone in the wind.