“Calm down, Miss Dawson.”

A hand pressed on my shoulder, holding me down. I blinked and an unfamiliar face came into focus—middle-aged, thin lips, large glasses that hadn’t been in style in thirty years. The woman leaned over me with a stern frown.

“Sin,” I blurted. “Is Sin okay? Where is she? Where am I?”

“You are in the infirmary,” the woman replied. “I’m Healer Austin. You suffered a severe bite wound to your left thigh and lost a dangerous amount of blood. Also, your nose was broken. I’ve repaired your injuries, but—”

I shoved her hand off me and sat up. The room spun, then steadied. I was on a narrow bed in what looked like a hospital room surrounded by crisp white curtains.

“I’ll be a good patient and all that shit,” I snapped at the healer, getting angry so I didn’t outright panic, “as soon as you tell me what happened to Sin.”

“Please lie down, Miss Dawson. I only just completed your healing and—”

I swung my legs off the bed and stood. My left leg twinged painfully, but it held me up. For a second, I was surprised to realize I was in a drafty hospital gown, but I didn’t let that stop me. If this lady wasn’t revealing anything, I’d find the answer myself. I took a wavering step toward the curtains.

They flipped open and Aaron stood in the gap. One glance told me he hadn’t been in a hospital bed. His jacket was gone and his shirt resembled Swiss cheese—black-edged holes everywhere. A dark, bloody stain ran down his front and splattered his jeans. His left arm was wrapped haphazardly in bloodstained gauze.

“Mr. Sinclair—” Healer Austin began while trying to force me back onto the bed.

“Give us a moment, please.”

Nodding, the healer retreated and closed the curtains behind her.

“Where’s Sin?” I demanded.

Aaron walked over and sat on my bed. Bracing his hands on his knees, he bowed his head.

“Aaron?” My voice shook. I wanted to sit beside him, but my limbs weren’t obeying. “Where’s Sin?”

“I couldn’t.” The words were hoarse, stilted. “I couldn’t go after her. I couldn’t leave the students alone. I couldn’t leave you. You were bleeding everywhere. You were unconscious. The wolves were in the trees. I couldn’t leave the students. I couldn’t—”

He broke off, breathing shakily, then he looked up like it took all his willpower to meet my gaze. His eyes shone with anguished tears.

“I couldn’t save her, Tori,” he choked. “I let them take her. I couldn’t stop them.”

My legs trembled. I sat heavily on the mattress beside him. “She—she’s—”

“They’re searching for her,” he whispered, shoulders slumping. “Kai and Ezra and a bunch of others.”

Every part of me shook. I grasped his forearm and squeezed hard. “It’s not your fault, Aaron. You—”

“It’s entirely my fault!” His shout jolted through me. “I took the students out there. I was the only combat mage with twenty-two lives to protect, and I wasn’t enough. I knew that before I went. It was stupid. I was so stupid.”

I leaned over and hugged him tightly.

“It’s all my fault.” He buried his face in my shoulder, arms clamped around me. “All because I couldn’t handle one boring lesson in a classroom.”

I held him tighter, my eyes burning with tears I desperately blinked away. I had failed too. I hadn’t been strong enough, prepared enough. Sin’s terrified face flashed through my mind, my last sight of her. Oh god, Sin.

“What now?” I whispered.

“We wait for word from the search team. There’s nothing else we can do.”

A shrill voice in the back of my head kept howling Sin’s name, but I held back my terror and focused on Aaron. “Are you okay? Do you need a healer? You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s mostly your blood.”

“My—oh. What about the kids? Lily and the others?”

“They’re okay,” he replied heavily. “A few minor injuries. Lily needed her arm healed, but there won’t be any lasting damage.”

“That’s good.” I straightened my hospital gown over my bare legs, wondering what my bitten thigh looked like now. Aside from a dull ache, it felt fine. “What were those things, Aaron? Those giant wolves? Were they fae?”

“They were shifters. Werewolves.”

Werewolves. Even after seven months in the mythic world, some things still shocked me. I’d heard werewolves mentioned before, but I’d still thought of them as fairytale monsters.

My stomach plunged with terror. “I was bitten by a werewolf. Am I going to become one now?”

“No. The healer already tested you for infection. You’re clean. We’ll test again before the full moon, but you should be fine.”

I gulped several times, trying to get my heart back down into my chest where it belonged. More questions piled up in my head, but I couldn’t get any more words out. All I could think of was Sin. Being dragged into the trees. Watching her friends and injured sister disappear. Terrified, hurt, alone. Surrounded by monstrous wolves. No one coming to save her.

Abandoned. Left to be bitten, torn, turned, eaten—

Aaron put his arm around my shoulders and I realized quiet sobs were shuddering through me. He stared at the floor, jaw tight, tears standing in his eyes as he fought for composure. I wanted to be out there, searching for her, and I knew Aaron wanted the same thing, but we were stuck here, too hurt and exhausted to help.

I didn’t know how long we’d been sitting there in silence, lost in guilt and despair, when a noisy clatter reached the infirmary. Loud voices, thudding steps. Aaron and I stood in unison. He strode ahead of me and threw the curtains open. The room was a long rectangle lined with a dozen curtained beds. Half the curtains were drawn, but as the noise grew, Healer Austin and a middle-aged man poked their heads out.

The infirmary door flew open.

Kai was first across the threshold, dressed in his dark gear with swords sheathed at his hip. Right behind him came Ezra—and in his arms was a body wrapped in someone’s coat, slim legs in bloodstained jeans hanging limply. Sin’s teal hair spilled over the dark jacket.

Aaron yanked me aside. Ezra went straight for the nearest bed—mine—and as he laid Sin on the mattress, the two healers crowded in. A third came running, rolling a medical cart in front of her.

Healer Austin pulled the jacket away and scissors flashed as she cut off Sin’s clothes.

“Check her breathing and put her on oxygen,” she barked at the male healer. “Kallie, elevate her legs then insert two large-bore IVs. Quickly now!”

As the man bent over Sin’s face, the youngest healer pushed the cart beside the bed, then snapped the curtains shut, blocking our view.

I inhaled unsteadily. “She’s alive?”

Kai and Ezra turned, noticing me for the first time. Next thing I knew, Kai was crushing me against his protective vest, then he passed me to Ezra and I was engulfed in his arms instead. They must have left for the search without knowing how bad my condition was.

“Sin is alive,” Kai confirmed. “Barely. I don’t know if …”

He glanced at the curtain, his face tight and eyes tormented. My hands closed around fistfuls of Ezra’s shirt—and it squished wetly. I looked down and saw red oozing between my fingers.

I jerked back. “You’re bleeding? Where are you hurt?”

He withdrew swiftly. “Oh shit. Did I get blood on you? It’s not mine. Shifter blood.”

Voices rose from behind the curtain. Healer Austin was shooting off instructions about binding wounds and starting a thaumaturgy frame. Electronic beeping now narrated Sin’s rapid heartbeat.

“Where did you find her?” Aaron demanded. “What happened? Tell me everything.”

Kai began an explanation but I didn’t hear him. My attention was on the dozen mythics crowded in the doorway, all geared for battle. I recognized them as alumni. Some gazed toward the sounds of the ongoing healing with concern, but others watched Aaron—observing his distress with haughty judgment.

I opened my mouth, not sure what I was about to say but absolutely certain it would be rude, when Ezra stepped in front of me. Taking my arm, he caught Aaron’s elbow with his other hand and led us to the far end of the infirmary. Kai exchanged a few brief words with the alumni, and they filed out the door.

Guiding me to the farthest hospital bed, Ezra nudged me onto it. The moment my weight was off my leg, I realized how badly it ached.

Ezra pushed Aaron down too, then took the spot on my other side. We sat in a row on the bed, waiting silently. Kai returned and handed me a sanitizing wipe, which I used to clean the shifter blood off my hands, then he shook out a soft blanket and swung it around my shoulders.

“Where did you find the shifter pack?” Aaron asked as though there’d been no interruption in his conversation with Kai.

“They weren’t far from where they ambushed you,” he replied, perching on the foot of the bed. “They were fighting among themselves—whether over Sin or something else, I don’t know.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Injured a few, but they scattered and we didn’t give chase. Our priority was Sin.”

“How many?”

“We saw five. There might’ve been more.”

Aaron cursed. “Five shifters on the property. How the hell did this happen?”

I pulled my legs up and wrapped the blanket around my bare feet. “What exactly is a shifter?”

“Superficially, they resemble the werewolves of human myth,” Aaron explained. “A person gets infected and turns into an animal on their first full moon. After that, they can transform at almost any time, and the full moon strengthens them. But what makes a shifter into a shifter isn’t what humans think.”

His fingers dug into his knees. I slid a hand out of my blanket and rubbed his arm.