Page 116 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

“Stay there,” the big man said, holding a hand up like a stop sign.

I ignored his growl of protest as I hurried down the steps to the injured man. As I did, I glanced at the dead wolf on the ground. Its sightless eyes stared up at the sky, glazed and empty. I prayed he was one of Eren’s. Jace would be devastated if he knew one of his men had died.

Dropping to my knees beside the injured man, I looked up at the other guy. “What’s your name?”

He blinked. “Uh, Tank, er—” He winced and shook his head. “Hank. My name’s Hank, but everyone calls me Tank.”

“All right, Hank the Tank,” I said. “Get down here and put pressure on this wound.”

Thankfully, he obeyed. As he knelt, I noticed he sported several deep gouges himself. Two puncture wounds on the side of his neck made me think he’d been close to having his throat torn out.

“I’m going to help out,” I said.

“We’ll heal,” Hank said. “Don’t worry about us.”

The blood pouring from the other man’s wound said differently.

“He’s going to bleed out before he can heal. I can help him,” I said, though, deep down, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could deliver.

Tank’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head, and he glanced down at his friend. “Kyro’s gonna die?”

The man on the ground looked up with surprised eyes just as blood spurted from his chest in an arc.

Great job, Tank, I thought.

“You’ll be fine,” I said, patting the man’s thigh.

When I told Jace I knew what type of witch I wanted to be, it hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment decision. I’d thought through the options since Tinsley had told me about the different witches. In the end, the choice was clear. My whole life had been about caring for people. After high school, I’d debated between two careers: medicine and education. I’d chosen education simply because I didn’t think I could handle the mental load of working to save people’s lives and still having to watch a number of them die. Now that I had magic to draw from and more options, I wanted to focus my talents on healing. Being a healer meant I could give Jace’s pack something no one else could.

“Just breathe deep,” I said, pressing my hands into the wound, pushing Tank’s aside.

The shifter, who looked like he couldn’t be more than twenty years old, nodded and winced in pain as my palms pushed the flap of skin back into place and pressed down. The other wolf had nicked a blood vessel. Not an artery, thank God, otherwise he’d already be dead, but something important enough that blood pulsed in a steady stream from the wound.

Behind me, I heard Tank on the phone.

“Jace, you gotta get back here. Pronto, dude. Eren’s guys showed up. They came rushing out of the trees like three seconds after you were out of sight. Kyro’s hurt bad…”

I tuned out his voice and focused on the man beneath me. With every ounce of my being, I tried to access my magic like I had when escaping from Eren. Instead of offensive magic, I pictured healing energy seeping from me into the man. After several seconds, the stone on my neck hummed to life, sending warm pulses into the skin on my neck. A cool tingle shivered across my palms, like I’d plunged them into ice water.

Kyro gasped.

When the tingling stopped, I pulled my hands away, and the flesh had knitted back together, completely healed.

“That’s freaking amazing.”

I looked up to find Harley gazing down at Kyro’s healed arm. I hadn’t even heard her come over.

Kyro sat up slowly, running his fingers over his skin. “Holy shit, that’s crazy.” He smiled gratefully at me. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” He shot Tank a look of pure irritation. “And thank you for making me think I was gonna die.”

Tank shrugged. “She said it first.”

The sound of a truck moving like a bat out of hell caught my attention. It rounded the curve of the driveway so fast that the rear fishtailed. Two seconds later, the vehicle rocked to a stop, and Jace and Waylan leaped out of it to sprint toward us.

Jace shoved Tank in the chest. “Didn’t I tell you to make sure Kirsten stayed inside if anything bad happened?”

Tank, who actually towered over Jace by a foot, flinched back and bowed his head. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t yell at him!” I shouted. “I came out on my own. He was busy trying to save us.”

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