Page 80 of The World Undone

I tugged at my hair as I ran from Sarah’s room, pocketing the key and not even bothering to respond to Arnell’s questions as I left the medical ward.

It seemed so simple now, so obvious.

Max healed us the easiest, because our ties to her were impossible to ignore. She healed Ro, because she spent a lifetime forging a connection to him.

Max hardly knew Sarah.

But we did. Wade and I were even bonded to her once.

The connection we had back then to Sarah was nothing like the one that pulled us to Max, but it wasn’t nothing either. She wasn’t some random girl. She’d been a part of our team. A part of us. Family.

I threw open the fanghole’s bedroom and closed the distance to where Max lay draped against him.

Darius woke with a start, shoving Max behind him as his startled eyes found mine, his fangs flashing, threat clear in every line of his body.

For a moment, I thought he was going to act on the adrenaline and fear coursing through his body and attack me, the urge to protect her too strong to fight.

He’d seemed a bit off lately, more driven by raw instinct than usual.

He was often an odd, unpredictable prick, but lately it was more than that. Like he was fighting some invisible battle only he could see.

I raised my hands up in apology, and backed away, and after a tense moment, his rigid shoulders relaxed.

“What’s going on?” Max grunted, her voice muffled and cracked with the edges of sleep as she fought to see around the vampire. “Darius, get off of me.”

“What are you doing in here, wolf?” he asked, voice flat as he fought against his instincts, “people need to stop doing this. And you—you should know fucking better than waking me up like that. When she’s here with me. When I—we’re all on edge.” The fight in his voice dissipated a bit as his brain recognized the absence of a threat. “Is something wrong?”

He pulled Max into his lap, his hands roving over her arms, her bare legs where the long T-shirt hit her thigh, like he was trying to convince himself that I hadn’t just broken in here to report that she was hurt.

“Sarah,” I said.

I heard the others’ doors open, Eli swearing softly about the ungodly hour, then all of them cluttering around Darius’s door frame.

Max stood up, crowding into me. Her hair was mussed and her eyes wild with fear. “Is she okay? She’s not?—?”

I pulled her to me, unable to resist her another moment, then pressed my nose to her neck, taking her in. This morning’s solo session had nothing on the real thing, on the way she felt in my arms, the way she smelled.

“She’s the same.” I pulled back, then met Wade’s eyes over her head. “Sort of. I think maybe I did something?”

“Did something?” Max grunted against my chest and I pulled back a little more, giving her enough room to breathe. “What do you mean?”

“I think I started to heal her a bit. Or established the connection to do it. She reacted, a little.”

Her brows lifted, her eyes scanning me from head to toe, concern etched into the lines of her face. “You’re okay? You didn’t drain yourself, did you? Atlas, that's dangerous. Why didn’t you wake me before? Khalida said that healing without training can kill you. And she was right. I’ve come close. You haven’t had any training.”

“It’s okay,” I squeezed her shoulders, “Bentley, I’m okay. Promise.” I held her eyes until she nodded, until she believed me. “I think we can heal her though,” I nodded towards Wade, “partially, I mean. Like you did with me. We were bonded to her, however briefly. Maybe we can at least buy her some more time. With your help.”

It took twenty minutes of convincing her that this would work, that we’d be safe, and then twenty more minutes for everyone to fight over shower time and get ready, before I found myself back at the medical ward, this time with five more in tow.

“What’s wrong?” Rowan’s eyes roved over us all until he found Max, the lazy casualness from before clouding suddenly into fear. “Is it the mission? Something happen?”

Max’s face split into a smile as she greeted her brother with a hug and then mussed his already out-of-control hair. “We’re fine. We’re going to try saving Sarah.”

He exhaled his relief, then ushered us all into her room.

Sarah’s position hadn’t changed since I’d left her.

Max, Wade, and I circled around her, linking hands as Max talked us through how she accessed her healing magic, how it felt, how intoxicating it could become and how important it was for us to resist that, to know when to stop.

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