Page 60 of Creatures of Chaos

My stomach drops. I completely forgot about my confession, but the dread of that admission hits me again full force. “Ensley, that wasn’t—” I cut myself off. I can’t lie to her now and say it wasn’t true because it is. It’s part of my truth that I’ve buried for years. A deep insecurity that I never, ever, gave voice to, but now it’s out in the open.

Ensley takes my uninjured hand between both of hers and squeezes. She shakes her head. “It’s not true. Becks and I don’t care how much power you have. We’re not your friends because we feel bad for you. We’re your friends because we care about you and love you. You’re family, and always will be no matter what. And you’ll never be alone because you’ll always have us.”

I’ve kept myself protected for so long that I’ve hardened, but Ensley’s words crack my shell, revealing a fleshy part of my heart that I hardly knew existed anymore. But now that it’s exposed I feel raw and vulnerable, but also filled with love.

Her face in front of me becomes a little blurry as my eyes fill with tears.

“Ride or die, for life,” Ensley says, tears glistening in her own eyes.

“For life,” I repeat with a nod and a wobbly smile.

She takes a deep breath to steady herself and then looks down at the blooded piece of fabric wrapped around my injury. “How’s your hand?”

I shrug. “It’s been better,” I say, playing it off, but the truth is that it throbs and is leaking blood again.

“Come on, let’s get it looked at before we go.” She leads me over to one of the spectators, an otter shifter who’s a part-time medic and has a first aid kit in his car.

Using skin-glue he gets the cut on my palm closed and then re-wraps it with clean bandages before moving on to someone else. I’m not the only one who did harm to themselves under compulsion and he’s doing his best to triage the injuredcompetitors. A couple of the competitors are in pretty bad shape, including the black-haired girl who was burned. She was compelled to climb one of the aspen trees and jump from a limb, which she did, resulting in what looked like multiple broken bones. She was injured badly enough that her natural healing process seems to have slowed. Some of the other competitors helped carry her back to the amphitheater, where her friends took over and whisked her away. Hopefully to a hospital.

Jules also wasn’t in the best shape that last time I saw her. She was compelled to thrust a nail into her eye and is among the group of competitors who failed the trial, confirming what I always thought to be true. She is a weak-minded creature who uses her magic as a crutch. Shifters are some of the fastest healers, but she’s going to be lucky if she keeps that eye. I can’t find it in my heart to be sad for her though. I don’t believe in karma, but I do believe in justice, and it seems to have been served tonight.

In all, another twenty-four competitors were eliminated tonight, leaving only sixteen of us to battle it out.

After getting my hand looked at, Ensley brings me home, offering to take me to a clinic to get my hand stitched properly, but I play it off as not as bad and convince her to bring me straight home instead. She drops me off on the corner, but rather than sneaking back inside to get a few hours of sleep before school in the morning, I stand where I am and watch the taillights of her car until they disappear from view.

Maybe Ensley is right, and I should give Becks some space, but instinct screams at me to do the opposite. Becks might already be home in bed, but if he’s not, I think I may know where he is instead.

Quietly grabbing my bike that’s chained in the alley next to our shop, I jump on it and ride through town, pulling off the street to catch a trail through the woods right after the lastbuilding. My hand throbs as my bike treks over the bumpy wooded path. It would hurt less to jump off the bike and walk it instead, but that would take too long. I’m too anxious to see if Becks is there or not.

The ride through the forest trail only takes a few minutes, but it feels like forever before the trees thin and finally open to the rock landing that Becks and I have been to so many times before.

My heart stutters when I see Becks’ broad back as he sits atop the highest rock looking out over the valley. When I get up there I won’t be able to see anything but darkness, but as a dragon shifter Becks’ eyesight—although not as good as cat or owl shifters’—is better than mine in the low light, so he can make out some of the terrain below.

I’m sure he hears me as I park my bike and then scale the rock. His hearing is excellent and I’m not trying to sneak up on him. But other than a slight tensing of his shoulders, he doesn’t react until I’m seated right next to him.

“How’s your hand?” he asks without looking over.

I stare at the white wrapping, my thoughts on the shifter next to me rather than my injury.

“I hardly even feel it,” I lie, and Becks finally glances at my face, giving me a look that says he knows I’m full of it.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, and it’s not uncomfortable. Becks and I know each other too well to let awkwardness creep in during the quiet.

“You didn’t stay after the trial,” I say.

It’s not a question. We both know he bolted before I made it back to the amphitheater, but Becks still shakes his head. “Yeah. Sorry about that. It was just . . .” His voice trails off, and as I study his profile I catch a muscle jump in his jaw.

“Listen, Becks, about what you saw?—”

“I hate this,” he says, cutting me off.

That’s a broad statement. There are a million things he could hate right now. His impending betrothal, that he’s the dragon heir, that I’m a Chaos competitor, that I almost gave my first kiss to Talon in front of him.

“I should be in Chaos with you, helping you, protecting you, but I’m not.”

Oh, that.

He picks up a loose rock and chucks it. I lose sight of it almost the moment it leaves his hand.

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