Page 55 of Gift from the Wing

“What has happened?”Tanith asks.

I didn’t even notice because I was so focused on feeling Willow, but she’s keeping pace with me easily. Her face is fierce as though we’re flying into battle and her body is cutting through the rays of the sun like a goldensword. Why the hell we’ve been lollygagging around if she could fly like this beats me.

“I don’t know. She didn’t say, but she’s upset and said she needed the three of us back.”

“Then let us fly, young dragon.”

With that, Tanith’s body takes off, attaining speeds I’m not even sure I can reach. It’s as though she’s got a touch of the vampire’s speed mixed in with her own.

As if the thought that he can’t keep up offends my dragon, he pushes harder. Shooting us through the air so fast, the trees beneath us are nothing but a sea of blurring green. The typical fifteen-minute flight is over in less than five.

My worry peaks as we approach the Central clearing and standing there waiting is my little wanderer, with tears in her eyes, my brothers, Gaster, and the Vito parents.

What the fuck happened?

My claws don’t even touch the grass before I’m shifting back into my human form and sprinting to Willow. The second she’s wrapped in my arms, I feel the tremble in her limbs.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” I ask frantically.

“We need to go to the healing wing now. Layton’s having seizures and he’s bleeding from his nose and ears. The Summum-Master is about to break through Aria’s rune. She’s already there, trying to fight him off, and Jamie is attempting to heal him, but he doesn’t have long, Draken.”

No. No. No.

Fuck no.

We can’t lose this kid.

“I will need an enchanted dagger with a Reservoir gem to reverse the rune. We must hurry. If the Summum-Master can cut through the rune blocking him, it will not take anything to kill the boy,” Keeper says immediately, stepping up beside me, no questions asked.

“Done,” Willow declares, and without missing a beat, she steps back from us, planting her feet in the ground as she opens her pocket dimension.

The familiar swirling pool of silver opens and she stretches her arm in for only a brief second before she pulls it back out with a dagger clenched in her hand. I forgot all about her taking that dagger off the dead pussycat. My mind hasn’t even thought about it since she was rescued, and I’ve seen it through her twice now.

She’s truly the smartest fucking person I’ve ever met in my life.

“This is one of the daggers, right?” she asks, handing it over to Keeper.

He nods as soon as she places it in his hands, and the blood, whoever’s blood that is sitting inside the gem, begins to bubble as he whispers in his language.

“Yes. A powerful one at that. Very good, Adored,” he says proudly, but my fierce goddess just nods sternly, then turns to Tillman.

“On me, we need to move,” he commands and we all latch on to him.

In milliseconds, we’re stepping out of the transport in the private sector of the Central healing wing, and the screams of Layton’s mom pierce my ears, making my feet freeze and my heart thud uncontrollably.

No, fuck no. We aren’t too late. I won’t accept that.

“Go, please,” I bark at Keeper, grabbing his sleeve and running toward the screams. I truly thought the Summum-Master had forgotten about the kid. He hasn’t fucked with him like Trex since the day he killed all the shifters.

Surprisingly, Keeper latches onto my arm, and with a stupid fucking amount of strength, drags me, literally drags my thousand-pound ass through the halls in the blink of an eye.

The scene in front of me is horrific. There’s blood pooling underneath Layton’s head as he shakes and convulses in his bed, and his mother is sunk to the floor, screaming and shaking in the arms of her men, begging for someone to save her baby.

It’s fucking gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, and it chills my blood.

Jamie and Aria are sweating, with pale faces as they each work as hard as they can to save him.

Aria’s ghostly, clouded eyes shoot up at us and although I can’t even see her irises, I see the plea in them.

---