Page 70 of Faerie Marked

I shook my head, the movement tiny. “No. And if I do everything right, he never will.” Then swallowed a scream when she jostled the soft cast.

“Sweetheart, your arm is broken. You landed pretty hard on it and the radius is snapped in the middle. There are some cuts from the scuffle and I treated those, set the arm. While you’re here, no one will be able to come in and see you. Let your wolf nature heal the rest. Bones take a little bit longer to heal without magic.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you.”

“There’s more.” Her eyes darted around, looking everywhere but my face. “It’s disturbing. I wasn’t sure I should tell you—”

“What’s the matter?” I interrupted. “What is it?”

“You have bites on your body. Werewolf bites.”

26

Awolf had bitten me, one of my own kind. Nurse Julie thought she was delivering some kind of terrible news to me. But I already knew and had made tentative peace with the knowledge.

“It’s okay. I had a feeling he was one of our own when he chased me down the hallway the other day. Have they found the man responsible?” I wanted to know.

Nurse Julie bit the inside of her lip and I had my answer. “The students saw you fall but no one saw who attacked you. If they did, no one has said anything to me. Then again, I rushed you right over here once I realized…you know…what you are. I didn’t want anyone else to figure it out and the more time you spent in the open, the more likely the outcome became.”

“He was on the balcony with me. Pushed me right over the edge because he knew I was going to wallop him with a spell. You’re right: he’s a wolf.” I shifted and ground my teeth to keep from crying out from the pain.

Healing abilities, sure, but this kind of damage would take me a bit of time to repair. I knew for a fact the school had a policy about broken bones. Another one of those lessons to make us strong. The nurses could treat our superficial wounds but not with magic. Any serious damage had to heal on its own or we would have to find a way to heal ourselves.

Advanced magic, I remembered Roman saying. Something they didn’t start teaching until the upper years.

What if Kendrick’s pack had found me and this wasn’t the school’s killer but a new attack? Surely my fated mate had dispatched his cronies to search for me once they discovered I had vanished. What if one of them had actually tracked me down to the academy?

Or what if they were killing students to get revenge for me running away?”

“Tavi, whatever you’re thinking,stop. It isn’t going to help you.” Julie reached out a hand and pushed the hair away from my face in an oddly maternal gesture despite the blue skin. Her fingertips were soft and warm. “I know about wolf culture. The boys might be petty but they wouldn’t harm innocents for no reason, even if they are Fae. And there are two other dead students in this case. Let’s sit here and try to use our heads. Okay? Who else would want to kill you?”

I shivered. “Well, I just got the top spot. The last two students who died…they were in line for the top as well,” I told her, sharing the idea that had plagued me.

She stared at me through wide eyes and I read the shock in them. She clearly hadn’t considered it, thinking the two deaths random. “Are you sure?”

“I think I’m sure. How much longer is this going to take?” I used my chin to gesture to the IV. “I need to go.” I wasn’t going to let this stop me, and I certainly wasn’t going to let the man get away with hurting anyone else.

“Sweetie, you need to relax. This isn’t a game. You have a serious injury. Someonepushedyou off abalcony. You need fluids, and your arm is going to take a long time to heal. Not to mention—”

She tried to push me back down. I understood where she was coming from, but I didn’t have the time to waste. And my wolf had taken enough shit lately.

I growled, ripping the IV out of my arm with a flash of gold-tinted eyes. It felt good to be whole again. “I’m leaving now.”

My voice wasn’t my own. It belonged to her, my wolf. She was pissed off. She’d been silenced for too long, pushed around, thrown into situations where she hadn’t had a choice, and eventually silenced entirely thanks to the potions. She wasn’t about to let anyone else tell her what to do.

Nurse Julie fixed me with a stern look, the tension in her brow melting into frustration, and I knew if she had a choice her wolf would have risen as well. To challenge mine. “Well, fine, if you’re going to act snarly, then at least give me a minute to get you set up with a new potion. You can’t leave like this, Miss Wolf. Someone is going to see you for who you are and then we’ll both be in hot water.”

“I have one more potion vial in my dorm,” I retorted.

“Then give me a minute to get it for you. You can’t risk someone seeing you right now. Especially when you appear to have a little trouble controlling yourself. Get those canines in check, missy.”

Did I have a choice in trusting her? No. Not even ahintof a choice. I ran my tongue along the length of my sharpened canines before willing them to return to normal.

Julie left me alone while she went to my dorm for the last vial.

It just didn’t make sense to me, I mused, tapping the fingers of my good arm against the edge of the table. An attack on me, I understood. But then the odds were clearly in the attacker’s favor. Coming after me during a party, when I was surrounded by people? Out in the open?

It was almost like he’d been desperate.

---