Page 96 of Caelum

I’d hurt another person.

My brow puckered at the thought, and as reason began to return while my rage burned away, I staggered to a halt in the corridor.

Half turning, my intent to turn back, I saw a boy who’d been watching what went down in the common room veer around me when he noticed I’d stopped.

He looked at me like I was a loose cannon, and after being ignored for two days, I couldn’t find it in myself to care.

They’d thought me weak, had believed they could pounce on me like I was vulnerable, and I’d just proven them wrong.

I released a breath, hating that it was shaky, but I used it to stir me into continuing on my journey. Why I’d picked a common room that was so far away, I didn’t know, but I had, and I regretted it now.

Especially after that incident.

When I made it outside, I saw that the plane was coming to a halt about fifty yards away from the secondary gate they used to access the runway.

That day they’d left, I’d wondered why they hadn’t just used the main gates, but it was closed. Locked. The huge padlock around its rails was a testament to the fact it was only opened on certain occasions. It all made sense now, of course.

If anything made sense here, that is.

I headed toward the other smaller gate and waited for the people on board to disembark.

The only ones that mattered to me were the ones I knew, the ones who’d made an attempt to be kind to me. That meant there were five on board whom I wanted to see, but there were dozens of people who’d gone with them to Nigeria.

I’d Googled Nigeria, and it didn’t exactly seem like a vacation hotspot. Not according to something called travel blogs, at any rate. I wasn’t surewhy so many of them had gone there, but I was just relieved they were back and I could be with people who’d accepted me.

When Nestor made it down the stairs with his arms hooked over Stefan and Eren’s necks, I gasped. The move was awkward on the narrow steps, but it was a testament to how weak Nestor was that they had to maneuver him that way.

As I stared at him, I saw there was someone waiting beside the stairs. I recognized the white uniform as someone who worked in the sickbay, and I assumed the chair with wheels was to help transport him.

I absorbed all that in a flash, and though it went unspoken that we weren’t supposed to leave the grounds, it didn’t stop me. I ran as fast as my chubby body would let me and didn’t stop until I was at the foot of the stairs, staring up at the three boys who’d made this place a home for me.

“What happened?” I cried.

They were surprised to see me, and Stefan even looked over at the gate as though imagining I was hollering at him from over there.

Scowling at him, I stacked my hands on my hips, ready to blast him for being slow to answer when Nestor whispered, “I’m okay.”

He didn’t look it. If anything, he looked the exact opposite of okay.

Now that I was closer, I could see that his throat was wrapped with thick bandages. Swathes and swathes of them, and even then, blood was spotting through.

Panic danced down my spine, and I had to contain myself as the nurse grabbed my arm and said, “Let me deal with this, Eve.”

I wasn’t sure how she knew my name, just did as bid and moved out of the way. When Nestor made it to the bottom of the staircase, she helped him onto the moving chair. I was at his side in a flash as the nurse began to push the chair over the grassy terrain.

I rushed with her, but I felt someone grab my arm, then I felt another someone grab the other.

Twisting around to glower at them, I demanded, “Let me go!”

Stefan’s mouth twisted. “No. You don’t want to be there when they check him over.”

My eyes burned with tears. “What happened to him?”

“He had an accident,” Eren told me, his voice calm. So calm that I wanted to slap him, but I didn’t because I saw pain in his eyes.

His throat…“Did he almost die?”

Eren nodded. “Yes. It was only because it was his Vampire’s day that he didn’t.”

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