Page 25 of Sold Rejected Mate
With a flicker, Xeran’s comms come back on. “Oh,” he wheezes, rolling over on his back, his helmet and mask coated in soot. “Fuck. That hurts.”
“Shit, shit,” Kalen mutters. “Sure wish Phina was here now.”
“Take that back,” Xeran hisses, and though I can’t see it, I know his face is contorting with pain.
I’ve seen Phina stop something like this before, lifting her hand into the air, pausing a falling tree in its tracks. My mind flicks back to Green, back to wondering if she really did start that fire with magic.
And if she could be like Phina. Could potentially use her magic tostopthe fires instead.
Together, Kalen and I work to heave the log off of Xeran’s legs, and when he lets out a groan, I know it’s bad.
“Go,” he chokes out, pulling himself to sitting.
“Are you insane?” Kalen yells, crouching down. “We have to get you to the hospital. To Phina—”
“Not gonna be a hospital left if this shit gets to town,” Xeran growls, pushing his brother away. “So go. Make sure it doesn’t. And don’t fucking forget to come back to me.”
It takes hours, but the four of us get the fire under control. And when we come back for Xeran, he’s unconscious, his helmet pulled off, his hair slicked back from the sweat and soot.
Kalen shifts, carrying him back to town on his back, one brother shouldering another. Anyone else would go to thehospital to begin the process of healing, but Kalen will take Xeran home, where Phina can look him over.
“I have to go,” I say to Soren, stuffing all my things back into my bag and hopping into my Jeep. “Phina is at my place. I’ll tell her.”
“Don’t envy that job,” Soren says, sighing and running a hand over his face. “Good luck.”
***
Phina and Nora fly out the door seconds after I tell them what happened, and I’m left alone with Green, who looks at me from her place on the bed with wide, slightly terrified eyes.
I’m in the kitchen, microwaving another can of soup for her, when she shows up in the door frame, looking at me thoughtfully.
“Whoa,” I say, rushing to her side, waiting for the moment she crumples to the ground. “Are you good? What about your leg?”
“Phina healed me,” she says simply.
This is the first time I’ve heard the sound of her voice. There’s something so striking about it. Something so familiar that it takes me a moment to recover from the initial sound.
“You—you’re talking.”
A smile curls up one side of her face, and it’s so fucking familiar that I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my mind. “Phina healed me. My throat, too.”
We stand in the kitchen, staring at one another. Maybe I should say something about it—tell her not to be so liberal withtalking about Phina and her magic like that—but I’m so fucking relieved that she’s okay that I can’t quite form the words.
“I’ll tell Xeran,” I say. “He’ll probably want to talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she says, and it’s much simpler than I thought. No fighting, no struggling against the idea of telling her side of the story. Her eyes flit down to the can of soup I’m halfway through opening. “Any chance we could get take-out instead?”
An hour later, after splitting an order of hot wings, Green goes back to her room, and I try to keep myself from hovering, from worrying that she might take off now that her leg is healed. Maybe the problem is that she agreed so willingly, had no issue with talking to Xeran tomorrow.
To let out some of the energy—and, honestly, keep an eye on things—I shift and do a couple of laps around the house, watching her bedroom window and trying to pinpoint her scent. The problem is, it’s still elusive to me, hard to catch and hold onto. So clinical and simple that it almost doesn’t feel like a scent at all, but the lack of one.
Then, two hours into my laps, I hear it.
She’scrying.
I’m shifting back, running inside, heading straight to her room. Inside, I find her thrashing against the sheets, sweat beading along her forehead.
She’s still wearing the old pajamas from Aurela, and it occurs to me, for the first time, that maybe I should look into getting her something to wear. Something other than the hospital clothes or old stuff from my sister.
