Page 72 of Psycho Gods

Scorpius lunged forward with his knife drawn.

I grabbed my fellow Protector by his neck and yanked him back.

The colorful vials clattered in the doctor’s shaking hand. “I-I-It’s for p-pain and w-will help her s-s-sleep and heal,” he stuttered.

John ripped the glass from his fingers and sniffed it.

He tipped it back and wet his lips, licked at the substance, then nodded and said, “He’s not lying.”

“Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” Corvus bellowed at the doctor. “Administer it now, she’s clearly in pain!”

Luka snapped, “But do it gently.”

I raised my eyebrows because the quiet twin didn’t talk to anyone besides John and Arabella; now he was fighting with Corvus and addressing a doctor.

The doctor reached for John’s hands, but the twin pulled the vial out of his reach and pressed it to Arabella’s gray lips.

Immediately she stopped squirming and whimpering.

Her eyes closed.

A few minutes later, the doctor pushed a clipboard with hastily sprawled instructions into John’s hands and told him to administer her drugs as he ran out of the room.

Pussy.

“You sure she’ll heal?” I whispered as my knees gave out at the edge of her cot.

“Yes.” John didn’t look away from her.

Gradually, my mates and Luka knelt along the bed as our collective panic and aggression decreased until there was nothing but silence and Arabella’s strained breaths.

I bowed my head and swore on the ancient House of Malum—on the crest of a fire-breathing dragon, on the tender feeling that had engulfed me when I’d held her against my chest—that she would find shelter with me.

My Revered would find peace in my arms.

It didn’t matter that we were champions in the middle of a war. It didn’t matter that I was a soulless creature who had hurt her in the past.

Arabella would find sanctuary with me.

Forever.

Bang. The doors to the medical barracks flung open, and dozens of gore-coated soldiers stumbled in.

Doctors swarmed like mosquitos.

The battle was over.

Quiet was replaced by groans of pain as men and women collapsed onto cots. A man was carried in screaming.

White floors turned red, and doctors slipped as they hurried to patients.

Arabella slept through the chaos.

I prayed.

“Oh my sun god, is she okay?” Sadie screeched as she fell to her knees beside my Revered’s bed.

I glared at her and bemoaned my inability to speak. All of us bristled as the white-haired woman stared down at our woman with wide, worried eyes.

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