Page 37 of Brutal Alpha Bully

“Go to the bathroom,” I say, voice hard, even as it’s tinged with exhaustion from keeping wards up around the house. “Fill the bathtub and sink with water. Don’t come out of there until I come get you.”

She hesitates but does what I say, her eyes lingering on Xeran’s limp body for a moment before she turns and runs down the hallway.

“What happened?” I ask Kalen, who shakes as he sets his brother down on the couch.

Xeran is coated in ash, and when Kalen rolls up his brother’s shirt, there’s a singed mark down the center of his chest. I suck in a breath at the sight of it—charred and already oozing pus.

“He took a strike from the fire for me,” Kalen says, speaking as though in a trance. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

“Watch out.” I’ve never spoken to another alpha like this—with, perhaps, the exception of Xeran—but Kalen listens to me, immediately moving to the side.

Healing magic has never been my strong point as I haven’t had a lot of chances to practice, but I raise my hands over him and take a deep breath, trying to remember what the other girls said about using the energy to mend.

Kalen watches, seemingly fascinated, as the skin around the wound becomes less puckered, less red. Then he stands, his fingers working anxiously on his helmet under his arm.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Kalen asks, apparently not bothered by my use of magic on his brother. “Can you fix it?”

“I can do my best,” I say through gritted teeth. “But he might have one hell of a scar.”

“The other guys are out there.” Kalen is already lifting his helmet, pulling it back on over his head. “I have to help them. Don’t let my brother die, okay?”

“Okay.”

With that, he turns and runs out the door, and I focus all my attention, all my magic and energy, on the man in front of me. It takes longer than it should, but eventually I manage to get the daemonic energy out of the wound, manage to seal it shut and ensure it won’t get infected.

I’m working on speeding up the healing process and taking away the pain when Xeran opens an eye and turns, blinking slowly when he sees me.

“Seraphina?”

“Oh, thank the gods,” I mutter, and, without meaning to, I slump forward onto him, overcome with relief that he’s okay, that my healing didn’t make everything worse. Then I remember he’s injured and might still be in pain. “Shit, sorry—”

But when I try to sit up, to pull away from him, he holds tight to me, keeping me there, pressed against him. The smell of his skin, his scent wrapping around me—it’s intoxicating, making that tug in the bottom of my stomach stronger than I’ve ever felt before.

“I’m sorry, Seraphina,” he murmurs, his voice low and gentle, like a song.

“What?” I ask, my voice muffled into his chest. Is he sorry for being injured? For saving his brother’s life so I would have to heal him?

But then he says, “I’m sorry for everything I did to you in high school. For the way I treated you. It wasn’t okay.”

Something inside me clicks into place. I’ve been holding on to what happened back then—the way he treated me—as a way to convince myself that he’s not a good person. Not a good man. And here he is, holding me, apologizing without prompting.

“It was right after you rejected me,” I say, voice shaking, and when Xeran pulls back from me, his eyes look a little clearer than before.

“What?”

“When the… when everything happened with the fire. Back then.”

Xeran’s eyes go wide, and he swallows. I’m going to tell him about what happened, even as my heart thunders in my chest and every instinct in my head tells me not to.

“I… had this group of friends. Some other girls in school who also felt like outcasts. We could all do magic, and the shame of that… well, I guess it kind of drove us together. After that day, when I tried to claim you, to ask you to prom…” I pause, taking a deep breath, trying not to think about how intent Xeran’s eyes are on me. “I don’t remember who suggested it, but we came up with this idea to sabotage prom. To do something that would make everyone sorry for the way they treated us. It was never supposed to be a fire, but one of my friends…” I close my eyes,think about her blue hair, the way she screamed when the flames overtook her. “She just took things too far.”

Xeran’s hand finds mine, and his touch startles me. But when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me with compassion, not disdain.

“You didn’t release the energy?” he asks, his eyes searching mine. “You didn’t start the fires?”

“No,” I admit, though I’ve always been confused about what, exactly, my role was that day. “But I was there when it happened. And I’ve always felt like it was partially my fault.”

“But we all blamed you,” Xeran whispers, closing his eyes. “We never even really asked for your version of things.”

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