Page 37 of Sold Rejected Mate
Valerie.
He’s coughing too hard to look at me, but I look at him, feel the weight of that.
Lachlan remembers me.
And this is the third time he’s saved my life.
I crawl over to him, crying and hacking, bile rushing up the back of my throat with a vengeance. But I can’t think about myself. I can only think about him, the angry red burns on his back, already blistering and peeling, the places where the daemon fire took bites from him.
Felix turns away and vomits into the bushes.
“You’re hurt,” I wheeze, reaching out to touch Lachlan, but not being able to find a spot where I could lay my hand without causing more pain.
“I’m fine,” he insists again, even as he sways, blinking hard.
“Valerie,” Phina says, running through the grass, falling on her knees beside Lachlan. “Oh,gods, this is bad—Valerie, you’ll have to help me.”
“But I just learned—”
“These burns aren’t normal,” Phina says, her eyes snapping to mine. “They’ll keep eating at him until we get the energy out. It will dig deeper and deeper until it hits his organs. Put your hands up andhelp me.”
I could hurt him. I’ll probably only make everything worse—that’s what I always do.
Then he lets out a cough, his body convulsing as he turns, lying on his back in the grass. Soren shrugs off his jacket and peels off his shirt, laying the shirt over Lachlan, covering his waist.
Nora is with Xeran, crying but safe. Xeran is clothed—so they’re able to keep their clothes somehow when they shift. Lachlan’s must have burned off from the fire.
I raise my hands, following Phina’s guidance, using my magic to pull the daemonic energy from his wounds, his skin. He groans with the pain, tilting his head up so his throat is exposed.
We work for what feels like hours before Phina says to the guys, “See if you can carry him into the house.”
And it occurs to me, for the first time, that the fire could still be burning around us, but it’s not. It’s gone, put out. I have no idea how, but I have no time to think about it. Instead, I stepback and watch the guys bend down, picking Lachlan up and carrying him together into his house, which looks like a shell of itself.
“He’ll have a room in the basement,” Xeran says. “Fireproof. Down the stairs to the right.”
Sure enough, there’s a single room in the house that seems untouched by the daemon fire, though I’m not sure how Lachlan did it if he didn’t use magic. The guys bring him in and lay him down on the bed, Phina and I following.
Phina and I bandage the burns that are still bad, and she pulls a sheet out, laying it over him.
“Will he be okay?” I ask.
I expect her to reassure me, meet my eyes with confidence, tell me that we did it—we pulled all the daemonic energy from him and he’ll be better in the morning.
But she doesn’t. Instead, the look Phina gives me is far from confident, her brow creased as she worries at her bottom lip.
“I hope so,” she says. “We’ll have to see if he makes it through the night.”
Chapter 18 - Lachlan
I’m seventeen again.
Which means I’m probably dead. That daemon fire, sweeping over my house—it killed me. The energy wormed its way under my skin and took hold of my organs before anyone had the chance to help me.
I’ve seen it happen to other people, and I knew what the risks were before I took off for the pool. I can only hope that the others got out safe.
That Valerie is okay. That it was worth the sacrifice.
But right now, at least, I’m seventeen again, and I’m in the high school cafeteria, smelling tater-tot casserole, walking through the tables, andseeingher for the first time. Of course I’d seen Valerie Foley before this day. We grew up together in the same small town, went to the same high school, and passed each other any number of times in the hallway.
