Page 147 of Caged

Through the Bond, I feel Caelan. It’s faint, flickering, but alive.

So very alive.

I close my eyes and readjust my grip on the thread of our Bond. I gather what little strength I have left—the tiny, flickering ember that my mother fought to protect—and imagine cupping it in the palms of my trembling hands.

Then, I give one final push.

I’m not gentle. I force that ember to flare, and will it across the Bond like a spark skipping from flint to tinder.

Live. Please live. I don’t care if I die, as long as you live.

I don’t wait to see if it catches. As darkness drags me under, I wrap myself around our Bond, and beg the universe to keep Caelan alive.

Even if it demands my own life in return.

Chapter 21

Vaelenor

Ilean against one of the walls in the compound’s basement at HQ. I’ve got a boot kicked up on the exposed brick, head tipped back as I blink at the recessed ceiling lights, and my arms crossed like that could somehow keep my insides from unraveling.

My hands won’t stop shaking. They’ve been shaking since the moment I saw Caelan strapped to that fucking table.

Dax is here too, pacing back and forth while we wait in the hall across from Caelan’s hospital room.

I guess hospital’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s not a hospital, exactly. Just a high-tech military-grade wing with species-specific doctors, a full staff, and enough blood bags to keep us on our feet.

At least, that’s what Dax says. All I know is that it’s where we come when we get shot, stabbed, crashed, or need bags of blood shoved down our throats in the form of a transfusion. Which is exactly what our brother’s receiving for the fourth time in two hours.

“Will you, for the love of the gods, sit the fuck down, please,” I snap, eyes still glued to the ceiling.

It doesn’t matter that I can only see Dax in my peripheral vision. I can hear his boots smacking across the tile floor, and it’s driving me insane. Back and forth, back and forth, like a malfunctioning Roomba.

“Why hasn’t anyone come out to tell us what’s going on? Why won’t they let us in there?” He stops pacing mid-step, and his eyes snap to my face. “I mean, who the fuck comes up with slow-drip silver poisoning anyway? How does a human even know about silver?”

It’s a good question. One I’ve asked myself a hundred times since we pulled up, tires squealing, with our brother’s blood staining our hands and the smell of burnt flesh in our nose. I’ve seen some fucked up shit with my pack over the last couple of centuries. Caelan, especially, tends to get into binds thanks to his savior complex. He always just assumes that whatever pain he experiences is worth the sacrifice.

Once, he got himself in a particularly nasty situation with an Italian Mafia Boss with a silver-backed whip in Tallemelo.

But I’ve never seen my brother in so much pain that he had blood dripping down his face from chewing on his tongue to keep from screaming.

That image will haunt me until the day I leave this world.

Getting him stable and transporting him to HQ was a lesson in futility. Once Dax realized what was happening and got that fucking IV out of him, Caelan seemed to calm down a bit. That only lasted until we hit a pothole or I had to make a sharp turn. Then he started screaming.

I haven’t heard a sound like that since two centuries ago, when a rogue Old World House Lord burned alive in front of us and kept screaming even after his lungs gave out.

I drove while Dax used what medical knowledge he had to stabilize Caelan. We called ahead to make sure our best Doctors were ready to go. Dr Aaron Calder and his Second, (because what screams “hospital” like a military chain of command?), Lenora Dennic.

Watching them roll my brother away was like watching part of my soul rip itself out of my body.

“Vae.” Dax snaps, pulling my attention back to him.

“What?”

He glares at me, hands on his hips. “I said, how the hell do you think a human knew about silver?”

“Well, he’s working with the Severed. I imagine Alexander or whoever the fuck informed him of its ability to make us scream like babies and shit ourselves in agony.”