Chapter 54

Chapter 54: Chapter 54

The journey back through the Mistwood was a blur of mud and mist and the agonizing slowness of carrying two injured people through treacherous terrain.

Valeria led the way, her crossbow loaded and ready, her eyes scanning every shadow, every tree, every patch of fog that might conceal a rogue. The forest was quiet now—the storm had driven most of the creatures into hiding but she refused to let her guard down. They had come too far. They had found them. She would not lose them now.

Elias and Orion had constructed a makeshift stretcher from fallen branches and torn cloaks, carrying Nyra between them. She was still unconscious, her face pale and flushed with fever, her breathing shallow and uneven. The herbs Soren had given her had helped, but not enough. She needed real healers. Real medicine. Real rest.

Soren walked beside the stretcher, one hand resting on its edge as if he could somehow lend her his strength through touch alone. His own wound had been crudely bandaged strips of torn fabric wrapped around his ribs, already stained with fresh blood. He should have been on a stretcher himself. He refused.

"He’s going to be alright," Valeria said, falling into step beside him. "We’ll get him to the healers. He’s strong. He’s survived worse."

"He shouldn’t have to survive worse." His voice was hoarse, raw. "He shouldn’t have to survive any of this."

"He has you. That’s more than most people have."

He didn’t answer. But his hand tightened on the stretcher.

They walked for hours. The mist began to thin. The trees began to look familiar landmarks they had passed on their journey into the forest, now reversed. Valeria sent Silas ahead to run to the academy and alert them of the returning party. The Beta sprinted off through the underbrush, his speed augmented by his wolf, vanishing into the fog like a ghost.

And then, finally, the treeline broke.

The academy gates rose before them like a promise, gray stone and iron and the familiar silhouette of the towers against the pale morning sky. And gathered at those gates was a crowd the size of which Valeria had never seen.

Students. Lecturers. Staff. They spilled out of the courtyard and pressed against the iron bars, their faces alight with hope and fear and desperate anticipation. Word had spread. Silas had made it. The academy knew they were coming.

Proctor Vesper Kane stood at the front of the crowd, his iron-gray hair disheveled, his robes rumpled, his face haggard with sleeplessness. When he saw the stretcher, when he saw Soren walking beside it, something in his expression cracked.

"Open the gates!" he bellowed. "Now! Let them through!"

The gates swung open. The crowd parted. And Team Alpha—what was left of it—staggered into the courtyard.

Healers rushed forward. Hands reached for Nyra, lifting her from the stretcher with practiced efficiency. Voices called out orders—"Get her to the east wing!" "Fever’s dangerously high!" "Prepare a cooling bath and moonflower extract!"—and then she was being carried away, swallowed by the crowd of white-robed medics.

Soren tried to follow. His legs gave out.

Ragnar caught him before he hit the ground.

"I’ve got you," Ragnar said, his scarred face tight with emotion. "I’ve got you, brother."

"Nyra—"

"They’re taking care of her. You need to let them work."

"I can’t—I can’t leave her—"

"You’re not leaving her. You’re getting stitched up so you don’t bleed out before she wakes up." Ragnar slung Soren’s arm over his shoulder and half-carried him toward the healer’s wing. "You look like hell, you know that?"

"Feel like it too."

"You should. You’ve been missing for three days. Do you have any idea what that was like? For me? For everyone?" Ragnar’s voice cracked. "I thought you were dead. I thought I’d lost my brother."

Soren looked at him and saw the evidence of those three days written across Ragnar’s face. The exhaustion. The grief. The fear that he’d been trying so hard to hide.

"I’m sorry," Soren said quietly.

"Don’t apologize. Just don’t do it again."

"I’ll try."

"You’d better." Ragnar adjusted his grip, his voice dropping. "Finn was worried sick too. About both of you. He’s been driving me insane with his pacing."

"Finn?"

"Yeah. Finn." Ragnar paused, a flicker of something—nervousness, maybe, or pride—crossing his scarred face. "He’s my... we’re... it’s complicated."

Soren almost smiled. "I gathered."

"Don’t give me that look. You’re the one who’s been missing in a forest with a princess."

"She’s not a princess. She’s the heir to the Astrlyn pack."

"Same difference."

"Not remotely."

They reached the healer’s wing, and Ragnar helped Soren onto a bed in the same chamber where Nyra had been taken. She was on the far side of the room, surrounded by healers who were working frantically applying cool compresses, administering potions, monitoring her pulse. Soren tried to sit up, tried to see her, but a healer pushed him back down.

"Stay still," the woman ordered. "You’ve lost blood. This wound needs cleaning and stitching."

"I don’t care about the wound—"

"You will when it gets infected and you die of blood poisoning. Now lie still."

Ragnar stayed by his side, a steady presence in the chaos. Around them, the healer’s wing hummed with activity—patients being treated, orders being shouted, the aftermath of a crisis that had gripped the academy for three days.

"She’s going to be fine," Ragnar said quietly. "She’s tough. You’re both tough. You made it out. That’s what matters."

Soren closed his eyes and let the healers work.

The news of their return spread like wildfire.

Finn was in the common room when he heard. He had been sitting with Marek and Jasper, the three of them huddled together in the kind of silence that came after days of fear and sleeplessness. Then someone shouted in the corridor—"They’re back! Team Alpha found them! They’re alive!"—and Finn was on his feet and running before he even knew what he was doing.

He burst into the healer’s wing and saw Soren on a bed, bandaged but conscious, and Ragnar beside him, and the two of them were talking in low voices, and Finn had never felt such overwhelming relief in his entire life.

"Ragnar!"

Ragnar looked up. His scarred face broke into something that was almost a smile. "Finn."

Finn threw himself at him, wrapping his arms around Ragnar’s neck with a force that nearly knocked them both over. "You’re okay. You’re both okay. Thorne—where’s Thorne—"

"They’re working on him," Ragnar said, holding him tight. "He’s still unconscious. Fever. But he’s alive."

"Thank the gods." Finn pulled back, his eyes wet. "Thank every god there is."

Marek and Jasper arrived a moment later, both of them out of breath. Marek said nothing—he never did—but he clasped Soren’s shoulder with a grip that said everything words couldn’t. Jasper stood at the foot of the bed, his sharp eyes taking in the bandages and the exhaustion and the evidence of everything Soren had endured.

"You look terrible," Jasper said.

"Everyone keeps telling me that."

"It’s true."

"Thank you, Jasper. Your honesty is, as always, deeply appreciated."

Jasper almost smiled. It was the closest thing to emotion Soren had ever seen on his face. "Don’t do it again."

"That seems to be the general consensus."

The door slammed open with enough force to crack the wood.

Corvin stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his dark hair wild and disheveled, his eyes blazing with fury and fear and desperate, clawing relief. Behind him, two guards were trying to restrain him—trying and failing, because Corvin had apparently decided that house arrest no longer applied to him.

"Where is he?" His voice was raw, cracking at the edges. "Where is Thorne?"

"Eldritch." Soren tried to sit up, wincing as the movement pulled at his stitches. "You’re supposed to be confined to quarters."

"I broke out. Arrest me later." Corvin strode into the room, his eyes fixed on the far bed where Nyra lay surrounded by healers. "Is she—is she going to be—"

"The healers are working on her. She has a fever. It’s been two days." Soren’s voice was steady, but there was something in it—a crack in the ice—that Corvin had never heard before. "She’s strong. She’ll pull through."

Corvin turned to face him. For a long moment, the two Alphas stared at each other the wolf and the serpent, rivals since the day they’d met, bound by a mate bond they still didn’t fully understand. The tension between them was palpable, thick enough to cut with a blade.

"You were supposed to protect her," Corvin said, his voice low and dangerous.

"I did."

"She’s unconscious. She has a fever. She almost died."

"But she didn’t. Because I was there." Soren met his gaze without flinching. "I killed three rogues protecting her. I carried her through the forest. I found her shelter and food and medicine when there was none. I stayed by her side every single moment. So don’t tell me I didn’t protect her."

"Then why is she in that bed?"

"Because the forest is cursed and the rain didn’t stop and she’s been fighting for her life since the moment she arrived at this academy. Not because of me. Not because of anything I did or didn’t do." Soren’s voice rose, then dropped, controlled again. "I love her, Eldritch. I don’t know if that means anything to you. But I love her, and I did everything in my power to keep her alive. Everything."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Corvin stared at him. Something shifted in his expression—the fury ebbing, replaced by something more complicated. Something that looked almost like respect.

"You love her," he repeated.

"Yes."

"And you told her?"

"I told her while she was unconscious. I don’t know if she heard me." Soren looked away, toward the bed where Nyra lay. "But I meant every word."

Corvin was quiet for a long moment. Then he pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, his anger draining out of him like water from a cracked vessel.

"I love her too," he said quietly. "I don’t know if she knows. I told her about the bond—about what we are to each other—but I don’t know if she understands. I don’t know if I understand."

Soren looked at him. "The bond. You and me. Both bound to her."

"Yes."

"That’s going to be complicated."

"Everything about this is complicated." Corvin leaned back in the chair, suddenly looking as exhausted as Soren felt. "But we can figure it out later. When she’s awake. When she’s safe."

"Agreed."

"Truce?"

"Truce."

They didn’t shake hands. They didn’t need to. The agreement was understood an uneasy alliance born of shared fear and shared love for the same woman. It wouldn’t last forever. But for now, it was enough.