The pain was familiar now. A dull companion, curled around his ribs like a serpent.
Langston had known agony before—battle pain, loss pain, the sting of betrayal. But nothing compared to watching his kin die. His mother, the matriarch of the Sunfire Clan, reduced to ash beneath a dark spell. His brother gutted by a traitor's claws.
He'd escaped only because she told him to. Because her final act was to buy him time.
He should have died with them.
Yet here he was. Cradled in the arms of a human girl with storm in her eyes.
The pain ebbed as she carried him. Her arms shook with the effort, but she didn't stop. Langston watched her jaw clench, saw tears in her lashes she didn't let fall.
She was fire pretending to be coal.
He slept, dreaming of his clan's final howl, and when he woke, he was in a cot, clean bandages wrapped around his side, the smell of antiseptic in the air.
"Welcome back," she whispered from the chair beside him. "You're safe now."
He wanted to believe her.