I blink rapidly, halfway to the ground when Beta Sinta grabs my restored arms, stopping my fall. I swivel like a puppet, trying to regain my footing.
His eyes are huge. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, imbecilic, reckless—”
“I get it,” I moan.
“—things to do!” His fingers tighten painfully. “Don’t ever do something like that again!”
Anger makes me see red again. “Why not? If I want to save someone, I will! What good is the Kingmaker without a king!”
He stumbles back, clearly as shocked as I am. I hadn’t meant to, but I think I just pledged him my loyalty.
“I’m not Alpha,” he says roughly.
“You should be!” My yell is more of a gurgle. Frowning, I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, and it comes away bloody. I’m suddenly aware of a hot pulse of pain in my back and remember the arrow. Is that why it’s so hard to breathe?
“Griffin?” I sway forward, and he catches me against his chest. It’s like a rock. A bloody, sweaty, dirty rock. It feels good. I breathe shallowly, catching the faint scent of citrus through all the blood and dust before my legs give out.
“Cat?”
I grimace, my back throbbing. “Can’t… Can’t breathe right.”
He sits and drapes me across his lap, his powerful hands moving incredibly gently over my back.
“It must have pierced a lung,” Carver says, crouching next to us.
Beta Sinta curses, breaks the arrow shaft but doesn’t pull out the head, and then curses some more. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Chimera’s Fire,” I wheeze. “Kills. Really hurts.” Not to mention the arrow heading straight for his heart.
Beta Sinta turns me in his arms. My eyes flutter closed, but not before I glimpse the haunted look on his face.
I must have blacked out because he’s suddenly on his horse, and Carver is lifting me up to him. One of Beta Sinta’s tunics covers me from neck to knees. He must have sliced a hole in it for the broken arrow shaft because I don’t feel it pulling.
“Burn the Fisan leader,” I whisper. “Dilute my blood.”
He gives the order without questioning me, splashing water over my mouth, hands, and back while Carver and Flynn do as I said. Kato is slumped over his horse, barely holding on to consciousness.
“Griffin?”
He leans down, putting his ear close to my mouth.
“The circus. In Kaplos again.” We’re closer to Velos, but the two cities are neighbors, and Kaplos can’t be more than an hour from here. “Selena. Healer.”
“You’ll want to stay with them.” His bloodstained fingers curl into the material covering my hip. The look on his face makes my heart twist.
Actually, if I survive, I kind of want to stay with him. I really am an idiot. “No choice,” I rasp.
His mouth flattens. His eyes flick up as he spurs his horse, heading west. The shock of sudden movement sends a burst of pain through my back, and I moan. Beta Sinta’s arm tightens around my waist, and I burrow into his chest, holding on. Maybe I’ll trust him to fight my monsters while I sleep. Maybe I don’t have a choice.
His voice is fierce in my ear. “You’re mine now, Cat. Don’t you dare die on me.”
CHAPTER 11
I wake up in a familiar tent. It smells like home. “Selena?”
She leans over me, smiling. Her blonde braid slips forward and brushes my arm. It’s glossy and sleek and so thick it’s the size of a man’s wrist. Her face is flawless. Ageless. She could be thirty, she could be two hundred, and her eyes are the color of a northern lake on a clear, windless day—dark blue and so deep that when I look into them, I sometimes think I’m seeing another world.
She gently brushes the hair back from my face, and I burst into tears.
Selena arches delicate eyebrows a shade darker than her braid. “That’s a first.”
“I missed you.” I hiccup, embarrassed.
“I’m flattered. I didn’t think you cried.”
“I don’t,” I say, swiping at my tears.
She sits back, bringing her thumb and index finger nearly together. “I’m this close to perishing from curiosity.”
I blink, surprised. Selena always seems to know everything, at least before anyone else does. “That would not please Hades.”
She smiles a secret, satisfied smile that makes me wonder what it’s like to be loved by a God, even one who already has a wife.
“The warlord isn’t talking, I think out of a misguided effort to protect you. Information on my end has been scarce lately, so tell me, who is the man that carried you into my circus, roaring for me to save you?” Her grin turns impish. “‘Fix her! Now! Or I swear to the Gods that the Furies will rain death and destruction upon you, and there will be lightning bolts to pay!’”