Instinctually, I rounded the bed toward Lucien and held his hands, sick with worry at everything that was happening. But Lucien didn’t move. He sat as still as a statue, his muscles tight, and not a muscle moving on his blank face.
Blood poured from Lucien’s back as Anais carved new lines over the Spellscript. I did not understand what she was doing at all; obviously, she was overwriting the Spellscript with a new one, but the lines of the new one were odd, jagged, not as symmetrical as other Spellscripts I had documented throughout the years.
“Two minutes,” Enoch’s voice echoed in the silent room, and his voice was a little strained now. Glancing at him while still holding Lucien’s hands, I realized he was leaning against the wall, sweat glistening over his face. He seemed dizzy.
Anais murmured something unintelligible as she carved more lines into Lucien’s back. His blood was creating too large a pool under his chair—so much that I feared this was more than his body could handle.
With a sudden movement, Anais threw the scalpel on the floor and put her bloody palms over Lucien’s messed-up back. She closed her eyes, and a soft light poured from her into Lucien’s skin. The light was different from Enoch’s: brighter, more purple in color.
Lucien’s back soaked in the light, and Lucien’s hands suddenly clenched mine—the only time he’d moved in the past couple of minutes. His face remained expressionless, and the rest of his body didn’t move, but he was holding me tightly. And when I saw the raw, tattered skin was being woven together, closing the wounds, it looked so painful, I squeezed his hands right back.
“Thirty seconds,” Enoch said, his voice a soft whisper. From the corner of my eye, I saw he had slid down to the floor, almost as if he couldn’t keep himself standing.
Anais suddenly took her hands off Lucien. His wounds, I saw, were closed. All that remained were the scars of the Spellscript carvings and the new ones Anais had inflicted.
“Done,” she murmured, sagging back against Thayer, who wrapped his arms around her, face a little ill, though his eyes were lit with a horrified kind of wonder.
The same kind I was feeling right now too. Because Lucien sagged against the chair, not falling to the floor only because I was still holding his hands, and Blaise, who’d stood next to him, caught him in time.
“Lucien!” I called, hovering over him when I saw his eyes were closed. My heart fell as terror filled me, and I turned to Anais. “What’s wrong—”
But Anais was no longer human.
Everything happened in a blur. Blaise practically peeled Thayer off her and shoved him back as he and Remi went to restrain her. Anais growled and thrashed against them, but she seemed a little weaker than before, and Blaise and Remi shackled her successfully to the bed again. She growled and growled, trying to bite into everyone who came close, and Blaise had to physically hold Thayer back. My stupid brother had tried to reach her.
“I’m sorry,” I heard Enoch faintly say, before the hospital director succumbed to his own darkness and lay still on the floor.
I stared at Lucien’s sleeping face as I held his hand, wondering when he would wake up.
Remi, who wasn’t just his cousin but also a healer in the Concordian Ward, said it would take a few hours. Having his Spellscript overwritten, along with Anais’s unplanned deep healing, would’ve taken a big toll on anyone, but since Lucien was an Alpha, Remi believed he would awaken after a good few hours of rest instead of staying unconscious for days.
It didn’t sit well with me either way, and so I stayed by his side after Teya and Blaise helped him get back to his cabin in the woods so he could sleep soundly in his own bed.
I told Thayer he should come back to the cabin with me, but he refused. “I want to stay here,” he’d said, face calm, though his eyes showed his distress as he sat next to Anais.
Despite his dislike for her, I understood why this whole thing hit him so hard. It hit me hard too. Seeing someone you knew, even for a short time, losing their humanity like that, with no hope of ever returning, was a lot to process. Thayer had spent most of his time since we arrived at the Ward with Anais and Enoch, as the two searched for a way to neutralize Lucien’s Spellscript. Beyond their mutual dislike, I believed Thayer respected her. And that must’vebeen even worse, seeing someone you respected turning into an incoherent beast in human flesh.
“Here you go.”
Blaise’s heavily accented voice made me snap out of my dark reveries, and I looked up to see him holding two cups of coffee. I could only nod as I thanked him, taking one cup from him.
He took a seat next to me, right near Lucien’s bed. “He’s going to be okay, you know,” he told me, dark eyes reassuring. “Lucien is strong.”
The way he pronouncedLucienwas almost musical. It made me give him a weak smile. “I know he’s strong,” I said softly, “but I can’t help but worry.”
He nodded with a heavy sigh, his eyes fixating on Lucien’s serene face. “Did he tell you aboutMontvoilé?”
I nodded, feeling a heavy weight on my chest. “Yes. It ... it’s awful. I’m sorry you had to go through this.”
Blaise leaned back, sipping his coffee. “When we first moved here six months ago,” he suddenly said, “Lucien, as the newly appointed Alpha, was given the choice to either keep the pack name or change it. It’s a choice every Alpha has, and it carries a lot of weight in the werewolf world.”
He gave me a sad look. “In French,Montvoilétranslates loosely into ‘the veiled mountain.’ Our pack back then kept this name for many centuries, to enforce our secluded lifestyle. We refused to let Otherborne mix with our pack, through friendships or mating. Humans, obviously, were out of the question.”
I remembered Lucien had said werewolves were very homogenous. That seemed to track.
“When we came here,” Blaise continued, returning his gaze to Lucien and tightening his hold on his coffee cup, “the pack name was Suncrown Ridge. A very bright, sunny name, fitting for a California werewolf pack.” He smiled a little. “But Lucien didn’t like it. It sounded too rigid. Too bright. It was like everything Lucien didn’t believe in stuck in a name.”
“Butsunis supposedly a positive word,” I said, frowning.