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touched my shoulder I jumped and started to bring the gun around. Wicked pinned my arm and the gun in his big hand. His mouth was moving. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but when he took the gun out of my hand, I let him do it.

I looked at my left shoulder but there was no blood. It hurt, but I couldn’t see a wound. Wicked was still talking to me, and I still couldn’t understand him, as he helped me to my feet. There were people rushing past us with drawn guns, headed toward Haven. Fredo was kneeling by Claudia. I asked, “Claudia—is she all right?” I had no idea how loud or soft I was talking. I couldn’t tell.

Wicked shook his head, his wet blond hair clinging to his face as if he hadn’t bothered to dry it. He was dressed. He was turning me away from Claudia, and I fought his grip to go check on her, but he tightened his grip. Did he not want me to see her? How bad was she hurt? Then he turned me enough for me to see that Noel was lying on his back, his chest covered in blood. I started forward, and then the crowd moved enough for me to realize they were kneeling by another body. Long auburn hair trailed out from between them. I knew now why my shoulder hurt, but there was no wound.

I was moving forward, shaking Wicked’s hand away. In that moment if someone had wanted to shoot me, they could have, because I forgot everything but Nathaniel.

24

I PUSHED THROUGH the kneeling people, not even seeing who was there, to fall to my knees beside him. He looked up at me, lavender eyes wide. Jason was holding his hand. Lisandro was putting pressure on the wound in his shoulder. I touched my shoulder, where it hurt exactly where his wound was, but I’d felt pain when Richard and Jean-Claude had been hurt and that had been worse. This wasn’t bad. I’d seen him survive worse. I knew that, but I still needed to touch him. I was crying and hadn’t meant to, but Jason was crying, too, so I didn’t feel so bad.

I touched Nathaniel’s face and he smiled at me. My hearing was coming back in pieces. I heard yelling. “He’s gone! He’s gone!” I turned to find Jesse and Kelly kneeling on either side of Noel. I could feel their energy, their lions reaching out. “Go,” Nathaniel said, “help Noel.”

I laid my hand over his heart, as if I needed to feel the thick beat of it before I left him, and then I moved the few feet to Noel. It was Kelly who was yelling at Jesse, “He’s gone! It’s too late!” She was cradling her arm.

I looked down at Noel, and the moment I saw him I knew she was right. Brains don’t belong on the outside. I stared down at the inside of his head spilling out into the floor. He’d been getting his master’s in literature. All that studying, all that effort, was leaking out of his broken head and spreading in a thick, bloody mass on the floor. Even a powerful wereanimal couldn’t have healed that. Almost everything else, but not this.

Truth was there, his hair black from the shower. “He was hiding in the hallway. We were running for the sound of fighting, and then he darted out. He tackled Nathaniel, saved him. We would all have been too late.”

I knelt beside the body, because that’s what it was now. It wasn’t Noel anymore, it was his body, and that was it. There’d be no miracle to save him this time.

I heard yelling from the far side of the room. I said, “Claudia?”

“She’ll live,” Wicked said. He’d come back from that direction. “And looks like so will your Rex.”

I stared up at him and Truth. “What?” I asked.

“He’s healing the damage. The doctor thinks he’ll pull through,” Wicked said.

Jesse said, “Haven is just that strong.”

I shook my head and stood up from Noel’s body. I walked toward the guards clustered around Haven. Wicked and Truth trailed me. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to keep me safe, or if they’d try and stop me. Dr. Lillian, our main medic, was kneeling over Haven. She must have come while I was in the shower. But it was a distant thought; I didn’t really care when she’d come or how she’d known we needed her.

I