My muscles locked. My body turned hard, as if I suddenly became steel and I crashed on the floor. The air vanished. I struggled to inhale and couldn’t. My lungs sat in my chest like two boulders, unable to expand.

“Dina!” Caldenia lunged to me.

I couldn’t look at her. My eyes wouldn’t move.

Poison… I’ve been poisoned.

The inn screamed, its wood creaking and groaning, reaching for me. I shoved at it with my magic. No! If it touched me, the poison would spread. I couldn’t kill Gertrude Hunt.

“You poisoned her!” Caldenia snarled, her sharp teeth rending the air.

Breathe, breathe, breathe… My body refused to respond.

I’m dying…

The balcony parted under me. I fell through it, down, and landed on the table in the kitchen, right between George, Sophie, and Jack. Pain slapped my rigid back. Above me, through the hole in the fabric of existence, Caldenia screamed, “She’s been poisoned!”

“Dina!” Sophie cried out.

I saw Turan Adin. He was there and then he vanished.

I couldn’t even gasp. My mouth wouldn’t move.

George’s face, pale, his eyes wide open, swung into my view. The tip of his cane was glowing, projecting information in front of it, scrolling with dizzying speed.

Not enough air…

“Not again!” Orro howled. “No, no, no….”

“Fix this,” Sophie ground out through her teeth. “Fix it now, George. This is too far.”

“I can’t. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Do something!”

“I’m trying,” George growled. “The database doesn’t know this poison.”

This is it, flashed in my head. This is how I am going to die.

The inn wavered around me, warping, its roots stretching to me.

No!

“The inn can heal,” Caldenia called out. “Let it heal her!”

“No,” George barked. “If the inn forges a connection with her, the poison can spread.”

Thank you. Thank you for looking out for Gertrude Hunt.

“Don’t die,  small human!” Orro yelled.  “Don’t die!”

I sent my magic out, letting it brush the walls. I love you. You are the best. You will be okay.

Wood snapped, cracking, as if something within the inn tore itself apart.

Shhhh. It will be okay. You will be okay.

I wish I could’ve found my parents. I wish I could have seen Sean one last time…

The light was fading. I couldn’t even close my eyes. I would die with them open.

Turan Adin filled my view. Nuan Cee’s furry muzzle appeared near me.

“I have your word?” the Merchant said.

All went black.

Chapter 14

I opened my eyes.

The room was dim, the light soft and muted, coming from the setting sun. The ceiling looked familiar. I was lying on the couch in the front room. And I was still alive.

I inhaled deeply and felt my chest rise, then fall. The air flooded my lungs, so sweet. Such an easy small movement. I would never again take it for granted. I sent my magic out. It whispered through the rooms, testing the connection, and Gertrude Hunt sighed in relief.

I was still alive.

The thought made me smile. I stretched a little and wiggled my toes. Someone had taken off my shoes. I turned my head slightly. The room was empty except for Turan Adin. He sat in a chair, his head inclined, his face hidden behind the empty blackness. Beast lay on his lap, her eyes closed.

The smile vanished from my lips. In all the time I owned Gertrude Hunt, there was only one person besides me who could hold Beast on his lap.

I slipped off the couch. Turan Adin raised his head but didn’t move. I walked over to him, my bare feet making almost no sound on the floorboards, reached out, and touched his hood. It retracted, folding as it slid to settle over his back. For a moment I saw a lupine head armed with monstrous jaws, and then it melted in a blink. Sean Evans looked at me with his amber eyes. His hair was shaved down to stubble. A ragged scar cut across his forehead, slanting to the left, interrupting his eyebrow and chewing up his cheek. Another scar snaked its way up his neck on the right, breaking into a tangle of smaller scars near his ear. What kind of injuries could they have been that the Merchants’ medical equipment couldn’t knit him back together?

His face was hard, so much harder than I remembered, as if any hint of softness had been bled out of him. His eyes were haunted. He looked at me and through me at the same time, as if he were expecting a distant threat to appear on some far horizon behind me. The cocky funny guy was gone. I was staring war in the face and it was looking back at me.

Oh no.

I reached out and touched the ragged scar on his cheek with my trembling fingertips. He leaned into my hand, like a stray dog who’s been on the run for too long, desperate for any crumb of affection. Painful heat burned my eyes and fell on my cheeks. Beast whimpered on his lap.

“Why?” I whispered.

“I owed a favor to Wilmos,” he said, his voice quiet. “I said I wanted a challenge. Turan Adins don’t last. The Merchants just keep recruiting more when the latest one bites the dust. As long as you match the height, the armor takes care of everything else. I signed up for six Nexus months and got there two days after the last Turan Adin died.”

“Sean…”

“The Army wasn’t hard for me. Everything I had done on this planet was easy. What my parents went through was beyond anything I ever tried. It was a test. I wanted to know if I could do it. If I was good enough to survive. If I was someone they could look on with pride. I wanted the training wheels off.  I had to know if I could.”

Six Nexus months, that was barely two months our time. “Why didn’t you leave? Your contract ended.”

“There are civilians in the spaceport and the colony.” His voice was ragged and low. “Children. Our resources are stretched too thin. They would be overrun. They need me.”

He was trapped. Sean’s parents were alpha strain werewolves, designed and genetically engineered to protect the escape gates against overwhelming force as the rest of population evacuated their dying planet. Sean was born with the drive to protect, the kind of drive that overrode everything else. Repelling the siege of the spaceport must’ve felt right to him, so right, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. His very nature trapped him there in the never ending hell.