Page 152

Jax looked down at his split knuckles. “Eventually. I thought we’d have until Friday.”

“And you still used him.”

His good eye lifted to mine. “You were in a car with the Council, reina. I needed any help I could get.”

“He did this to you because of me.”

“He did this to me because he thinks I belong to him. You were just the excuse.” His voice remained steady, but I could hear the exhaustion beneath it. After a moment, he continued. “He asked about you again while they were bringing in the next fighter. He wanted to know what you are, what you can do, and whether you really shifted into Kaelen Vance’s wolf at the Proving. I told him you were nobody, and he laughed.”

The Proving had barely happened, yet Vey already knew about Kaelen’s wolf. Somehow, information was leaving Ironmoor almost as soon as events took place, and whoever was carrying it to him was wasting no time.

I stayed on my knees in front of Jax and forced myself to look at his injuries properly. The more I saw, the harder it became to contain what was happening inside me. I had been angry before, but this was different. The feeling kept growing until I no longer knew what to do with it, and the sheer force of it frightened me.

“Five years,” I said. “You’ve been doing this for five years. The entire time I’ve known you.”

My throat tightened, but I refused to stop.

“The night of the Baths, when you walked me through that gallery, you went and did this afterward. Then the next morning, you let me check your ribs. You made jokes about tigers and told me you’d fallen down the stairs.” My voice broke despite my efforts to keep it steady. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you hide this from me?”

Jax lowered his eyes to his hands. Every knuckle was split open, the skin swollen and torn. He slowly turned them over before answering.

“Because it was mine to carry,” he said quietly. “You already had enough of your own problems. There was the Moonrun, Kaelen, the putas in this school, and everything else they kept throwing at you.” He paused, and when he looked at me again, some of the exhaustion in his face gave way to something gentler. “Every time I looked at you, reina, I thought the same thing. I wasn’t going to give you another burden. I wanted to take some of yours away instead. I wanted to make you happy.”

For several seconds, I couldn’t answer him. Tears had blurred my vision, and I had to blink them away before I could see his face clearly again.

“You idiot,” I finally managed, furious with him even as I cried. There was so much feeling in my chest that I could barely make sense of it, but one truth rose above everything else.

I loved him.

“You absolute idiot,” I continued. “I have medical training, Jax. Taking care of others is literally what I do.”

He laughed, then immediately winced from the pain it caused him. I rose higher on my knees and wrapped my arms carefully around his waist, making sure not to put any pressure on his ribs. He let me hold him like this, which might have been the clearest indication yet of how badly he was hurt.

Before dawn, I made Silas take him to the infirmary.

Jax argued the entire way until I told him that if one of those ribs had punctured a lung, I would personally kill him before the injury had the opportunity.

That was enough to end the argument.

The infirmary kept Jax under observation until sunrise. Nothing had punctured his lungs, his skull was intact, and his shifter healing had already begun repairing the worst of the damage. They cleaned and dressed his cuts, told him to rest, and ordered him to take regular deep breaths to keep his lungs fully expanded.

Jax apparently took all of that to mean he was well enough to come to breakfast.

He sat beside me with one side of his face swollen and bruised, drinking his tea carefully from the corner of his mouth that wasn't split. We had barely started eating when Silas told us about the exam.

"Oda sent for me this morning, before it was light," he said. He swallowed a spoonful of porridge before continuing. "The Council set my recertification for Bond Night. It'll be in the Pit." He paused, and something in his expression changed. "They're making it a Culling Exam."

I had never heard the term before, but Jax obviously had. His cup stopped halfway to his mouth, and the sudden stillness in him made me turn toward him.

"What's a Culling Exam?" I asked.

Jax lowered the cup to the table. "They use live ferals. Real ones from the Council's holding pens, usually four or five at a time." His eyes moved to Silas. "They put the person being examined into the Pit with them, and he has to kill them."

I stared at him. "They keep ferals in holding pens?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"