Chapter 163: The Lost Princess
Nina
As I walked into Enzo’s old apartment, which had been turned into a makeshift safehouse for the hockey team, my eyes widened and my face went pale as a sheet when I saw a familiar person staring back at me from the corner, tied to a chair.
“James?” I said. My throat suddenly felt dry and cracked. Whatever joy I had earned from curing my friends and being saved by Enzo and Matt was now gone.
“Nina.” James stared at me through his eyebrows, his face darkened and twisted into an angry scowl. His nose was bloody and purple; it was obviously broken.
“How did you guys find him?” I asked, turning to look at Matt and Enzo. Enzo’s eyes were narrowed as he glared angrily at James, and it was now that I realized that his arm was wrapped protectively around my shoulders. I was so shocked from seeing James sitting there that I somehow didn’t even notice.
“Ask your boyfriend,” James said, nodding his head toward Enzo. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” Enzo replied. His voice was hardly more than a low growl. “I. should kill you now for what you did to Nina.”
“Go ahead,” James snarled. He tilted his chin up to look down his broken nose at Enzo. “Kill me.”
Enzo made a motion to walk toward. James, but I put my hand on his chest and stopped him. He slowly looked down at me, his eyes wild with fury, but I only shook my head. He paused for several moments as though he was still considering killing James anyway, but finally conceded. Without a word, he took my hand and led me over to his bedroom and shut the door firmly behind us.
“Why do you keep protecting him?” he asked as he sat me down on his bed and crouched in front of me to get a good look at my leg. I winced as he peeled back the bloody bandage.
Truthfully, I didn’t have an answer for him. James seemed like a lost cause. He was hell bent on killing werewolves, and even shot me and left me for dead for supposedly ‘getting in the way’ of that.
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. Enzo seemed to drop the subject, focused solely on my leg. It hadn’t healed at all on its own, and was even worse now than it was when I woke up in the back of that older couple’s pickup truck from all of the running I did. The wound was still open and bleeding because all of my movement stopped it from scabbing over.
“You didn’t heal?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet mine. I slowly shook my head. “No. I can’t find my wolf.”
Enzo sighed, then reached out to put his hands on my leg. I instinctively flinched away, but relaxed as much as I could when he shot me a worried look. Once I was relaxed enough, he put his hands on my leg without quite touching the wound and shut his eyes.
Nothing happened at first, but soon I began to feel a tingling sensation in my leg. I watched as the wound slowly began to close up until there was hardly anything more than a red mound where the bullet hole was.
“You’re lucky it didn’t go all the way through, and it seemed to miss your bone,” he said gently when he was done. “I’m not sure how well I’d be able to heal something like that on my own. Do you wanna tell me what happened now?”
I shook my head as tears came to my eyes, still shaken up from everything that had happened recently. Without a word, Enzo pulled me into his arms, still on his knees in front of me, and rubbed my back as I silently sobbed into his shoulder.
“I knew you would be okay,” he said quietly, “You’re strong. And you saved Lori and Jessica.”
“I just wish Tiffany was here,” I whispered through a choked sob. Enzo was silent for a moment. “She’s alive through that antidote,” he said finally. “She’s alive through you, your actions today.”
Neither of us spoke for a while after that. Gently and tentatively, I finally bent my head down and kissed Enzo. Without hesitation, he cupped my face with his hands and kissed me more deeply and passionately, sending a chill down my spine.
When we finally pulled away, he stood and held out his hand for me. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s check on the others.” I nodded and took his hand, noticing how rough and calloused his palm was, then followed him out to the living room where the team was sitting around quietly. Matt was standing over by the window, looking out. James was quiet now and only stared down defeatedly at his lap.
“Those rogues will be looking for us for who knows how long,” Matt said, turning to face the group. “If you need to rest, then rest, but just be aware that we might need to move soon.”
The team seemed to be in agreement.
While the rest of the team laid down on either the couch or the floor to shut their eyes for a while, Enzo retreated to his room to change into some more appropriate clothes he was wearing – a suit, for some reason, which was tattered and dirty now, but eventually returned a few minutes later in his usual jeans and a flannel. Matt, Enzo, Lori and Jessica, and I then sat down around the table. We still had electricity despite not being able to turn the lights on for fear of being caught, so Enzo dumped some frozen food on a tray and shoved it in the oven. While we waited for it to cook, there was still a lot to be discussed.
“What happened after I left with Luke?” Enzo asked Matt after explaining how Ronan and Lisa had him tied to a chair with a gun to his head.
Matt shook his head and stared down at his hands. “We had them, but they got away,” he said somberly. “Haven’t seen them since. I think they got scared and ran off… Cowards.”
“So… The Crescents don’t have a leader on campus right now?” Jessica asked, to which Matt nodded.
“I actually overheard them at the cabins when I got Tiffany’s medical bag,” I chimed in. “They were talking about Ronan: I think there was some talk of an unofficial ‘leader’ being named, but they didn’t seem to be too concerned about it. It does seem that they also think that Ronan went off to hide, so I guess that means that the loyalty within their group-isn’t exactly the strongest.”
There was a long silence as the group digested this information. Surely there would be some way to use it to our advantage, but right now, our brains and our bodies were too tired for too much critical thinking.
Finally, the food finished cooking. We ate in silence, which was only broken occasionally by the sound of soft talking. For the first time in days, I felt as though I finally had an appetite again. As I sat alongside Enzo, I knew that everything would be okay.
But, at the same time, I couldn’t stop wondering how he was able to get away from Selena. I sensed that something bad happened, but I couldn’t tell exactly what. Either way, the somber expression on Enzo’s face worried me to my core.
