Page 24 of Only Unity Will Spare Us: The Magi Accounts 5

Something forced me to look toward Mads, and my eyes caught his unerringly. He looked awful. He looked half-dead. And my heart clenched in my chest. I never should’ve let him move ahead without me.

When he mouthed, “I love you,” I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was saying goodbye. I could feel it through our connected souls.

“Nooo!” I screamed and began pushing my way through the enemy, ignoring all the magic hitting my body as I went.

I didn’t care one bit about me. I just needed to get to my mate.

And then I felt a huge rush of his love warming me from the inside out. It was so sudden and so intense, I cried out because I knew exactly what it meant.

“Nooo! Mads! Nooo!” I screamed.

And then the world exploded, along with my heart.

I woke up coughing,a groan on my lips as I tried to turn to the side.

My chest felt so heavy, like there was a boulder sitting on it. A cry left my lips when I finally managed to twist enough to cough up some blood. I blinked and glanced down at my body, surprised to find nothing crushing me.

Why did my chest feel like this? Like a horrible ache, a horrible emptiness, like someone had reached inside it and stolen my heart.

A raspy gasp came out of me when memories flitted through my mind’s eye.

Madeo.

I couldn’t get to Mads.

Him saying goodbye to me.

And then… and then pain. Everywhere.

I remembered the blast, but I knew the blast wasn’t what actually knocked me out. My heart had ripped into a million pieces because… because Mads.

A small sob escaped me as I rolled farther over and started to crawl over the rubble and dead bodies to where I last saw my mate. It looked like the blast had taken out every single witch in the area. But it hadn’t harmed our pride. Not a single pride member had been affected by the blast.

It had been my bond… breaking that had knocked me out.

Madeo had used the last bit of himself to protect us. Oh god. Another sob escaped me.

The absence of him, of everything Madeo, in my chest was like an open wound. I was sure if I looked down, I’d see an empty cavity and a trail of blood pouring out of me with every crawling step I took.

It took a long time for me to reach the area where Mads fought the monster. When my eyes landed on my mate, another sob escaped.

He was… completely covered in wounds, drenched in blood, and parts of him burned to a crisp.

And he was still. So, so, so still.

“Mads,” I rasped out, my voice barely above a whisper. “Baby.”

I moved up beside him and cupped his cheek. “Mads, baby, wake up.” He didn’t move, and my eyes ran over his body, trying to figure out which wound needed attention first. My vision blurred as my eyes welled with tears, and I moved my gaze back up to my mate’s face. “Baby, I need you to wake up. Mads, wake up.”

A loud sob caught my attention, and I turned to find Kulani crying over Jude’s bloody and broken body. Oh god, Jude. He was… jesus, he looked as bad as Mads.

River must’ve come out of the panic room in the house because they ran across the yard and fell on top of Jude’s body right beside me. They were crying, body-wracking sobs, and the sight of it made my own tears fall faster. Kulani was hugging both River and Jude to his chest, sobbing. I wanted to comfort them, but I needed Mads to wake up first.

“Come on, baby. Wake up. I need you. I need your help.”

“Jude,” Kulani said. “Please, darling, please come back to us.”

“K, I can’t… can’t f-feel his pulse,” River cried out.

I ignored them because I couldn’t help them right now. Not when I couldn’t get Mads to wake the hell up.

“Mads, wake up. Please, baby. Open your eyes.” I leaned down to rest my forehead against his. “Please, don’t do this to me, baby. I can’t… I can’t… not without you. Please, baby.”

More sobs filled the air, and it took me a moment to realize they were coming from me. I grabbed Mads to me, pulled him to my chest, and nuzzled against his neck, breathing him in. He smelled like himself underneath all the blood, sweat, and burnt skin, but there was a faint smell of something else already emanating from him. Something I couldn’t, wouldn’t, acknowledge.

Because Mads couldn’t be… he couldn’t… he couldn’t leave me.

“Please, Madeo. Please come back to me. Please.”

I rocked him and leaned back to look at his beautiful face. I brushed the hair out of his eyes and whispered, “Open your pretty blue eyes, baby. I want to see them.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t so much as twitch.

And that stench was growing deeper by the second.

No!

No, I couldn’t let him go. Not like this. Not after everything we’d been through.

“You’re not allowed to leave me, Madeo Ono-Nai. I have so much I want to show you. We have so much to do. I haven’t even t-taken you… to the z-zoo yet. We’re going t-to… grow our pride, and there will be so many p-people who… love you.” I sobbed. “Please don’t… do this to me. P-please, Mads.”

I buried my face in his neck again, rocking him as my tears wet his shirt, mixing with the blood already there.

Madeo, please.

The pain in my chest grew, even though I refused for this to be… to be the end.

“This isn’t how our story ends, sweetheart. It can’t be.”

Please come back to me, Mads. Please, baby. I don’t want to live without you.

God, the pain in my chest. It ached. My soul felt like it was bleeding itself dry.

But my damn chest.

I sucked in a breath and rubbed at my chest without putting Mads down. I refused to let him go. I would never let go of him.

My heart thumped in my chest, skipping a beat and distracting me for a second. I ignored it, but it did it again. Skipped a beat, and then thumped hard and loud inside of me.

It did it again. And again. And again.

I thought for a moment that maybe I was having a heart attack. That maybe seeing my mate this way would be my undoing.

But when it did it again, I felt… something. Something different.

No, not different. Something familiar. As familiar to me as my own soul.

And then like a ray of sun shining through a cloudy day, I felt a bit of hope trickle inside me. That something different was… it was a piece of Madeo’s soul.

How? How had it stayed behind inside my chest?

The answer came to me with barely a thought. We were so intrinsically entwined that this small piece of his soul had grown too attached to my own. It had clung to me hard enough that even Madeo’s… Madeo’s death couldn’t make it part from me.

I grabbed onto it with all of my might, and somehow, I felt magic swirl around me. It was a mix of my magic and… and Madeo’s. Of shifter and magi. They swirled around me, and I felt that small piece of his soul light up like a beacon.

And then that small piece of his soul doubled in size. And then it tripled.

It took me a moment to realize that pieces of Madeo’s soul were… coming back to me. As if the piece attached to my heart was calling them home.

Like attracted to like.

That had never seemed so true as in this moment.

The larger the soul grew, the more pieces came back to me.

But now I was having trouble keeping that much extra soul inside myself.

I panicked for a moment, unsure of how to get the extra soul out of me and into Mads, but the magic swirling around us seemed to understand my duress. It guided me, and I leaned my forehead against Madeo’s, gently opened his mouth and breathed out.

I felt the soul—his soul—move from inside of me, out of my mouth, and into his. I breathed into him over and over again until only a small part remained attached to my heart and soul, the way it was meant to be.

I opened my eyes, expecting to see Madeo’s blue orbs staring at me, but his eyes were still closed. He wasn’t breathing.

Quickly, I placed him on the ground and started compressions.

I heard a few of my pride members yelling at me to stop, that it was too late, but then Logan yelled at them to let me and said I was working magic with my compressions. I blinked and tried to look around myself and Mads. Logan was right. There was blue magic swirling all around us and a bright glow of it surrounding my hands.

I kept going. Compressions, breathing into his mouth, and back to compressions again.

The glow seemed to grow and wrap around his body the longer I did CPR. I watched the worst of the wounds begin to close, my magic, our magic, somehow healing parts of him. My hope grew. Magi magic couldn’t heal like that, but it seemed that shifter and magi mixed together could.

“Come on, baby. Come on.”

I had no idea how long I’d been doing it when Mads started coughing.

I burst into tears as I stopped my compressions and started rubbing his chest instead.

“Mads.” I sounded pained to my own ears, tears running down my cheeks in streams.

He blinked up at me, and those gorgeous blue eyes I was afraid I’d never see again found mine.

“Mads,” I cried out again before pulling him into my arms.

He groaned but clung to me, so I didn’t put him back down. I cried into his neck, and I felt his body trembling.

“Oh god, you’re cold.” I leaned back, set him on the ground, and pulled my shirt off. It was covered in filth, but so was he, so I wrapped him in it as best I could. It was a testament to how badly he felt that he didn’t yell at me to get that disgusting thing off of him.

One of his hands reached out to grip mine, and he whispered, “Cos.”

“I’m here, baby. I’m right here. You’re safe now.”

Our pride had formed a protective circle around us, not allowing the TRD teams that finally showed up anywhere near us.

Mads gave a slight nod, then whispered, “Kitty cat.”

My lip quivered. “Cat lover.”

His lips quirked, but then he sucked in a deep breath. “Jude.”

My heart lurched, and I couldn’t help my eyes flicking over to where Jude lay still with his mates clinging to him.

Madeo’s eyes followed mine, and a whimper fell from him, but he looked at me with determination in his gaze as he said, “Take me to him.”

We were only a few feet from him anyway, so I held tight to my mate and scooted over to sit beside River and across from Kulani. Mads didn’t hesitate to grab Jude’s hand, and the second they touched, I felt and saw more magic swirl through the air.

The same magic I’d used to save my mate.

Even though I wasn’t the one who was bonded to Jude, I felt the magic deeply as if I was. Jude’s soul pieces came to Mads, and I felt the magic pulling on my strength through my and Madeo’s bond. Probably because Mads didn’t have any strength left.

When Jude’s soul was too large for Mads to hold, I lay Mads down beside his dyad, even though I didn’t want to let him go yet. I watched as Mads breathed Jude’s soul pieces into his dyad’s mouth.

When he was done, I said to Kulani, “Do CPR on him.”

As soon as he started, Mads attached his magic to Kulani’s hands, and the magic glowed from K’s hands and started to spread over Jude’s body. The magic pulled on me—a lot—as I watched the wound on Jude’s neck slowly close up.

I pulled my mate into my lap to watch, unable to stop myself from hugging and scenting him and holding him tight. God, I never wanted to let him go.

It took even longer for them to wake Jude up, but finally, he coughed and spluttered and came back to life. He held Madeo’s hand even as both his mates hugged and kissed and fussed over him. I had a feeling the five of us would be sticking like glue to one another for a very long time.

Mads didn’t let go of Jude’s hand, but he did turn his attention back to me with a tired smile. “Thank you.”

I blanched. “For what?”

“Everything.”

Before I could protest his words, he tugged me with his free hand into a soft kiss. It was just lips, no tongue involved, but I didn’t think I’d ever had a sweeter kiss than this.

With every passing moment with him in my arms, my heart felt like it was filling back up with his love.