BIKER QUEEN AND HER HELLBOUND KING

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chapter 14

Grace

Mara's hands were cold and efficient, which I was grateful for, because the wound on my arm had started to sting the moment she cut the sleeve away and got a proper look at it.

"Two weeks," she said, her voice carrying the specific disappointment of someone who had expected better from me which is wild because I had only just met her. "You walked around with this for two weeks."

"A week and some days," I said, which was true, and also not the point.

She didn't flinch at the sight of the jagged, angry lines on my arm under the bandage, but her brows furrowed.

“This is a wraith-touch, Grace,” Mara said, her voice dropping for a moment and Jinx audible sucked in a breath.

“A what now?” I couldn't understand the reason for their panic.

“Kent should have known better, a standard human cut would have scabbed over days ago. Wraith venom prevents coagulation and slows cellular regeneration. You’re lucky you haven't lost the arm to necrosis yet.” She explained, taking off her gloves.

She reached into the glass cabinet behind her and pulled out a dark bottle with no label on it. "Wraith wounds don't close, Grace. They leave a tear in the tissue that keeps the body from completing its own repair cycle, you could have walked around with this for another two weeks and it would have looked exactly the same."

"I didn't know what caused it," I said.

"You didn't come and ask either, you could have died.” Although the mask was covering most of her face, I could tell she was incredibly disappointed.

“Kent would probably like that” I rolled my eyes at the expression on Jinx’s face.

“You should have come to me the moment you got here. Stubbornness is a poor substitute for survival.” Mara replied, completely ignoring my words as she worked on the arm after putting on another pair of gloves.

“Forgive me for not prioritizing my healthcare while being chased by monsters and kidn*pped by a two-hundred-year-old biker,” I snapped. Jinx, who was leaning against the wall by the door, let out a nervous whistle.

Mara ignored him and uncapped the dark bottle. "This will hurt, hold still."

Whatever she poured onto the wound was not antiseptic, at least not any kind I had ever encountered in a lab. It burned from my arm down to my wrist and felt like liquid fire. I hissed, my hand gripping the edge of the exam table so hard my knuckles turned white.

"Sorry," Mara said, in a tone that suggested she wasn't very sorry at all. "The compound has to break down the wraith's venom before I can stitch it. If I close it without clearing that first, the wound reopens from the inside."

"Fantastic," I managed through gritted teeth.

"You should have come to me the day after you arrived."

“You keep saying that like I hadn't been held hostage the moment I crossed the ward, I've had my hands full of supernatural lessons and trying to get your leader to let me go. Forgive me, but my to-do list has been quite full."

Mara didn't smile, but something in her face shifted in a way that told me she wanted to. She set the bottle down and picked up a pair of curved forceps, inspecting the wound with a small light. The silence stretched for a few seconds, occasionally broken by the sound of Jinx fidgeting on the chair by the door.

Then Mara went very quiet in a different way, not like someone who was conducting a medical examination, but like someone who just made a huge discovery.

"You're a Conduit," It wasn't a question, it was more of surprise.

"Oh," Jinx said from across the room. "Kent hasn't told you yet?" Mara shook her head in response.

I looked between the two of them. "Why do you look like that's information you have just been made privy to?"

"Because I didn't know, Kent only told me the basics.” Mara said simply, returning to the wound.

I let out a short breath. I wasn't sure why it surprised me, Kent was very closed off, that much I had noticed despite only being here for some time, but some part of me had assumed that in his own town, among the people he trusted completely, he would have said something. "So when you said only the inner circle knows about me, you meant—”

“Where you're from, who you were before you came here, that you needed to be kept safe." Mara began threading a needle with something dark that didn't look like standard suture material. "Not this."

"He really kept it to himself," I said, more to the ceiling than to either of them.

"He usually does," Jinx said, and didn't elaborate.

"Hold your arm out straighter. I knew you were something significant, the ward responded when you crossed it in a way it hasn't in decades,”

“Yeah, yeah.” I said waving my other hand. “Apparently that's a huge deal, Kent has been talking my ears off about it.”

“You really don't know how incredible that is? Your kind is supposed to be extinct.”

“Considering I only found out about the whole supernatural society recently, no, I do not find it incredible”.

Mara started stitching and I focused very hard on the wall behind her head and not on what her hands were doing. "There's something else in your power," she said, her blue eyes piercing like she was looking into my soul, I ignored the look and focused on the wall, her gaze made me uneasy.

"Something sitting underneath the Conduit ability. I can feel it when I work close to you, there's a secondary current. Older than a typical Conduit signature."

“You can tell all that just by looking at me?”

“Hm,” she hummed, not saying anything else as she continued stitching.

“It's part of her Marked ability.” Jinx explained instead.

“Oh. What kind are you?” I asked and her hands stopped. She tilted her head to the side like she was considering what response to give and her eyes crinkled in a smile that seemed to say ‘shh… don't ask’

Jinx cough nervously and mouthed behind her, ‘she hates that question’

I read the room and quickly changed the topic. “So, is it a bad thing that there's something else besides the conduit whatever in my blood?”

“Not necessarily, it doesn't seem to be interacting negatively with your powers but we'll need further examination to be completely sure.” She replied, her movements careful and steady. I wondered how many of this kind of wounds she had seen, probably not much since Marked beings healed up pretty fast.

I thought of Dr. Fenn, the way he had told me about the formula before it had been injected in me, I didn't know the specifics of what he'd done but I'd been told it would strengthen the compound in my blood. I had trusted him completely and he had done something to my blood that I still didn't fully understand.

"I might know what that is," I said, I didn't know if I could trust her or anyone else in this town reall, but I needed to understand this power everyone was going crazy over and to do that, I needed to let some information out myself.

"Kent said there might be some kind of enhancement in my blood. My mentor in the lab I worked at ran an experiment on me. He said it was a medical study, that it would improve my body's baseline responses.”

Mara's hands didn't stop moving but her attention sharpened. "What kind of experiment?"

"I don't know the specifics," I admitted, which was just embarrassing on my part. "It was pretty hush-hush and he wasn't specific. Besides I was like twenty two-ish when it all started and I trusted him."

"We'll come back to that," Mara said, which meant this was more serious that I thought.

"For now, understand that your Conduit ability is early stage and completely uncontrolled. It responds to adrenaline, strong emotion, and proximity to Marked beings. The stronger the Marked being, the faster your power activates around them." She tied off a stitch with a neat, practiced pull that made me hiss. "You understand what that means for you in this particular town."

"Kent already said as much," I told her.

"Did he tell you that he specifically is the problem?" she asked, her blue eyes lifting to mine. "Not Marked beings in general. Him. He is the oldest living Hellbound, which means his blood is the most concentrated source of Marked power on this continent. Every hour you spend in close proximity to him, your ability accelerates." Mara continued, oblivious to my internal spiral.

“Can I… turn it off?” She let out a short laugh at my question.

“Not until you learn to control your powers.” Something in my chest lifted at that, there was hope. “It could take years to master,” she said, completely shattering my hopes.

"Then I'll just stay away from him," I said.

Mara looked at me for a long second. "Good luck with that."

“Is that a medical opinion or a warning?” I asked.

“Both,” she replied.

Jinx made a sound that he tried to disguise as a cough and I glared at him.