Chapter 175: The Main Target
SELENE’S POV
"William! William!"
I called out his name as he lay on the floor, soaked in blood, and I couldn’t fathom what to do. A lot was going through my mind in seconds ... my hands were literally shaking. How did he get here? How did they penetrate the borders with those weapons without being detected?
Draven did all of this? It was insane. I hadn’t seen him as someone with the motive to go this far.
And now William lay unconscious on the floor, and it looked every bit like I was about to be widowed.
"No! Somebody please help me get him up!" I screamed, and Valerie and Lucian ... who had been moving to fight Draven ... came rushing back to help me.
"Let’s get him to the hospital ... he needs to at least... fuck! They will pay for this," I shouted.
When we got downstairs, everywhere was in utter smoke. The whole place was quiet and in ruins. The only sounds I could hear were the sobs of people who had survived and were discovering that their loved ones hadn’t. The DJ had been caught in the blast ... he lay across his table in a pool of blood.
I couldn’t even see the rest clearly. The smoke was too thick and too heavy. But people had died, and I ... the entire Icefang ... hadn’t been able to do a single thing about it.
We rushed William to the hospital. The bomb hadn’t reached there. Maybe if they had succeeded in killing me, they would have gone there next ... but they were fucking motherfuckers and they had failed.
The way they had cut down my soldiers before I or any of them could blink twice ... it made my blood boil. Not all of them, thankfully. But too many.
"Doctor, please save him ... he’s been shot, upper abdomen. Please don’t let him die," I said to the doctor as they placed William on the bed. I had started sobbing before I even finished the sentence.
He had done this to save me. I could have been the one lying there with a bullet in my stomach. I was the target, and William had been willing to die in my place. What was he even thinking?
Valerie came to hold me. Lucian stood nearby ... a man who had just lost his own wife and Luna. I hadn’t even thought to check on him. My own husband was still fighting for his life.
"The bullet struck him in the spleen," the doctor said. "We have to perform surgery to remove it before he goes into shock."
"Okay ... okay. Please do it," I said.
They moved him out in a rush toward the intensive care unit.
Fuck. I stood there praying the surgery would go well, that he would come out alive ... and at the same time, I was asking the goddess why she would allow this. Of all the times. It was the mating festival. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the Morvaine festival. This was a devastating blow to our face, and I felt every single ounce of it.
"Selene, please calm down," Valerie said, rubbing my back. "At least the doctors are here. William will survive."
I was not holding myself together and I knew it. I could go absolutely mad if William didn’t make it through.
I sat, then stood, then changed positions again and again for hours while the surgery went on.
Then the doctor finally came out, his gloves removed, and he approached me. I crossed the room to meet him faster.
"Doctor ... what’s the update?"
"He will live."
I went to my knees right there on the hospital floor. Those three words were the only sound I had needed to hear.
"The bullet was successfully removed, but he won’t be discharged anytime soon. We’ll need to let him recover, and we may have to fit him with a brace ... the bullet came very close to damaging his spine. How quickly that resolves will depend on his own resilience and recovery speed, which we’ll be supporting every step of the way," the doctor said.
"Okay. Please do whatever it takes, as long as he’ll be fine," I told him, and he went back inside.
They needed to complete a few more procedures, so we couldn’t go in yet. I could only peer at him through the glass ... wires and monitors all over him. Poor William.
Valerie pulled me into a hug right there in the hallway. She had been a rock through all of it, and I felt for her too.
"Aren’t you supposed to be with Lucian?" I said through tears. "He lost his wife tonight. Please ... go to him. That’s where you’re needed now." She was crying too as she pulled back and walked toward Lucian, who was doing his best impression of a man who had it together when anyone could see that he didn’t.
Valerie went to him. He held her back. A woman he had barely known for a matter of days ... dead in his arms, killed by a scumbag named Draven Blackstone.
I couldn’t stay in the sobbing. I had to move. I had to do something. The blood of innocent people had been shed tonight ... that couldn’t be taken lightly, and it wasn’t going to be.
Beta Damien followed me. Valerie stayed at the hospital.
I drove to my company building and could already see it from the outside ... cracks along the wall, smoke still rising from it. They had penetrated it. These fucking losers had almost destroyed everything I had built, but they hadn’t managed to finish the job. There was still something left to work with.
I walked past the bodies of people ... mostly young, people who had come out to have a good time and celebrate. They deserved better than this.
It looked like Armageddon.
When I reached the border gates, the security personnel were as shaken as the rest of us.
"What happened here?" I demanded.
"It was six of them ... they’re the ones who must have done this," one of the two guards said.
"Oh, you saw them? So what happened to security instinct? What happened to not letting anyone through until you were sure they weren’t a threat?"
"We checked them and there was nothing on them..."
I grabbed one of them by the collar before they could finish the sentence.
"All of you soldiers are useless ... do you understand how many people are dead right now because of your carelessness? If my husband had died tonight, you cannot imagine what I would have done to you."
"We’re sorry, Luna," they both said.
I slapped them. Sorry wasn’t going to do anything. It wasn’t going to bring back a single one of the dead.
"Now you are going to gather the rest of your men," I said, my voice low and sharp, "and you are going to find out everything there is to know about the rogues who attacked us. Tonight." I let go and walked away.
I was grateful my parents hadn’t come. And I hoped Astrid was okay ... I hadn’t seen her at all since everything went sideways.
---
ASTRID’S POV
I went back to my husband after my meeting with Selene. My mission had been accomplished. I could breathe now, and my mind was at ease.
Ethan, who had booked us into a hotel for the three days of the festival, had been the least concerned person in all of Icefang from the very beginning. He didn’t care about having a nice time or doing anything memorable. He had simply settled into the room and planted himself there ... eating tacos and cheese, drinking hot chocolate like a man with absolutely nowhere to be.
I came back and found him in the exact same state.
"You really mean this, don’t you?" I asked, watching him work his way through his snacks like it was a full-time job.
"Hey, babe ... have you seen your sister? How is she? Come join me."
Too many questions for a sentence that was supposed to be an answer.
"I’ve seen her," I said. "She sends her greetings to you too. She’s everything I heard and more ... she exceeds every expectation. She’s become something great."
"Wow, that’s awesome," he said, without missing a bite.
I went and sat beside him. There was nothing else I needed to do, so I joined him in the carnage ... we ate through every bit of junk he had ordered. He had paid for premium junk and gotten exactly what he paid for.
We stayed like that from night into the next day, just the two of us in that little room.
Ethan had started nudging me to pack up and head home since I had gotten what I came for, but I refused. He shrugged and did as I wanted, because that was Ethan.
As the next day came, I almost wished he had pushed harder.
We went on a tour of a few spots around Icefang. It was a genuinely beautiful place ... I hadn’t given it enough credit. Neither of us cared much about the festival itself by then, and when the third and final night arrived, we went back to our room and streamed it live on the television.
Looking back, it was a strange thing to do ... we were already in Icefang, we could have walked to the ground ... but who cares.
Deep into the night, the broadcast went silent.
I frowned at the screen. Then an explosion went off in the distance, and we heard the screaming come through the TV before we heard it in the air.
Then the main ground went up. A bomb blast.
We knew immediately what was happening.
The hotel wasn’t right next to the festival grounds, but the foundation shook with the impact.
"Ethan ... it’s an attack. We have to move," I said.
We didn’t grab bags, clothes, or anything else. We ran. Everyone in that hotel ran ... out of the building, past the gates, to a safe spot beyond the outer border of Icefang.
Once we were out and could look around at the people flooding out with us, it was clear enough.
We were not the target.