Thing 1 doesn't have time to grab me before I disappear into a dark blue haze. I come to in a dark, empty room that resembles the interior of a warehouse. The floors are coated with a layer of dust which thickens the air in the room. I turn in circles as I search for an obvious exit- at least, I feel like I'm spinning. Actually, no- I'm just extremely nauseated. I try to take a step forward, but I crumble with my first step.

I hunch over and gag a few times, thankfully not expelling any of my breakfast. When the room finally stop moving, I take in my surroundings. I see a dark form on the floor about five feet from me and I instantly scoot back as I gauge the danger. Once I see white hair on the individual, I sigh in relief and rush over to him.

Eli looks... awful. He's sweating profusely and that's not the worst of it. He has horrible injuries all over his arms, face, and neck- and that's only the ones I can see. His face is red and swollen. I see more bruising than skin color. His lip is split, his cheekbones are scattered with tiny cuts, and he looks like someone just left him bruised and battered on the side of the road.

"What the hell? Eli are you okay?" I frantically search his body for more obvious injuries. When I notice the yellowish- green bruises on his face that accompany the purple and reds, I realize that these injuries aren't new but days old.

"'Mm fine," he mumbles incoherently. He opens his eyes and takes a sudden breath, then winces at the action. He tries to sit up with difficulty, so I gently aid him in sitting up. He definitely is in pain, but he tries to hide it with a fake smile.

"Who did this to you?" I whisper as tears form in my eyes. He leans in to wipe my tears away, but I gently grab his wrist and look at his hand. Two of his fingers look crooked and are most likely broken while the rest of the hand looks bruised.

"What-"

"Shh, don't worry about it. That's not why I brought you here," he reasons. If he thinks that I'm just going to sit here and not find out who hurt him and beat the shit out of them, he has another thing coming... Okay, maybe I'll make Grayson beat the shit out of them, but it's the thought that counts.

"I needed to talk to you, and your freaking werewolf boyfriend wouldn't let me get within five feet of you. And he blocked my number from your phone after we texted, so none of my newer messages were going through."

My shock turns to anger when I realize Grayson invaded my privacy and took away my freedom without me even knowing it. My mind slows down enough to process that Eli must have portaled us to this obsolete building so he can talk to me. That explains why he brought me here, but not why he looks like he was run over by a truck. Unless...

"Eli," I begin, anger seeping into my voice, "Did Grayson do this to you?"

He looks at me with a small grin. "I wish. Maybe then you wouldn't talk to him again. Werewolves are so primal, animalistic. They're beasts, Thea. But to answer your question, no. Your perfect little wolf didn't touch me." He groans as he rises to his feet. He stumbles forward, and my hands shoot to his shoulders to steady him. I'm usually the one with balance issues, so it feels good to help someone else for a change.

Tension leaks from my body when I realize that Grayson didn't do this to him.

"If Grayson didn't do this, then who did?" He looks like he's going to skirt around the answer, so I firmly order, "you have to tell me. Right now."

He grumbles something under his breath, then looks at the floor. The small amount of confidence he did have drained out of him the moment he answered me.

"It was the coven."

My eyes widen as strange noises of shock come pouring out of my mouth. His own people did this to him? What could he possibly have done to deserve-

Oh. My. Gosh. He saved me, so they punished him. They hurt him because of me. This is all my fault. This time, my tears don't stop. I cover my face with my hands as I stand before my injured friend and bawl. I suck in air greedily in between sobs.

"This is all my fault. I did this, I-"

"Hey, hey, hey. This is not your fault. I'd gladly go through it again if it meant that I got to save your life."

I hug him tightly, but when I hear him grunt in pain I immediately let go of him.

I boldly reach for the bottom of his shirt and lift it so I can see the damage. If I ask him for permission, he would say no and claim that it's not a big deal.

Thank god I checked, because his abdomen is even worse than every other injury on his body. Besides the obvious bruising, there is a deep wound just below his ribs that is definitely infected. It's disgusting and is clearly oozing a yellowish- green colored fluid. I can't help the look of revulsion on my face.

"Jeez. Eli, this is infected. Why haven't you seen anyone about this?" I probably sound like my mother when she would reprimand me as a child for playing in the front yard alone. I'm beginning to understand her frustration when people do- or don't do- things they obviously should do.

"It's infected?" He looks down at the cut and cringes at the ghastly sight.

"Yes! It looks awful! No wonder why you're sweating." I put my hand to his forehead and shake my head when I feel how warm he is. "You're burning up, too. I need to take you to the hospital so they can clean this and give you some strong meds."

He's already shaking his head no.

"Why the hell not? You're going to get worse if they don't help you!" Why is he such an idiot?

"I'll just go shower at home and you can get me the pills or whatever you need," he begins walking away from me, most likely towards the exit. I quickly pick up my bag as I rush to follow him. I feel my phone vibrating, but I can't pick it up now. I have to take care of Eli and convince him of how stupid he is.

"You need a lot more than a freaking shower and a few over-the-counter pills to fix this. I mean, what have you been cleaning this with? It looks so crusty and dirty."

His face scrunches with confusion, and I internally face-palm myself. Here comes my motherly instinct.

"YOU HAVEN'T CLEANED IT?!?"

He winces at my tone and increased volume and thankfully stops trying to walk away from me. He repeatedly blinks before he rolls his eyes at me.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"What?" he exclaims as he spreads his arms out in annoyance. He looks throughly confused at my concern, so I speak slowly to attempt to understand how he could have such horrible injuries and not take care of them properly.

"Have you never cleaned a cut before?"

He looks down at the ground and rubs the back of his neck. "...No."

I'm speechless. I know for a fact that's he's been hurt before. We all get scrapes on our knees or get into minor accidents where we need to clean our wounds. How would he not know that this was a necessary thing to do? He speaks up before I can finish rationalizing the situation.

"I've never had to before. Usually I just use magic to fix them." He says this as if it's a completely normal thing to say. Maybe for him it is, but I'm still mind-blown by the fact that he can perform magic at will. It's such a foreign and unbelievable concept to me still. I'm starting to get around to the idea of werewolves existing, but magical spells and portals are still new to me.

I really want to slap Eli right now, but he's in so much pain that I can't risk hurting him more.

"Do your little hand trick thingy and fix yourself! Why didn't you do it days ago?"

He frowns and looks me in the eyes. "My punishment was to endure pain like a human would... Like you would. They won't let me."

My eyes cloud with tears for the third freaking time in ten minutes, but I refuse to let them fall and make this about me.

"Why can't you just defy them? You're hurting! Fix yourself!" I reach out to touch him but I retract my hands before I make contact with him. I'm afraid to hurt him more.

"They would know if I used my magic to do it. Magic is like a big pool of energy that witches and warlocks pull from. When one person uses it in the coven, we all know. The kind of energy I would need to heal myself... They would know immediately. They would hurt Elle if I tried anything."

I nod my head and grit my teeth in anger. I'm infuriated by the people he calls his "coven." They are all monsters. How can they let Eli suffer like this when he could easily be healed in minutes? Beating him to a pulp wasn't enough, but they want him to remain in pain for weeks after? They're despicable. I don't want to go on a rant while Eli gets sicker by the minute, so I pull out my phone and order an Uber.

Eli leans over my shoulder and looks at my phone. "What are you doing?"

"I'm ordering an Uber to the hospital. I didn't think you'd appreciate me calling an ambulance."

Before he can complain, I shush him.

"You said you had to heal like a human. Well, a human would go to the hospital in the state you're in. So, let's go. You can tell me what you wanted to tell me when we get there."

I don't leave room for an argument.

~

The Uber shows up five minutes later. I tell the Uber driver to step on it, and just from one look at Eli's sickly form and our final destination at Redwood Regional Hospital, he complies. We walk into the emergency room and I nag the lady at the front desk until we're walked into a curtained off section of the hospital. Eli continues to search his surroundings in a daze. He's probably never been inside of a hospital- at least, not as the patient.

It doesn't take too long for Eli to be seen by a doctor, but as soon as she looks at Eli's abdominal wound she immediately jumps into action. She looks at the chart that a nurse had filled out, and she noted that Eli's fever was at 103 degrees. She had us transferred to a private room where Eli was given an IV with fluids and an antibiotic. He whined a lot, which would have been extremely hilarious if he weren't in such bad shape.

A nurse came in to dress his wound and care for his other injuries, and he began cursing her out for being too rough. My mouth remained in a flat line as I silently apologized for Eli's behavior. The nurse looked like she has dealt with way more difficult patients before, so she wasn't too fazed by the irritated warlock.

When the nurses and doctors stopped coming in and out of the room, I sat down on the edge of Eli's bed. He looked a little better already- he stopped sweating as much, and the pain killers must have kicked in because he seemed calmer. His fingers were in a splint, but other than his fingers, nothing else was broken.

"Are you feeling any better?" I asked gently.

He smiled and placed his hand on mine. "Yeah. Thanks for taking care of me, Thea. You're a good friend."

I grinned back at him, happy to see the Eli I know come through instead of the irritated guy he's been ever since we got here. "What can I say? You save me, I save you. We're even now."

His eyes darken immediately. His eyebrows scrunch in anger, but I'm not sure why.

"We need to talk about why I came to see you. They're planning something. They want to-"

Eli stops talking and we both turn our attention to the hospital door. Intense yelling can be heard from the nurse's station, and my heartbeat speeds up. I stand protectively in front of Eli, half expecting his entire coven to come storming through the door to hurt him again.

What I don't expect is my mate to come barging through the door with silver eyes blazing. He enters the room and heads straight for me while two nurses come flying into the room after him to make him leave. The nurses are completely unprepared for a "visitor" as large and strong as Grayson, so they don't really know what to do. One of the nurses holds a phone in his hand as he prepares to call hospital security. The other nurse turns to me and Eli with fear.

"Do you know this man?"

I turn to Eli, knowing that if he says no, then hospital security will be murdered along with half the residents in this hospital. I beg him with my eyes to answer in the affirmative.

"Yeah! This is my cousin Richard visiting me in my time of need. All's good, nurses. Shoo!" Eli makes a shooing motion with his hands and the nurses hesitantly leave the room, but not before glaring at Grayson once more.

I've gotten pretty good at gauging Grayson's emotions, and I can tell that he's moments away from shifting. I jog over to him and he meets me halfway as he wraps his arms around me and buries his head in my neck. I close my eyes and rub my hands up and down his back in a soothing motion. His muscles slowly relax the longer I'm in his hold.

He lifts his head from my shoulder but keeps my body close to his as he finally turns to look at the platinum warlock.

"I told you I would kill you if I ever saw you again."

Eli releases an emotionless chuckle. "Go ahead, Wolfie. Kill me while I'm defenseless. I'm sure Thea would really appreciate that."

I reluctantly back away from Grayson only for him to growl at our separation. I stand in the middle of the two while attempting to ease the tension in the room.

"Eli, Grayson won't kill you. And Grayson, don't kill Eli," I say in a slightly raised voice. I never thought I would be in this position- asking my werewolf boyfriend not to kill my magical friend. If I were anybody else, I would think I was crazy.

Grayson breathes heavily but doesn't make a move towards Eli, which I'm grateful for. Instead, he looks to me and says in a low voice, "Where have you been?"

"Well I was-"

"Because Jared mindlinked me that you were abducted by a warlock he couldn't identify."

Ahh, that's Thing 1's name. "I try calling you and you don't answer. I track your phone and see that you're in an abandoned fucking warehouse, probably being tortured or worse. I race over there without any backup, only to find that you're not there- my phone says you're at the FUCKING HOSPITAL." The more he talks, the angrier he gets. I feel guilty for putting him through that, but Eli needed me. I didn't exactly have the time to text Grayson an update.

"What the fuck am I supposed to think? Hmm? I thought you were dying. Again. I knew you weren't dead because I would have felt it, but I didn't know what to expect. I followed your scent up here only to find you taking care of him." He spits out the word "him" like it's a vile word.

"I'm sorry, but what was I supposed to do?" I ask. "Eli had something important to tell me, and apparently you wouldn't let him near me, and you blocked his number on my phone." I cross my arms and shift all my weight onto my right foot as I send my meanest glare towards Grayson. I want him to know that what he did wasn't okay and that I'm allowed to be mad at him too. He doesn't get to hog all of the anger.

His eyes soften slightly, but his eyes are still hard. "I did that for your protection."

"Really? Because apparently, Eli risked his life to tell me something really important. He was just about to when you barged in here like a bull in a china shop."

"Well how was I supposed to know that!" Grayson scoffs. He acts all innocent, but he knows what he did was wrong. "The last time you two were alone, he almost killed you and-"

Eli clears his throat, causing me and Grayson to pause our argument to look at him.

"I hate to break up this lover's quarrel, I really do, but I have important shit to say and not a lot of time to say it."

I walk over to Eli's bed and sit down at the edge of it. Grayson growls at how close I am to Eli, but one glare from me has him shutting up. Good. He's learning his place.

Eli looks at me, then at Grayson, and when his eyes finally rest on me he tells me something that I've been dreading.

"The coven is planning to kill you."