The Wind and the Horizon (Book 2 in the Starborn Series)

Chapter Fifty-Three

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I came home and heard her screaming. She was alone like this when I found her."

May felt herself lowered from the warmth of her brother's safe arms and onto a thin, rigid mattress.

A gurney, she told herself. They were at the hospital.

"May?" came an unfamiliar voice through the fog of pain and blood loss. "Are you with us, May?"

"Yes," she groaned as hands belonging to a nurse eased Kai's wadded t-shirt from the gouge down her chest. She wasn't normally one to get woozy at the sight of blood but her head spun anyway.

"We're going to take care of you, okay?" the nurse told her in a calm voice. All May could do was nod weakly in reply.

She was wheeled away for stitches and x-rays. While a nurse carefully shaved the side of her head to clean up one of her wounds, May wondered if Melanie was in one of these hospital rooms, either receiving treatment of her own or waiting patiently for her chance to finish the job. Thankfully, May was rarely alone long enough to have given her the chance. Her bones were whole, there was no evidence of violation between her legs - she told them this but they gently insisted in the name of being thorough - and though her stitches were many, her body would heal. Physically, she was going to be fine in time; a doctor gave her medication for the pain and a prescription to fight infection.

"We'll need to keep you overnight for observation in case of concussion but otherwise you're going to be okay," said her doctor, the name of whom she had already forgotten.

"May? Oh, my baby. Who did this to you?"

May removed the cooling gel packet from the side of her face - the one she'd been given to help with the swelling - to find her family rushing into the room, led by her mother. A pair of uniformed peace officers followed them into the room and, after a few quiet words exchanged with the retreating doctor, they shut the door with a soft click.

"Miss Alana," said one of the officers; a woman whose face somehow managed to show compassion with neither a smile nor trace of pity. "I know you've been through a lot tonight but we need to ask you some questions."

"Right now?" her father asked. "Can't this part wait until morning? My daughter needs to rest."

The officer opened her mouth to answer but May beat her to it.

"It's okay, papa." She sighed, struggling to straighten up against the pillows at her back but giving up when the pain turned out to be worse that she anticipated. "They're just doing their job. Can my family stay though?"

"If that's what you want."

May told them almost everything - she had been attacked by a woman who had been waiting in the house when she got home; ruddy face, grey eyes, late 30s or early 40s - but held back the facts that she knew who the woman was and what exactly she wanted. She told them about the knife and how she used it to get free. Had Kai not come home when he did things probably would have ended differently.

When the officers finally left the Alana family alone, May closed her eyes against her mother's tears and the low murmuring between her father and siblings. All she wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up to discover this had all been a terrible nightmare.

"Did you know her, Maybe?" Kai asked at last. "The woman."

"Yes," May grunted, her eyes still closed. "She's a Loyal. She's looking for Em."

Ora and her father spoke at the same time.

"What does that mean?" her sister fretted as their father growled, "I knew that girl-"