Never

Chapter 16: Nightmares

Thaddeus's POV:

There were few things worse than standing by helplessly while the people you love more than anything are in danger. Specifically, while they're about to die. I'd already done it too many times. Maybe I wasn't right there with all of them. I definitely wasn't when Amiah died. I showed up hopelessly too late in every sense of the word. With Edmund, I was literally seconds too late. That one fucked me up in a different way as I replayed all my actions leading up to it, hating myself for every small delay in getting to him.

The hardest was probably the first, both because it was my first time ever experiencing a deep sense of grief and because I was right there. Grief came in lots of forms, and plenty of people experienced it, but there was something existentially different about losing a person you'd never spent your life without. There was an added form of all-consuming grief that came with loathing the future because your future was supposed to include someone it never would again. It was a life-shattering feeling, something you couldn't just pick yourself up from. You slipped again and again in a permanent state of grief that never really went away but rather just became something you learned to live with.

The first one was my brother, Ansel. He died feet away from me while Juliette and I watched. We were unable to do anything, just stood by and watched him die after we'd adjusted to the idea that we'd never have to experience losing one another since we were immortal. We were very wrong about that. Immortal didn't mean invincible, and losing Ansel nearly drove us to the brink of insanity.

It was that same, paralyzing terror and fear I felt watching the building burn up, knowing my brother was inside but helpless and useless all over again. I called everyone I knew in the area but they weren't getting there fast enough. For all the shit I gave him, losing Kristoff might've been the last straw in my sanity. He was a pain in the ass, a know-it-all and annoyingly bossy, but he was also one of my best friends, my confidant, my voice of reason. He was my brother and I loved him with everything I had. I could feel that impending sense of dread up until the moment that insane human sprinted into the house without the slightest amount of hesitation.

The fear was still there, but it was in that moment I realized I had more faith in her ability than I initially thought. It was a shock to me, but I felt relieved when she ran inside. While I didn't understand how the hell she ended up so well-trained in the supernatural ways, I couldn't deny her skill. She'd taken down vampires on her own, dragged a werewolf out of a club by herself, and also took down a witch who looked like my brother. If that wasn't enough, I'd seen what her routine was like over the past few days. She trained constantly.

It was stupid, but not hopeless. She was completely insane to run into that fire, not to mention the fact she was disobedient since I distinctly remembered telling her to stay put. It was irresponsible and impulsive. The building was starting to collapse, and the smoke was thick. No sane person would've run in there. It might've been the first time I was happy she was reckless, because my brother would've died in there if she wasn't.

Kristoff would've died.

Fucking hell. I owed this human everything. Maybe it was a blessing we were locked in the house together and forced to get along because I was now indebted to her whether I liked it or not.

That was why I hadn't left her side. I couldn't. Kristoff was only still alive because of her and so I sat beside her bed, tuning out the beeping of the machines and the hissing of the oxygen masked strapped over her face. We needed to get her somewhere fast but I needed someone for Kristoff and Selene's wounds as well. That meant no human hospitals, so I called a friend of mine, Alpha Liam. His pack was a bit of a distance away but he was one of the few people I could trust with healing my brother. He welcomed us in and it was his healers who got to work on Kristoff, Winter and Selene. Kristoff and Selene recovered faster with the blessing of quick healing. I sent them home and promised to behave while waiting for Winter to wake up.