As soon as they’re done sedating him, I run more tests. Nothing works.
“I’m starting to feel like I’m just irritating you,” I murmur, looking up into his wide and wild eyes. “But let’s try one more.”
I’m de-seeding a pomegranate—the seeds feature in many myths and fae tales—when the knife slips and cuts across my palm. Hissing, I press down on the wound and count to ten. When I let go the skin has healed, and there’s only a little blood in the mixture. I use a spoon to fish the droplets out and mix the rest up, then turn it into a poultice.
It’s late now, so dark that the sun has set. My eyelids are heavy as I press the mixture to Gage’s wrist, murmuring an apology as he flinches.
“Last one, I swear.”
Wiping the sweat from my brow, I lean back in my chair and stare blankly at the wall. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what to try next..
A gasp draws my attention back to Gage. He’s staring at me with clear, focused eyes for the first time.
“They’re gone,” he says in a voice filled with wonder. “The voices, they’re just… gone.”
“I’ll go get Waylon,” I tell him.
As I stand, he reaches for me, his movement aborted by the handcuffs. “Thank you.”
The gratitude in his eyes is all I need to make this hard, long day worth it.
Waylon looks him over, checks through the pack bond, and confirms that, as far as he can tell, the madness is gone. He’s so thrilled that he claps me on the back more than once. Kieran looks at me with an unreadable emotion in his eyes, but all I hear is Waylon instructing us to the pack’s guest house, and ordering someone with an ATV to go fetch my bike.
I barely clock the trip to the house. I don’t even notice when Kieran slides my backpack off my shoulder and takes it up to the guest bedroom himself. If I had, I would’ve stopped him.
All I really feel is the exhaustion as it takes me, drowning in the comfort of a soft mattress and thick sheets, Kieran staring at me with something like concern in his ice blue eyes.
Chapter 6
Kieran
I’ve never seen anyone do what Aurora did last night. Even the few times I dared to deal with a witch, despite my father’s strict rules banning the coven from our land, I was rewarded with only silly charms and useless spells. Nothing that fixed the ache of the broken mate bond.
She was so exhausted after all of it that she fell asleep on top of the covers. I watched her for a while, wondering if I should tuck her in. My wolf certainly wanted me to—he wanted to touch her skin and smell her hair. Her lilac and honey scent wafted through the air and drove him mad even from across the room. That alone was enough to convince me that it was better to keep my distance.
It’s getting harder and harder to control him around her, and it’s only been two nights.
I get up early, before the sun, and take the longest, coldest shower I can manage. My libido is a wild thing inside me, my cock aching for release, but I grit my teeth and resist touching myself. The erection is gone by the time I get dressed, and I’m resolved to keep it under control today, just as I did yesterday. Thankfully Aurora should be so tired that she won’t be up for a while.
At least that’s what I think until I step into the kitchen and discover her hunched over the table in the breakfast nook, her pale blonde hair twisted up in a giant clip, her long legs crossed on the chair in front of her. She’s wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt and a pair of loose shorts that are sure to drive my wolf wild.
“There you are,” she says, glancing up, a pencil in her hand, the eraser end of it marked by her teeth. “I was starting to think you would never wake up. Although I should’ve known when the snoring stopped that it meant you were out of bed.”
“I don’t snore.”
“If you say so.”
Grunting noncommittally, I jerk my gaze away from her and focus… elsewhere. It takes what seems like every brain cell in my head to make my feet bring me across the kitchen to the coffee pot, then convince my hands to move.
Coffee pot: in right hand.
Mug: in left.
Pour… try not to spill…
By the time I have cream and sugar in the mug and have brought it to my lips, my desperate wolf has calmed considerably. Still, I’m aware of every breath Aurora takes, of every bounce of her knee as she chews on the end of the pencil some more. She’s out of it right now, just like she was yesterday, consumed in her thoughts. Seeing her like this is a reminder of how bright she is—how much fun we used to have.
And her teeth on the pencil…
