“Shit.” He touches her face with the back of his fingers and recoils. “She’s so cold! We need to warm her up.” He stands and goes quiet for a second, as though he can’t think of what to do. Then he snaps back. “Go boil some water for tea and heat a pad in the microwave. I’ll get these wet clothes off her.”
I race off and return minutes later with a hot water bottle wrapped in a kitchen towel, as well as a stack of blankets. “Here.”
Aiden has managed to wrestle her wet parka and jeans off and is gently rubbing her socked feet. Skye seems to be semi-conscious, her face screwed up in distaste.
“Stop it,” she keeps saying, pushing Aiden’s hands away.
His face is grim as he gently restrains her hands and keeps up his work. “You need to let me help you,” he murmurs. “Don’t you dare pass out again.”
We wrap her up as best we can, and I run back into the kitchen for the tea and another heating pad. It’s all we have here—blankets and tea—because hypothermia has never been a problem for us. Sea dragons run warm, and we’re built to withstand even frigid winter temperatures in both our forms. Skye has commented that Jack and I are furnaces in the night, but I never really thought about the implications of it: that she was so much more fragile than us.
We should have checked what humans need in these climates, besides warm clothes, and grabbed the supplies in Anchorage. If she’s really staying here, we’ll have to stock up on the right medicine and equipment to treat her, too. Leanne will have to research it.
Just then, Jack arrives with the nurse in tow, both of them pink-cheeked from running.
“Move,” Leanne orders, and it’s a testament to Aiden’s state of mind that he obeys immediately.
Leanne checks Skye over, taking her temperature and shining a light in her eyes. She grunts in approval at the heating pads and blankets, then pinches Skye’s thigh.
“Ow!” Skye yelps and cracks her eyes open with effort. “What?”
“Oh good,” the nurse says. “You’re awake. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me how exhausted you were! You should have stopped or at least told me to call one of these boys to come get you.”
Skye grimaces. “Yeah. But Ben…”
“Ben would have been fine with a cast and a couple of days of rest,” Leanne snaps. “I told his mother as much, and she’s sorry she bothered you at all.”
“What happened?” Aiden demands.
Leanne huffs, her annoyance clear. “Old prejudice mixing with stupidity, that’s what. But that’s not the most pressing problem now.” She palpates Skye’s neck. “We’ll be lucky if Skye doesn’t get a fever out of this. Humans…”
Her grumbling continues as she completes the examination. Jack, Aiden, and I stand back, letting her work. Finally, she takes off her stethoscope and shoves it in her coat pocket.
“Get her some tea and soup if you have some ready. Then make sure she’s warm, and if she develops a fever, give her paracetamol every four hours. If it gets really bad, call me. There’s a little rattle on her lungs that I don’t like. I think you’re in for a rough couple of days.”
With that, she marches right out the door, leaving us staring after her. A beat passes, then we spring into action. I heat up some soup, and Skye manages to sip about half a cup before drowsing away again. Jack carries her into Aiden’s room, which is the largest, and gets in bed with her, wrapping his long, muscular body around her. We’re better than heating pads, and we make plans to stay with her in shifts until we know what’s up.
When I return to the kitchen, I find Aiden leaning against the counter, his face ashen. “She did it because of us,” he says.
I put the soup bowl and spoon in the sink and turn to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“What she did at the clinic. The healing.” He rubs his face with his palm, and his blue eyes seem to burn with a strange light. “She did it so people would accept her. So they wouldn’t think I made a mistake by bringing her here.”
I walk forward until I’m a foot away from him, then take his shoulders. “You don’t know that,” I tell him, even though I suspect he’s right. It’s exactly what Skye would do.
He hangs his head. “I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t…”
On instinct, I wrap my arms around him and pull him into a hug. “Hey. Stop that. She needs to sleep it off, you’ll see.”
Aiden clings to me so tightly, it takes my breath away, but I hold him just as hard because I’m not sure I believe my own words.
Fifteen
Aiden
The two daysfollowing Skye’s collapse are horrible. Her fever spikes on the first night, until she’s shivering in Jack’s arms, her brown eyes tired and glassy. I rush out in the middle of the night, waking Leanne to find a broad-spectrum antibiotic from a first-aid kit she replenished last year. Then it’s a waiting game to see how her body will respond.
It pains me to do it, but I postpone the clan meeting, which probably doesn’t win me any fans, but I don’t care anymore. When I take my shift to watch over her so Jack can get some sleep, I don’t take my eyes off Skye even for a minute, too afraid of what might happen if I stop paying attention. Princess Penny is beside herself with worry and howls in her little squeaky voice for hours until she finally exhausts herself and falls asleep.
