CHAPTER SEVEN || REED #2
I injected as much menace into my words as I could. Given the situation, it wasn’t a lot. “You’re an idiot.”
“I know,” he said. “You can berate me later. But I’m an idiot who’s getting you to safety. I’m not leaving you. And you can either help me, or you can make me carry you—but without my weapon, we’ll both be sitting ducks.” He glared down at me. “What’s it going to be?”
I glowered back at him, but I knew he was serious.
And every moment that passed was a moment the monster was using to recover.
I had no idea how Harris had managed to injure it, nor how quickly it could heal, but with so many unknowns, wasting time wasn’t an option. I let him pull me back to my feet.
Then I immediately stumbled, my legs giving out beneath me. Harris caught me around the shoulders before I could fall.
“A paralytic. Some kind of toxin in its claws,” I croaked out, my voice strangely rough. With effort, I slid an arm around Harris’s waist, clinging to him. “I’m going to have a hard time moving. It’s spreading. Before long, I’m going to be fully paralyzed.”
“Fuck.” He tightened his grip around me. “Okay, we need to go—now. Tell me where I’m heading.”
For the next half hour, I murmured directions, my grip on Harris getting weaker with every passing moment, my steps harder, until Harris was mostly carrying me anyway. It wasn’t like most paralytics. I could still feel everything, but I had no strength in my muscles anymore.
Harris kept his grip on his gun the entire time with his other hand.
The creature didn’t come back. He must have injured it badly.
At last, we were through the trees and back at the edge of the commune.
“My cabin,” I managed, my voice barely audible. “There’s an antidote in there. We need to get to it.”
Harris didn’t question me. He holstered his weapon, scooped me up with one arm under my shoulders and the other under my legs. Though I was a full-grown man, he handled me with less effort than I would have imagined—as if I were weightless.
I should have felt fear, rage, and humiliation at being so helpless. But it was hard to muster any of that. Because without his weapon, my human was in terrible danger. More so than before. That was the only thing that seemed to matter.
Moving quickly, he got us to the relative safety of the commune. Then he paused in front of the nearest cabin. Speaking quietly, he said, “Wait. Reed, which cabin is it?”
Making one more herculean effort, I rasped out, “The one next to yours.”
He paused, glancing down at me. His expression went softer, as though he’d understood that I hadn’t wanted to be far away from him.
“I’m going to have to set you down for a moment to open the door.” His voice was a low whisper.
Was he being so quiet because he thought the creature might still be close?
But time was of the essence. I tried to nod but wasn’t able to. The toxin was cutting off my ability to control my own body.
Harris shifted my weight, setting me down gently while keeping his arm under mine so I was standing upright. My bare feet touched the wooden porch in front of my cabin.
The helpless rage I should have felt wasn’t there. My mate was taking care of me. I had needed him, and even though I had been nothing but unkind to him since his arrival—since our first meeting, in fact—he was protecting me. Helping me.
He pushed my cabin door open. Wolves don’t usually bother with locks. Almost anything that would try to gain access to do us harm wouldn’t be deterred by regular locks anyway.
Harris carried me to the couch.
“What am I looking for?”
The antidote wasn’t really a magic potion at all, but a vial of very powerful blood given to me by Nathaniel Bailey, the vampire king of Seattle.
It was blood belonging to his mate, Ethan Solomon, who possessed the—as far as anyone knew, singular—ability to negate any form of magic.
Since a creature from the Otherworld is made of pure magic, its venom is as well.
Even a single drop would return me to normal immediately.
I hoped.
I tried to answer him, to tell him what he was looking for, but I couldn’t even make my lips move.
Genuine fear shot through me.
I rolled my eyes up to meet his. He was breathing hard, his lower lip trembling, his gaze locked on mine.
He seemed to understand how I felt. Because he took a deep breath and straightened up, as if pushing away his own fear. “Listen, it’s going to be fine,” he said, his voice calm and soothing. “I’m going to find it, okay? You’re going to be fine. I’ve got you. You can trust me.”
I wanted to nod, but I couldn’t make myself move.
Harris vanished from my view for several minutes. I expected him to call the others—to get Daniel, or the first wolf he ran across—and knowing my luck, it would be Lacey—to come help him. And then my pack would see me exactly as I feared myself to be: weak. Ineffective. Unable to help anyone, ever.
But when Harris returned, the vial was in his hands.
I watched as he uncapped it and held it to my lips.
I smelled the copper tang of blood. I prepared myself for him to use up a year’s worth of anti-magic in one go, unable to stop him.
And I couldn’t have blamed him either—it’s what anyone would have done.
I was going to have to go back to the vampire king with my tail between my legs and ask for another supply.
Not exactly a small ask, given how fiercely protective Nathaniel was of Ethan and how hard he had tried to stop his mate from giving it to the pack in the first place.
Harris paused. Then he drew the bottle back and gazed down at me, his lips pressing into a frown.
Part of me half-expected him to give me an ultimatum—to use my helplessness as leverage. I would have been shocked by it, given what I knew of Harris, but a lot of guys might’ve tried something like that. And what the hell did I really know about him?
Instead, he said, “Blink twice if I need to give you the full bottle. Blink once if I should use less.”
Surprise coursed through me. How had he known to ask that?
I blinked once.
“Half the bottle?” He studied me—and I stared back in amazement that he had considered how much to use.
But I was still very much unable to speak.
Harris paused, his brows drawing together in concern.
Then he flashed me a rueful smile. “Oh. Right. Blink twice if it’s half the bottle, once if it’s less. ”
I blinked once.
He dribbled a small amount of the blood between my lips. More than he should have used, but still not much. With effort, I swallowed it.
The effect was immediate. The weakness left my limbs—suddenly gone.
Harris’s eyes widened when the wounds on my chest vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind angry red marks that were perfectly ordinary. “Holy shit. It’s like magic.”
“It is magic,” I told him, sitting up. I could have cried, I was so grateful to have my limbs back. “How did you find the vial?”
“Not many places to hide something like that. It would need to be accessible. And it’s medicine, right? So why not the medicine cabinet?” He paused. “It made sense to me.”
Before I could stop myself, I let out a bark of laughter. Harris joined me. And we grinned at each other.
Maybe we weren’t really so different, after all.
“How did you know to ask how much to use? I would have dumped the entire bottle down your throat.”
He hesitated. “I… sensed you. Your thoughts. Not like I heard you, exactly, but I could tell what you were thinking. The general shape of it, at least. You were worried about how difficult it would be to get more.”
I stared at him. “The bond is that strong for you? I thought it was mostly a wolf thing.”
“It’s how I found you tonight.”
Surprise coursed through me. Harris could find me. He could feel me the same way I could feel him.
Then Harris paused, grimacing. “I’m sorry for that, by the way. You were right. I shouldn’t have gone looking for you. I almost got us both killed.”
“No,” I said immediately, taking his hand. “You saved my life tonight. And now we know what type of creature we’re up against.”
“But if I hadn’t been there—”
“I would have fought it and I would have died. It would have paralyzed me and dragged me off.”
“Reed—”
“You saved my life tonight, Harris. And even when your own safety was at risk, you wouldn’t leave me. I should never have called you helpless.”
“Don’t forget ‘prey.’”
“I shouldn’t have said you were prey, either,” I added immediately. “I was being a dick. You put yourself in danger to protect me.”
Harris smiled, but his cheeks flushed as though the praise had embarrassed him. He looked away, shaking his head. “Get used to it.”
Maybe fate had chosen correctly for me after all. Because Harris was a man after my own heart. We were far more alike than I had ever imagined.
And when my mate turned his head to meet my gaze again, I returned his smile. A new sort of understanding had been born between us. “Yeah, I’m kind of thinking I’m going to need to.”