Chapter 17 #4
“Stay conscious,” I ordered as we began our agonizing journey back down the path. “Talk to me.”
“Bossy,” he murmured, his head lolling against mine. “Like that.”
Under different circumstances, I might have smiled. Now I just needed him to keep talking, keep fighting the venom’s paralytic effects.
“Tell me about the Brewstillery,” I said, adjusting his weight as we navigated a particularly steep section of trail. My backpack banged awkwardly against my hip, the strap cutting into my shoulder, but I couldn’t spare the focus to fix it. “How did you start it?”
He stumbled, nearly taking us both down. I braced against his weight, muscles screaming in protest.
“Una’s recipes,” he managed, each word seeming to cost him. “Her legacy. I wanted to… honor her.”
His skin grew hotter against mine with each passing minute, the fever spiking as his body fought the venom. Worse, I could feel the tremors intensifying, no longer just in his left hand but throughout his body, muscle spasms that betrayed the venom’s advance toward his central nervous system.
It took us nearly an hour to cover ground that had taken twenty minutes earlier.
By the time the Fae dwelling came into view, Brody was barely conscious, his weight dragging heavily against me.
His breathing had grown labored, punctuated by involuntary groans that tore at something deep in my chest.
I half dragged, half carried him through the doorway, his increasingly dead weight making each step a struggle. My backpack slid from my shoulder, landing with a thud on the wooden floor. I left it where it fell, every ounce of my strength focused on getting Brody to the healing waters.
“Stay with me,” I commanded, maneuvering him toward the stone pool where the COL water flowed. “We’re almost there.”
His eyes, when they briefly focused on mine, were clouded with pain, gold morphing into gray as his wolf fought the venom. “Bad?” he managed through clenched teeth.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I lied, propping him against the pool’s edge.
I crouched to unlace his hiking boots, my fingers fumbling with the blood-soaked laces. The venom’s sickly glow had spread down his left side, visible even through his torn clothing. The boots finally came free, followed by his socks, revealing feet unmarked by the venom, small mercies.
I needed to get him into the healing waters immediately, but his clothes would have to come off first. The Swarmer’s claws had ripped through his shirt, leaving it hanging in tatters that were already fusing with the wound.
Every second counted, but removing the fabric carelessly could tear the wounds further, accelerating the venom’s spread.
My gaze landed on the small bottles arranged at the edge of the bathing pool, the Fae bathing essences we’d used just last night. The memory of their warming tingle against my skin gave me an idea.
“Hold on,” I said, reaching for one of the bottles. I uncorked it. The oil inside shimmered with faint blue luminescence, seemingly responding to the proximity of the Swarmer venom with increased brightness.
I poured a liberal amount over the places where fabric had stuck to his wounds. The oil immediately began to foam, creating a barrier between cloth and damaged tissue. Wherever it touched the venom, it hissed and sizzled, the acrid smell making my eyes water.
“This will help separate the fabric,” I explained, my voice steadier than I felt. With careful movements, I eased the shirt away from his wounds, the oil’s properties allowing the cloth to slide free without reopening the gashes.
What I revealed sent ice through my veins despite the summer heat.
The Swarmer’s claws had left six deep parallel gashes across his torso, but it wasn’t the wounds themselves that made bile rise in my throat.
It was what was happening beneath his skin.
The venom moved like a living thing, spreading in glowing tendrils that branched through his veins in a twisted, poisonous web.
Where it traveled, his skin darkened to an unnatural purple-black, like severe bruising but worse, pulsing, alive, purposeful.
“That bad?” he asked, attempting a smile that turned into a grimace of pain.
I’d studied venoms my entire scientific career.
I’d seen rotting flesh, full-body poisonings, and nerve-destroying toxins.
Nothing had prepared me for this. This wasn’t just venom.
It was something older, something with intent.
I could almost see it hunting for his core, seeking the fragile bridge between his human and wolf sides.
My mind calculated survival probabilities while my heart seized with terror. His accelerated pre-feral condition was speeding the venom’s spread.
“We need to get you into the water. Now.” My fingers moved to his belt, working it free with unsteady hands. Each second that passed was another moment the venom worked deeper into his system.
The gravity of our situation hit me like a physical blow. This wasn’t a laboratory, and Brody wasn’t a test subject. He was my…
No. I wouldn’t let myself think that way. Not now. Clinical detachment was what he needed, not emotional chaos.
Yet my hands betrayed me, lingering on his burning skin longer than necessary, my fingertips memorizing the contours of muscles I’d traced in darkness just hours ago.
Images flashed through my mind, Brody laughing in the kitchen that morning, the way his eyes had softened when I’d told him about Oxford, the gentle touch of his hands on my feet at the bathing pool.
Each memory sliced through my mental armor with surgical precision, leaving me bleeding and exposed.
“Don’t you dare leave me now,” I whispered, the words escaping before I could swallow them back. “Not when I just found you again.”
I poured more of the oil along the waistband of his jeans, where dried blood had fused fabric to skin.
The foam separated cloth from wounds, allowing me to ease the denim down without causing further injury.
When the pants caught on a patch of dried blood, he groaned, the sound tearing through me like physical pain.
“Almost there,” I promised, finally freeing him from the last of his clothing.
The full extent of the damage became visible, stealing my breath.
The venom had spread down his left side, the luminescent tendrils pulsing beneath his skin in a sickening rhythm.
Where they reached his pre-existing tremor sites, they seemed to intensify, causing muscle spasms so severe I could see the strain on his tendons.
“It’s moving too fast,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my own ears as I kicked off my own hiking boots. My fingers fumbled with the laces, desperation making me clumsy. I peeled off my sweat-soaked socks and reached for the hem of my shirt.
Practicality, not modesty, dictated my next actions.
I needed to be in that water with him, skin to skin, the mate bond our best hope against the Fae venom.
I stripped quickly. Yet as my clothes fell to the floor in a hasty pile, shirt, sports bra, jeans, underwear, each discarded with single-minded purpose, I couldn’t ignore the electric awareness that this would be the first time our bodies touched with nothing between us.
Last night in the pool had been different, deliberate, controlled.
This was a raw necessity, primal in its urgency.
I stood naked in the golden light of the Fae dwelling.
My nipples tightened in the cooler air, goose bumps rising across my arms and thighs.
My body remembered his touch from the night before, the careful massage, the way his hands had moved over my feet with reverent attention, and responded traitorously despite the dire circumstances.
This wasn’t about desire but survival. I repeated the mantra silently at the thought of holding his bare body against mine.
His eyes, though glazed with pain, tracked my movements. Even dying, he was still Brody.
“If this is what it takes to get you naked again,” he slurred, “I should have gotten scratched sooner.”
A strangled laugh escaped me, half sob and half genuine amusement. Even dying, he was trying to make me smile.
“Idiot,” I whispered, sliding my arm around his waist to help him into the pool. “Don’t you dare joke right now.”
His body radiated like a furnace against mine, fever consuming him as the venom worked its way deeper. The horrific glowing network beneath his skin made each muscle and vein stand out in grotesque relief, like a living anatomy lesson gone horribly wrong.
As we slid into the COL water, I positioned myself behind him, pulling his larger frame between my legs, his back against my chest, where I could hold him upright.
The water embraced us with liquid warmth, clinging to our skin like a living thing.
It immediately began to steam around the venom sites, releasing an acrid smell that made my eyes water and throat constrict.
The COL water tasted of minerals and magic against my lips, carrying whispers of power older than human memory.
Around us, the luminescence of the gemstones embedded in the pool’s walls increased, responding to the venom’s invasion with counterpoint rhythms of blue-white light.
The air grew thick with opposing magics, Fae venom and Fae healing, crackling with unseen energies that raised the fine hairs on my arms and sent electric tingles across my scalp.
Brody’s blood mixed with the water, creating copper-scented crimson clouds that dissipated into nothingness, absorbed and neutralized by the COL’s purifying properties.
Each point where our skin connected, my thighs against his hips, my chest against his back, my arms around his torso, burned with an intensity that transcended physical heat, as if the mate bond itself sought connection through our flesh.