“Give me the watch,” he roared as he kicked the base of the door in a fury. “Give it to me, or I’ll peel the skin from your body to garland my home.”
Dylan shoved the watch back into his jeans, turned around, and loped—careful of patches of ice—after Somerset. Behind him, he heard the Wolves as they bickered among themselves. Their voices were gruff and vaguely distorted, as if they were being forced out of something not made for those sounds.
“…let him go?”
“Why would we…?”
“…do that. We could just…”
“Have both!”
The first Wolf, his voice distinct in how articulated and sharp his voice was, slapped at him to get them back in line. “Of course not,” he snapped. “I lied. I lied. What of it? Shut your mouths.”
A sharp thread of tension that hunched Dylan’s shoulders eased. He let them come down from his ears.
He’d made the right decision.
Dylan eyed Somerset’s broad shoulders as they resolved out of the snow. At least he had where the Wolves were concerned. Hopefully he had when it came to trusting Somerset.
And what the hell, if thiswasa coma, he might as well go all in.
“What now?” he asked.
Somerset stood on the very edge of the roof, with the toes of his boots balanced over the drop as his coat tangled around him. It was even more than six floors now. As Dylan got closer, the wind at his back felt like it was going to push him over.
His stomach turned queasily at the quick, vivid, mental image of falling, his arms and legs swinging uncontrollably as people stared in horror from behind the windows. It made him edge back, away from the uneasily compelling drop, but Somerset reached out and caught him by the arm.
“Remember,” Somerset said. “It wasn’t me that dragged you into this.”
Then he stepped off the edge of the building, taking Dylan with him.
Chapter Six
TwentyyearssinceSomersethad tried to tap the power of his old position. Now he had done it twice in one night. He would never admit it, but as the wind blew up into his armpits, he wasn’t sure the magic he’d set aside would answer.
Apparently though, there were no hard feelings.
Cold filled his chest and soaked out into his body. It spilled out of his mouth on white fog and turned his marrow into frost. The only heat in him came from the prickle of pain as a dozen tiny fractures crazed along the bones of his arms and legs. The threads of the North Wind surged up around him and thickened under his feet. His boots skidded on the slick, snow-vapor surface at first. It was solid, but not still. The wind blew and eddied under his weight. It made for unsteady footing.
The weight of Dylan as he swung awkwardly from Somerset’s grip didn’t help. Somerset briefly indulged the thought of letting him drop. He was not a sentimental man at the best of times, that wasn’t what his kind had been made to be, and the chill of Winter magic in his bones reduced the idea of logic and odds.
Mostly.
Dylan didn’t scream or thrash. He gripped Somerset’s wrist with white-knuckled fingers and kept his eyes closed so he didn’t give in and look down. Somerset had always liked that quality about the wiry paramedic. No matter what happened around him, Dylan was always the calm at the heart of the storm. It made him… pleasant… to be around.
Something in Somerset’s chest, buried down deep under permafrosted meat and organs, felt warm. The rest of him was too Winter-numb to put his finger on what the feeling was. Guilt maybe. Or something stupider.
Either way, as he remembered the knack to riding the storm, he dragged Dylan into his arms. The other man resisted at first—Somerset didn’t take it personally—but the only other option was to fall. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Dylan pressed against Somerset’s chest, arms wrapped around him so tightly that Somerset could feel knuckly fists dug into the small of his back.
Somerset enjoyed the feeling of the warm, lean body pressed against him for a moment, then he had to focus on what he was doing.
“You can fly?” Dylan asked, his voice ragged and his breath warm against Somerset as it seeped through the cotton T-shirt. When Dylan laughed, it was a thin, nervous sound. “Explains what happened to my car.”
Somerset hesitated as he narrowed his eyes. He could see the snow caught in his lashes. Dylan was right; that probably had been what happened.
As many questions as that answered, though, it raised more. Wolves couldn’t walk the storm, so who’d brought Gull down? Had he already been injured?
The wind took advantage of Somerset’s distraction and tried to drop from under him. He stumbled, caught himself, and did his best to ignore the way Dylan’s arms tightened around him.
