My breath rushed out of me.Finally.
I held her with one arm and on one raised knee, got the door unlocked, and took her inside. I nudged the door shut with my foot and inhaled deeply, drinking in the scents of Alice’s home.
I started for the stairs, then hesitated. She needed to be safe andfeelsafe.
“Can you put the wards back up?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her fingers brushed against the wood and then stroked it gently.
I expected the wards to flare as quickly as they’d dropped, but they didn’t.
And when her body went tense and then rigid, I realized I might have made a mistake asking her to do this.
Seconds ticked by as she trembled and strained, fighting to raise the wards as if to do so she had to drag boulders uphill through loose sand.
I wouldn’t have asked her to do this if I’d known raising them took so much more effort than dropping them. I didn’t know enough about Alice’s kind of magic. I needed to learn, and soon.
I was also starting to learn that when it came to Alice, maybe the question shouldn’t beCan you do this?but insteadShouldyou?Because she’d sayyesevery time whether she really should do it or not.
Maybe some of that was her pride talking, and I couldn’t claim I wasn’t guilty of doing the same sometimes as both a man and an alpha.
But I also suspected she’d internalized past abuse to the point she feared failure, or even the possibility someone might see her as having failed and punish her. She felt she had to do what was asked of her, even if it ground her to dust.
And when I found out who’d used and abused her in that way?—
I dragged my thoughts away from visions of bloody revenge and back to Alice.
The wards flared to life once again, sizzling against my skin in a way that was both painful and reassuring.
At the same moment, Alice made a tiny sound of pain that made my gut wrench. She went limp, her head falling back and her arm dangling.
“No,” I ground out, readjusting her in my arms so her head rested against my chest. Son of a bitch—she was starting to shiver again. “Come on, Alice. Stay with me now. Shit, I shouldn’t have even asked about the damn wards.”
I carried her upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, and straight to her room. By the time we got to the bed, she was shivering almost violently and her skin was cool and damp.
She was going into shock again. Raising those damn wards had taken everything she had and then some.
This time, I didn’t hesitate to strip off my boots, pants, and socks and climb into the bed next to her in my boxers. I drew her against my chest and tucked her head under my chin, offering my body heat and alpha comfort. Her teeth were chattering.
“C-cold,” she whimpered.
“I know, baby,” I murmured, my lips on her hair. “Hold on to me.”
“Don’t c-call meb-baby,” she scolded, her voice barely audible.
Something thumped weakly against my chest: Alice’s fist, hitting me with all the ferocity of a butterfly landing on a leaf.
I couldn’t help it; I snorted. But not at her—at myself. I deserved that butterfly punch and worse for using a nickname like that.
I was about to apologize when she buried her face against the side of my neck and inhaled deeply.
My body—and my wolf—went completely still. Wonder and contentment washed through me.
She wanted my scent. Like a shifter, she’d nuzzled me where my natural aroma was strongest. She still shivered so badly that she shook us both, but some of the tension left her body.
It didn’t mean anything.
Maybe it did.
