Menace carried me to the bathroom where he’d run a tub of cool water. The first splash was a shock, but then it was like sinking into a lake after a long run. My pulse slowed; the red haze in my vision faded to pink, then blue. I could see the lines in the ceiling tile, the way they made constellations if you stared long enough.
They worked in silence. Savannah used a cup to pour cool water over my head. Menace kept my arms pinned. I tried to fight, once or twice, but there was no strength in my body. My bones felt hollowed out.
After a while, Savannah leaned in and whispered, “You need to hold on. She’s not dead. I just know it.”
I shook my head; the effort dizzying. “You’re wrong. She’s gone. I lost her.”
Menace was watching me, his face unreadable. “She’ll come back,” he said. “You just have to be here when she does.”
“Easy for you,” I spat. “Your mate didn’t leave you to die.”
“Stop being a whiny fuck. Your mate didn’tleaveyou. She was taken. Stop pitying yourself and concentrate on your bond. And Ihada mate who was taken from me if you forgot. And I did die onher, remember?” he was pissed. And he was right. My little bird would never leave me. She’d die with me before she’d do that.
The fever pulled me down again, but this time I dreamed of nothing. Only the hum of the lights, and the sound of my own heartbeat, slowing, slowing, slowing.
When I woke, I was back in my bed, alone.
My mouth was dry as a fistful of sand. The taste of blood had faded to the back of my tongue, replaced by the bitter tang of old medicine. I tried to sit up. My muscles responded, barely. The room was empty except for the shadow of the door.
The mate bond was still dead. I probed it gently, but there was nothing. No Parker. No little bird.
I let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a sob. My chest folded in half. I slammed my fist into the mattress. I screamed her name, over and over, until my voice was a shredded cord and my eyes blurred with tears.
Then Menace was there again, holding me down until the storm passed.
“Stop,” he said, when I finally ran out of air. “She’s not dead, Eli. You’d know. You’d fucking know.”
“Don’t tell me what I’d know!” I spat. “You don’t feel it. She’s gone. There’s nothing there. It’s—” I broke, couldn’t finish.
He sat beside me, boots on the bed. “Let it hurt. But don’t let it kill you.”
I wiped the blood and snot off my face with the heel of my hand. “Why are you here?”
“Because you’re my brother,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Savannah came in, carrying a tray with water and what looked like a sandwich. She set it down, then pressed a cold hand to my cheek. “You need to eat,” she said. “If you want to heal.”
I turned away. I didn’t want to heal.
But when the door closed behind them, I forced down a sip of water, then another. It tasted like nothing, like empty glass. I chewed the bread, forcing my jaw to move. It hurt to swallow, but I did it anyway.
I sat on the bed and stared at the ceiling until the sun changed places in the sky. Then I let myself sleep, not because I wanted to, but because I had nothing left to fight it.
In the dark, I whispered her name over and over, like a prayer.
Wren. Little bird. Parker.
Come back to me.
Hours passed, or maybe it was only minutes. I sweated through the bedding, then the sheets, then whatever thin layer of mattress pad Parker had added to our bed. The shivers came in waves, sometimes rolling up from my feet, sometimes crashingdown from the base of my skull. Every so often, the pain would ease just long enough for me to hope I was getting better, and then it would come back twice as bad, as if my body hated me for even entertaining the thought.
Sometimes, I imagined I was dying. Sometimes, I hoped I was.
The only sound was the slow drip of water into a tin pail Menace had set beside the bed. At some point, the darkness behind my eyes lit up with odd flashes of blue, so vivid I tried to bite them with my teeth. It didn’t work, but the taste of ice lingered in my mouth. Maybe the fever had burned through the last few working neurons in my head.
Then, without warning, the universe punched me straight through the heart. I arched off the bed, spine locked and buzzing, every hair on my arms standing up. My eyes shot open. I tried to scream but couldn’t get air. The world collapsed into a pinpoint and then exploded, white and blue, sharp as a fresh wound.
And she was there.
