It wasn’t unheard of for poisoned victims to not remember the aftermath. What I needed was the memories before the symptoms started. Did she still have those?
“You were poisoned,” I told her. “Nightshade. And a lot of it.”
She didn’t answer. The silence stretched between us so long that I wondered if she heard me.
“Eryn?”
“I was poisoned.” It wasn’t a question, more a statement of disbelief. “I was f-fucking poisoned?”
I couldn't help but grin. If she could be angry right now, then things weren’t as bad as I originally thought. She did still have a fever, though, which meant the poison wasn’t done with her yet. We had to stay ahead of it.
“Trust me, I’ve been angry enough for the both of us, but right now, I need you to drink some of this.”
I offered her the vial. and she took it from me without argument. Almost.
“What is it?”
“So little trust in me. And after I just saved your life,” I teased.
“Kaiden,” she warned.
“Kai.”
She growled, but with her shivering it sounded like an irritated kitten. Adorable.
“Kaiden,what is this stuff?”
“The antidote,” I replied with a sigh. “Take half, and it should ease the fever.”
She obediently followed my direction, thankfully, and handed the half-empty vial back to me. There were a million questions I wanted to ask her about what happened before her symptoms took over but now wasn’t the time. She’d had a rough night and morning wasn’t far off. I told her to get some rest and returned to my place on the loveseat before she could comment about me being in bed with her.
Sleep was out of the question, there was too much circling my brain, but it surprised me when an hour later, she hadn’t succumbed to her own exhaustion. Her restless movements and soft groans of discomfort should have eased by now.
“I can hear your teeth chattering from here,” I told her and stood. “Why didn’t you tell me you still had a fever?”
“You gave me the a-antidote,” she replied. “I assumed it needed time to work.”
That shit worked faster than Tylenol. If she hadn’t kicked the poison yet, we needed to try something else. Something I was almost positive would make her want to kill me.
“That was your second dose,” I explained while lifting my T-shirt over my head.
“W-what are you doing?”
The tremble in her voice wasn’t from the fever this time. I stood in front of the window, so I knew she saw me unbutton my jeans and let them fall to the floor. Clad in only my boxer briefs, I stepped toward the empty side of the bed.
“I have only one dose left, and while Ezra can brew some more, I don’t think it will solve our problem.”
“Y-you don’t?”
I picked up the still-cool vial and glanced over at my bond. She looked so small, huddled behind the covers as she was. I didn’t want her to fear me, and pushing our bond was the last thing I wanted to force her into, but I didn’t know what else to do.
“Not by itself,” I admitted. “The antidote needs a little help from our bond.”
I actually heard her gulp, and her fear hit me like a bucket of ice water. I was resigned to the plan, however. Something had to give.
“W-we–” she started, and then went silent. Her breathing picked up when I set a knee on the bed, but she didn’t bolt. “We don’t have a bond.”
She had a point, to a degree. Our bond was nothing more than a seed, but it was there. We just had to convince it to bud a little.
