Was he being so quiet because he thought the creature might still be close?
But time was of the essence. I tried to nod but wasn’t able to. The toxin was cutting off my ability to control my own body.
Harris shifted my weight, setting me down gently while keeping his arm under mine so I was standing upright. My bare feet touched the wooden porch in front of my cabin.
The helpless rage I should have felt wasn’t there. My mate was taking care of me. I had needed him, and even though I hadbeen nothing but unkind to him since his arrival—since our first meeting, in fact—he was protecting me. Helping me.
He pushed my cabin door open. Wolves don’t usually bother with locks. Almost anything that would try to gain access to do us harm wouldn’t be deterred by regular locks anyway.
Harris carried me to the couch.
“What am I looking for?”
The antidote wasn’t really a magic potion at all, but a vial of very powerful blood given to me by Nathaniel Bailey, the vampire king of Seattle. It was blood belonging to his mate, Ethan Solomon, who possessed the—as far as anyone knew, singular—ability to negate any form of magic. Since a creature from the Otherworld is made of pure magic, its venom is as well. Even a single drop would return me to normal immediately.
I hoped.
I tried to answer him, to tell him what he was looking for, but I couldn’t even make my lips move.
Genuine fear shot through me.
I rolled my eyes up to meet his. He was breathing hard, his lower lip trembling, his gaze locked on mine.
He seemed to understand how I felt. Because he took a deep breath and straightened up, as if pushing away his own fear. “Listen, it’s going to be fine,” he said, his voice calm and soothing. “I’m going to find it, okay? You’re going to be fine. I’ve got you. You can trust me.”
I wanted to nod, but I couldn’t make myself move.
Harris vanished from my view for several minutes. I expected him to call the others—to get Daniel, or the first wolf he ran across—and knowing my luck, it would be Lacey—to come help him. And then my pack would see me exactly as I feared myself to be: weak. Ineffective. Unable to help anyone, ever.
But when Harris returned, the vial was in his hands.
I watched as he uncapped it and held it to my lips. I smelled the copper tang of blood. I prepared myself for him to use up a year’s worth of anti-magic in one go, unable to stop him. And I couldn’t have blamed him either—it’s what anyone would have done. I was going to have to go back to the vampire king with my tail between my legs and ask for another supply. Not exactly a small ask, given how fiercely protective Nathaniel was of Ethan and how hard he had tried to stop his mate from giving it to the pack in the first place.
Harris paused. Then he drew the bottle back and gazed down at me, his lips pressing into a frown.
Part of me half-expected him to give me an ultimatum—to use my helplessness as leverage. I would have been shocked by it, given what I knew of Harris, but a lot of guys might’ve tried something like that. And what the hell did I really know about him?
Instead, he said, “Blink twice if I need to give you the full bottle. Blink once if I should use less.”
Surprise coursed through me. How had he known to ask that?
I blinked once.
“Half the bottle?” He studied me—and I stared back in amazement that he had considered how much to use. But I was still very much unable to speak. Harris paused, his brows drawing together in concern. Then he flashed me a rueful smile. “Oh. Right. Blink twice if it’s half the bottle, once if it’s less.”
I blinked once.
He dribbled a small amount of the blood between my lips. More than he should have used, but still not much. With effort, I swallowed it.
The effect was immediate. The weakness left my limbs—suddenly gone.
Harris’s eyes widened when the wounds on my chest vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind angry red marks that were perfectly ordinary. “Holy shit. It’s like magic.”
“Itismagic,” I told him, sitting up. I could have cried, I was so grateful to have my limbs back. “How did you find the vial?”
“Not many places to hide something like that. It would need to be accessible. And it’s medicine, right? So why not the medicine cabinet?” He paused. “It made sense to me.”
Before I could stop myself, I let out a bark of laughter. Harris joined me. And we grinned at each other.
