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I tucked my frozen face against his chest and continued to shake while he held me. Gradually, warmth began returning to my body. His heart beat hard beneath my cheek, and his hand moved steadily up and down my back. He smelled of cinnamon, sweat, and something distinctly animal.

As the cold receded, unfortunately, so did my ability to ignore everything else.

I became aware of his bare chest against my breasts, the position of his thigh between mine, and the humiliating fact that I was now extremely wet for a man who was, in practical terms, serving as emergency treatment for hypothermia.

I had no idea how much time passed. It could have been ten minutes or much longer. Eventually my shivering eased. Somewhere along the way, his did too.

Once I could think clearly again, I became acutely aware that I was lying in a moonlit forest wrapped around a naked man I had spoken to exactly once before tonight.

Jax noticed the moment I became self-conscious about it.

I felt him smile against my hair.

“This isn’t how I pictured our second conversation,” he murmured. “I had a whole line prepared. It was very smooth.”

“What was the line?”

“I can’t remember.” He paused. “Something about your glasses.” Another moment passed. “You’re warmer.”

“I’m warmer,” I agreed.

He sat up carefully, and I noticed something red trailing from his left hand.

A cord.

It had apparently been tied around his foreleg while he was a jaguar, and now it hung loosely from his wrist.

We both looked at it.

Then we looked at my bare left wrist.

“If I tie this on you,” he said quietly, “you belong to Solace until the end of term. Nobody would touch you. Not Fenhall, not Delphine, nobody. We protect our own.”

He turned the cord between his fingers.

“It would be safer for you. It really would.”

I looked at him kneeling in the bracken with the cord in his hand and thought about Delphine’s teeth, Fenhall’s laughter, and the words lovely little maid. I thought about how kind Jax was being.

Then I thought about what it would mean to survive because someone else had made the decision for me.

“Don’t,” I said. “I want to win.”

His expression tightened.

“Winning won’t mean much if you freeze to death. Let me take you back. No cord. I’ll carry you to the gate and tell anyone who asks that I found you after dawn.”

“No.”

“Then I stay with you.”

“And lead every hunter in the Wood straight to me? You’re a jaguar the size of a sofa, Jax.” I pushed myself upright, although the world tilted when I did. “I’m warm now. I know the warning signs. I’ll stay out of the water, keep moving, and if the shivering gets worse, I’ll head back to the school.”

“You were blue.”

“I know.” I held his gaze. “But I am not leaving because somebody else decided what was best for me. Not again. This is my choice.”

He studied me for several seconds, watching closely enough that I suspected he was checking for the confusion that would mean the cold had already affected my judgment.