"How did you know?" Gentry asked, resting his boot on the bottom stair.
"She had a broken lifeline. When I traced it with my finger, in my head I had a vision flicker back and forth, back and forth. In one vision, the lifeline picked up again and continued for a long time, curved beautifully under her thumb. In the other vision, it stopped in the middle of her hand and didn't continue. It was always up to you which vision would come to fruition."
"I don't understand what that means," Gentry gritted out, good and fucking tired of riddles.
"You could come to me for the wolf, or you could watch her die. I've already been gathering supplies, but I need a few more things."
She rested her pitch-colored gaze on Asher.
"You need them alive?" he murmured, gaze averted to the snow.
"Need what alive?" Roman asked.
"I need big power to save your she-wolf," Odine said. "I need living things to draw that power from."
"Jesus," Roman muttered, pacing away, then back. "And you expect Asher to bring you these living things?"
"Yes," Odine said without hesitation. "Because I know he will."
Chills blasted up Gentry's forearms as he looked at his oldest brother. Blaire let off a pained sound, and he cradled her closer.
Odine sighed out a frustrated sound and stood on the top step. "Bring me sick animals that won't make it, or bring me something stuck in a hunter's trap." She gave Roman a dirty look. "It'll take longer, so you can help."
"No. Make Gentry help."
"Gentry is good, and I want to keep him that way," Odine snapped as she disappeared into the dark cabin. "Besides, you heard him in the car. He won't leave his mate. Now hurry, scurry, Strikers. A storm's a-comin'."
"A storm's always coming," Gentry muttered as he followed her into the cabin.
"I'm not talking about the weather."
Gentry turned in the entryway to see his brothers both standing in the snow, staring up at him with haunted looks. And then the door slammed closed.
"Fucking rude," Roman called through the barrier.
Gentry smiled despite how very un-funny this entire situation was. Leave it to Roman to talk to a witch like that.
"Lay her there," Odine said, gesturing to a table in the middle of a cluttered kitchen.
Above him, bundles of drying plants hung from the rafters. The counters were covered in a mismatched disarray of differently sized glass jars full of powders. The labels were printed in a language he didn't understand.
Before he did this, he had to make sure. "Blaire," he murmured, settling her on the wooden surface as Odine busied herself stoking the fire in the hearth.
"Mmm," Blaire said, staring vacantly up at the ceiling above.
"Do you want to do this? Do you want Odine to try and raise your wolf? Do you want her to try and fix this?"
Blaire rolled her head to the side and locked hollow eyes on Gentry. "Will it save you?"
Gentry swallowed hard. Of course, she would think of him instead of herself in this moment. She was walking through Hell, and her concern was saving him. She was an angel. She was everything. Already he could feel her sickness through their bond. It curdled his stomach and made Wolf crazed. If she died, he wouldn't be far behind her. If she lived … he lived. He'd always dreaded a bond, avoided women, hated the idea of his life being so tethered to another's. But now, he didn't want to live unless it was with her.
He nodded his answer.
"Then yes," she said on a breath. "I want Odine to save you."
Chapter Nineteen
Blaire was stuck between dream and awake. She was pinned in the in-between. On one side, there were hallucinations of horrible things. Pain and monsters with sharp teeth. Something was constantly snarling right behind her. Glowing eyes in the dark. Fear.
On the other side, in lucid moments, she could see Odine working over her. She chanted things Blaire didn't understand. It smelled bad. It had to be the plants she was burning over and around her, but it smelled like something more. Death? Was that her own death she could sense? Against the wall, Gentry stood, watching over her. Always watching over her. Who was screaming? His fists were clenched. Sometimes he looked away, but not for long. Not her Gentry. He would never leave her alone to lie here. When his lips would snarl back and he would growl, it would match the sound in her head. That's always when the clarity flickered. It was as if he was calling to the dark monster behind her, and the shadow was calling back. And it always, always sent her spiraling into the dark again.
Odine would switch to English just in time to whisper, "Let her have you," before Blaire was swallowed up by the hallucinations again.
It had been infinity, or maybe a day, or maybe a week, she didn't know. Her body was weak and needed food. There was yelling. Gentry was yelling. Someone stop that screaming! Asher was there, stone-faced, telling Gentry he needed to eat or sleep. Telling him to take a break and leave for a while. She wanted to laugh. Silly Asher. Gentry couldn't leave. They were bound, stuck together like a magnet to a paperclip. If he left, he would drag her soul with him. Gentry wouldn't leave her. He wouldn't. She wanted to bite Asher for suggesting it. Bite him? Yes, that felt right.
Roman was squatted in the corner. He looked sick, but his face morphed from his handsome, bearded, worried face, to his snarling wolf with the gold eyes. They'd come for Gentry on that snowy road. He'd called, and they'd come. They'd come for her. Too late. The screaming was so loud in her ears, but it changed to something steady. Something with a tone that held. Something beautiful.
Blaire tried to smile. One of the boys was howling. She arched her back against the table in an effort to see which one. Which one of her boys was singing for her? Her pack was calling her home.
Gentry stood in the middle of the room, his eyes wide and reflecting strangely in the firelight. His fists weren't clenched anymore, and under his beard, he was almost … smiling. When had he grown a beard? He looked handsome in it. She wanted to touch him and kiss him and tell him everything would be okay because she was fighting for him. She was fighting to live so that he could keep breathing. So she could keep his heart beating because it was the most important sound in the world.
Near the wall, Roman had his hand on Asher's shoulder, and they both looked bewildered. Eyes too bright though, silver and gold. They weren't howling either.
Her body buckled, and the howl rose again. Her howl.
And then there was the sound of gunfire. And then there was pain.
Blaire fell off the table, or more like … she didn't fit on the table anymore. Not as she had. The clatter of bowls and the shattering of glass was deafening. She could hear everything as she scrambled against the floor, trying to ease the hurt that rippled through her body and blazed down every nerve ending.
Odine was still chanting, louder now, words that made no sense and all ran together.
"What's happening to her?" Roman asked. Too loud, too loud. His voice bounced around her skull, splitting it.
Words were impossible now, but suddenly, the pain stopped. It just disappeared like fog in the sunshine. She couldn't move. She was frozen, and her body didn't make sense. Nothing felt like it was where it was supposed to be. Something moved behind her, and she yelped a strange noise and scrambled away from it. More movement, and she went mad, clawing her way in a clumsy circle to defend herself. Roman had his cell phone up taking pictures, and Gentry was trying to calm her, hands out as he approached.
Don't! She snapped her teeth at him, and he winced away. Asher wore a dark smile as he leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
Odine wasn't chanting anymore. She sagged heavily into a chair as if she were utterly exhausted. She looked like she'd aged a decade, and there was more gray in her hair now. "Let her out before she finds her legs and destroys my house." Her voice cracked with age. "And for God sakes, boys, don't let her kill anyone."
"I thought werewolves didn't come in white," Roman said as Gentry threw the door to the cabin open.
Werewolf? White? Baffled, Blaire looked down at the floor, and to her horror, there were two snow-white wolf legs with black claws that had raked deep scratches into the wooden floorboards under her.
There was movement behind her again, scaring her into scrabbling forward.
"Look it," Roman crowed. "She's afraid of her own tail."
"Shut the fuck up, man," Gentry said, shoving his brother into the wall. "She doesn't know what's happening."
"I thought she would look like a zombie or something," Asher murmured. "Red eyes maybe."