“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.