I’d been all about getting naked with Miles right up until he was there on the couch with me, over me, the intensity of his gaze unnerving, and then I panicked. He was just too... raw. Too primal. Like a predator who wanted to eat me up but also a man who knew what he wanted—and I was it. He was too strong and intense. I shivered with it as I dozed on his chest, listening to the thumping of his heart.

And instead of pushing me to do more, he backed off. I almost couldn’t reconcile that kind of consideration with the man who’d kidnapped me, although learning that he’d adopted Mercy when she didn’t have a home and seeing him feed Cricket gave me a glimpse of someone very different. He held me on his chest and didn’t even try to squeeze my ass, though his hands rested near my thighs. Cricket eventually jumped down and searched out somewhere else to sleep, and I could slide to the side on the couch, wedged between the back cushions and Evershaw’s side so I didn’t smother him.

Miles grunted and moved around, still asleep, to wrap his arm around me and press me against his side. For a brief moment I considered waking him and recommending we snuggle in his bed, but I didn’t think I could actually say that to him without my head exploding. So instead we crowded close. It should have been uncomfortable or awkward, yet instead laying my head on his chest and feeling the power of his muscles as he squeezed me and patted my ass felt natural. Normal. Like we’d done it every night for years.

There was an unnerving degree of familiarity, something that felt almost contrived or unnatural about the depth of our connection. The relationship felt natural, but the very naturalness of it felt unnatural. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to quiet my brain. I really overthought everything. Every single thing in my life had to be analyzed and considered and debated and evaluated. I needed to let go and just enjoy, to see where things went. Maybe I needed to let Miles take the lead and set the pace, since clearly he’d be careful with me.

I drifted, half-asleep, as the movie ended and the black screen emitted only a soft dark glow. Cricket got the zoomies and started racing around the living room, bouncing into each of the bedrooms and skidding through the kitchen, then careening onto the couch to launch off of Miles’s face and over the back. I winced, waiting for Miles to wake up and yell at the cat, but nothing happened. He didn’t even twitch an arm to try and push Cricket away after the fact.

My heart jumped to my throat. That wasn’t normal. Surely a wolf would need to have better reflexes and be a lighter sleeper, especially with four paws full of claws digging into his chest as it was used as a springboard. I patted Miles’s chest, then his cheek. “Miles. Wake up.”

The skin around his eyes tightened, but he didn’t stir. He still breathed, or at least it looked like he did. I slapped his cheek, sitting up to get more oomph behind it, and he definitely flinched. But he didn’t wake up. He didn’t grab my wrist and wrestle me to the floor, didn’t joke or laugh. He didn’t do anything.

I scrambled up and ran to the door, hitting the lights on the way, and shouted for help into the hallway. Someone had to hear. Someone had to. I screamed until I heard footsteps and questions from the other end of the hall, then I raced back to where Miles lay on the couch.

He couldn’t have been poisoned. The timeline didn’t match up for being exposed, particularly when there were so many of us in the car—we all would have been poisoned. And we’d eaten the same food. It didn’t make sense. It just didn’t make sense.

I sat on the coffee table after knocking everything off of it and tried to concentrate as I reached for magic. Regardless of what it was, I could find it. I could figure it out. I squeezed my eyes shut as magic built slowly inside me until I could spool it into him, trying to cleanse the toxins or poison or whatever it was from his blood, though sudden noise and movement in the suite almost knocked me sideways.

Henry reached me first. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“He’s not responding to anything,” I whispered. “We were sleeping and the cat ran across him and he wouldn’t wake up. When I tried to wake him up, he didn’t do anything. He’s just—there.”

The wolf cursed and started shouting orders for the medic and Todd and someone to call Smith, and still more chaos erupted. I concentrated only on Miles, on the sluggish beating of his heart and the cool skin under my palms as I touched him, and whispered one of the healing spells my mother had always used as a good luck charm. More people crowded in around him, though they didn’t jostle me much, and talked over each other until I could hardly hear myself think.

And that wasn’t good. That wasn’t the way to save his life.

I borrowed from my ice queen mantra and dragged my eyes away from Miles’s face so I could glare at all of them, and my voice boomed out to overwhelm all of them. “Be quiet. If you’re not helping, get out.”

Silence followed, then the wolves retreated and left only Henry and Mercy at my side, and Todd standing over the couch as he watched his cousin’s still, silent form. Todd, on the phone with Smith, started relaying questions. “Is it the same as what poisoned him previously?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I gritted my teeth and shoved the magic at the alpha, though it didn’t want to fit the right way. Normally magic was like water and would just slide in to fill whatever container you put in front of it, but for some reason, it didn’t want to fill Miles. It didn’t want to get anywhere near him. “It doesn’t feel the same, but it might have been a different delivery mechanism.”

Todd repeated it, waited a few moments, then asked, “Are the symptoms the same?”

“No,” I said. Even though I couldn’t really say. “But you know that better than I do, don’t you?”

He grunted and talked more with Smith, turning away, and I redoubled my efforts to keep Miles alive. It felt more like pushing a boulder uphill than saving a man’s life. Mercy remained next to me, practically vibrating with worry, and whispered, “Can I help?”

I shook my head, and instead of moving away, like I feared, she edged a little closer and rested her shoulder against mine. The quiet support, offered without expectations or strings attached, almost broke through my concentration. I was worried when Miles didn’t respond right away to my magic and the cleansing. I held back a sudden surge of emotion at the thought that he wouldn’t wake up, not just because he would leave a hole in his pack if he died but because—I realized in a sudden rush—I would miss him. I wanted to know what it would be like when we got past the “just kissing” phase and what he looked like in the morning when he first woke up and whether he actually could cook anything. I didn’t know why, but I liked Miles Evershaw and I would miss him if he died.

The realization only made it more difficult to focus on dragging magic into him, fighting off whatever darkness clawed at him from inside.

It took far longer than it should have for his skin tone to improve and his eyes to move beneath the lids; long enough that I hovered on the edge of tears and almost had to face the question of when to give up. Smith had even arrived to watch me work and offer quiet commentary to Todd and the others on what he speculated caused the paralysis. I blocked it all out as my hands shook and hovered over Miles’s chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the possibility that he might not wake up at all. I’d reached the end of my strength. I couldn’t do anything else for him.

My eyes burned and a tear escaped and then a warm hand slid around my wrist. I tried to pull away, shaking my head, and my voice cracked. “Not yet. I need another minute.” They didn’t let me go, insistent, and I sucked in a breath. “I’m not done yet.”

“Deirdre,” he said, and my heart tripped.

I almost couldn’t believe it as I forced my eyes open and found Miles awake, holding my wrists, and watching me with beautiful chocolate, patient eyes. “Hi.”

I swallowed a knot in my throat. “Hi.”

Mercy burst into tears and punched his leg as she said, “Don’t ever do that again,” and she bolted out of the room.

Henry took a breath as he squeezed my shoulder, then strode after her with a sighed, “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

I worried about her but I couldn’t look away from Miles. His thumbs rubbed gently, over and over, against the inside of my wrists, though he hadn’t otherwise moved. I took a shaky breath and started to pull away. “How do you feel?”

“Better now,” he said. His gaze didn’t leave me, though he raised his voice to address the others in the room. “Todd, what happened?”

“The witch woke us up. You wouldn’t come to after the cat ran over you, so she was worried. I called Smith as she tried to save you, but it’s been a long night.”

Miles nodded a touch, squeezing my wrists before he went back to stroking the fragile skin over my pulse. “And can Smith tell what caused this?”

“It’s not the toxin,” the ErlKing said. I dragged my eyes up to look at him, and found Smith studying me with sympathy in his ancient eyes. “It was different. Perhaps the poison but synthesized from something else or into something else or delivered in an unconventional way. It could have been magic, although I did not see any particular fingerprints that would reveal the perpetrator.”

Magic? I breathed out and started to shake. It couldn’t be. I would have felt something or sensed something on him. I shook my head, all of my insides cold with fear, but Miles squeezed my hands and slowly sat up, distracting me as he said, “I’ve pissed off a few witches lately, but I don’t think either of them did anything to me today.”

“That’s what you think,” Smith said under his breath. He shuffled over to sit on the coffee table next to me, frowning as he studied Miles. “If I may?”

When Miles nodded, Smith touched his forehead and a green, ancient magic flooded through him. I jerked away from Miles’s grip and shot off the coffee table; the old man’s magic had a hungry, seeking power to it as it searched and searched, bloodthirsty and angry after centuries of waning influence. I shuddered and retreated still more, though Miles’s attention followed me regardless of what Smith did.

Todd stepped closer and put his arm across my back to keep me from backing toward the open door. The second-in-command murmured, “Take a deep breath. Don’t run anywhere, okay? He’ll chase you, and that’s probably not a good thing until we know exactly what happened, right?”

I nodded, staring at Miles, but I couldn’t stop shaking and shivering. The spreading ripples of Smith’s vile power filled the room with the smell of old forests and rotting vegetation, heavy and oppressive, and I gagged. Todd carefully ushered me toward the open door near the kitchen that kept me within Miles’s line of sight, and shooed me into it. “Go in there. Shut the door if you want. He won’t worry about you in there. I’ll let you know when it’s all clear. Do you need anything else?”

“No,” I whispered, and staggered into the room. It was only when I stubbed my toe on a heavy piece of furniture that I realized where I’d stumbled—Miles’s bedroom. I’d walked through it on my first tour through his suite as we searched for what poisoned him, but that felt like an eternity in the past. I’d still been furious about being kidnapped and ready to kill Miles myself if I could have gotten away with it. I couldn’t believe it had only been a matter of days.

The door remained open a crack, but at least I couldn’t feel that awful magic anymore. I sat on the foot of the bed and stared at the floor near the door, watching for shadows and listening for something other than the soft rise and fall of their conversation. I wanted to rewind the night a few hours and go back to kissing and snuggling on the couch with a crappy movie in the background. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to block it all out, then jumped as something soft brushed my ankle.

Cricket. He always knew when I was upset and somehow always found me. Even when I tried to hide, he found me. He backed up and heaved himself up onto the high mattress, head-butting me until I lay back and he could clamber onto my stomach to knead his paws against me. His purr rattled through me, like the best white noise machine in the world, and it wasn’t long until my eyes drooped and the desperate nausea of Smith’s magic faded still further away. I exhaled and worked my fingers into Cricket’s fur. It would be okay. It would all be okay. It had to be.