“Then we wait.” I swing her up into my arms and stride toward the stairs. “But I’m not fucking leaving her side.”
CORA
The world was gray, barren, and ashy. The sky low and heavy with clouds. What the fuck, Jasper? What had he done to me?
Where the fuck was I?
A rumble like thunder filled the air, and then the ground in front of me cracked and a slender gray form covered in black veins rose out of the aperture. It looked like a fucked-up tree person. Twig-like arms hung from its trunk-like body. The form was too smooth to be wood and too fractured to be stone. Its face was featureless, but slender inky veins formed a network across the surface. Malice and hunger emanated from it in waves that beat at my skin.
I took a step back.
Become one with us. The voice was like nails on a chalkboard.
“Um…no thanks.”
Join us.
Feed the hunger.
Be sated.
The voice echoed around me, which was fucked up because there was nothing for the sound to bounce off and create an echo.
I took another step back, not sure where the fuck I’d run to, but the thing moved in a blur and stopped inches from me, its featureless face peering down at me, eerie as fuck.
You belong to us now.
Gray tentacles shot out of its cheeks and latched onto me so fast there was no time to evade, and then I was falling.
TOR
“She’s burning up.” I smooth sweat-soaked tendrils off her forehead.
We’ve laid her on her bed, and while I sit, my hip at her thigh, Leif kneels on the floor by Cora’s side, her hand clasped in his.
Conah is gone, back to the mansion to search for information on the infection. There are boxes of old texts, unshelved and unlogged. He won’t find answers, but I understand he needs to be doing something, and there’s no role for him here.
Jasper stands in the corner of the room like a watchful shadow. His expression is closed, unreadable. Rune stands by the window with Sloane, his golden body tense and alert. Out of all of us, he feels this the most. This thing is inside him too. Has been for a decade, dormant and waiting. To see it active in someone he cares for, to see her fighting, to feel it through the bond we share is a different kind of torture.
The infection is a dark throb tugging at the threads that bind us to Cora. Testing the links, wanting to sever them.
We can’t let it.
Leif makes a sound of assent as if I’ve spoken and he’s heard me.
Cora moans softly, mouth parting, brow furrowing.
“Strip her,” Pippa orders as she enters the room carrying a bowl. “Open the window a little.”
Sloane tries. “It’s stuck.”
Fuck. “I nailed it shut.”
She waves her hand over the wood, muttering under her breath, then the window is sliding open and cool air fills the room.
I glance at Leif and he nods. We begin to take off Cora’s clothes. I didn’t expect the first time I undressed my mate to be like this. I didn’t expect my stomach to be tied in knots of fear.
I’m not afraid of death. Never have been. But right now, with Cora balancing on the precipice between life and death, fear is a relentless band around my throat.
Creamy smooth skin is exposed as I peel her T-shirt from her chest. I look away, not wanting to stare at her nakedness. Not like this.
Leif does the same, his gaze averted as he unbuckles her trousers and tugs them down.
“For fucksake,” Jasper says. “Get out of the way and let me. I’ve seen it all before.”
I want to throttle him, but he has a point, so I back up and let him finish up.
He makes quick work of stripping my mate, which calls forth all kinds of thoughts, thoughts that make me want to smash his face in. But then he covers her so tenderly with a sheet that my ire melts.
Pippa takes over and begins wiping Cora down with a washcloth dipped in tepid water.
“We need to keep her fever down. Help control it,” she explains.
Jasper returns to his spot in the corner of the room. He’s fading and it hits me that he’s no longer feeding off Cora. He’s letting her go so she can fight this infection.
I hate that I’m beginning to like the fucker.
Fight, Cora. Fight it, Rune says softly, for us all.
CORA
Ours.
Like he is.
Bring him to us.
He belongs.
No more fighting.
No more running.
You can be together here. Together if you join us.
I was falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole. I needed to stop but there was nothing to grab hold of. Nothing to halt my progress. A conviction bloomed in my chest that if I hit the bottom I was lost.
This thing would have me. “What are you?”
It speaks to us, still speaks. They never speak.
Should we answer?
Puppets, nothing more.
Not this one.
Not the other one.
Connected maybe?
This one is connected to more than one. Do you feel it?
Can we have them?
Not easily…not unless she takes them for us.
They were talking about my guys and Jasper. This infection, this multitude of voices, it wanted them, and it wanted to claim me and make me infect them.
Rage flared in my chest. “Fuck you!”
My descent slowed.
What is it doing?
I needed to find a nook or a foothold in the walls of this hole. “You can’t have me.”
My body jerked upward slightly, fighting the descent, and I lunged for the wall, fingers scrabbling for purchase.
How is it doing this?
It must not do this.
Join us. Be one with us.
The voice was now a croon, no longer nails on a chalkboard, more a lullaby. It stroked the back of my mind, and my grip on the nook relaxed slightly.
Fight, Cora. Rune’s voice filled my mind. For us all.
I shook off the effects of the crooning voice and slammed my body into
