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But before I could ask her, she began to shake so hard she could barely stand up. I bent, slipping an arm under her legs and picked her up, wrapping her close to my body as I raced across the centre area to our cabin. What I could feel of her skin shocked me. Instead of the uncomfortable heat from earlier, she felt like a block of ice that felt colder with each breath I took. I didn’t care if I was rude to Amber by not answering her. My only concern was for Mel and getting her warmed up as fast as possible.
Chapter Six
Mel (Melinda)
Cold. I was so cold. I don’t think I’d ever felt so cold before. And the water that the woman used hadn’t been normal. The moment it touched my coat and quickly soaked through as if I hadn’t been wearing a stitch of clothing to reach my skin, I could feel the hum of magic. Magic that held me in place, unable to move while it felt like ice slowly encased me, freezing me… from the inside out.
“Come on, Mel. Stay with me.” Noel’s voice sounded far away even though I could see the worry in his ice blue eyes. Blue eyes that had a darker rim around them, making them standout even more. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, most likely because I hadn’t been this close to him before.
“Shit. I’ve got to get these wet clothes off you, okay?” I tried to answer, I really did, but I couldn’t get my teeth to stop chattering long enough for me to make more than a moan. Besides, at this stage, I didn’t care if he stripped me naked. Anything to stop the cold from getting worse.
“Noel?”
“In here, Teddy. I need your help. Freddy’s too.”
“Fuck! What happened to her? What did you do?” Teddy tried to pull me from Noel’s arms, but neither Noel nor I were letting go of each other. I wasn’t sure why Noel wasn’t, but for me, I couldn’t get my muscles to unclench.
“Stop. You’re hurting her.” Noel pulled one of my arms out of my shirt, but when he could get the other one out since it was wrapped around his neck, he swore again. “Help me, Teddy. We need to get these wet clothes off her. And it wasn’t me. It was Amber.”
As Teddy tried to help with my pants, I felt the pressure of two other hands working on my arm behind Noel.
“That bitch. This is the last straw. I’m going to Welly about her.” I glanced up into Freddy’s eyes and was shocked at the amount of anger, fear, and desperation I saw there. It was almost as if… but it couldn’t be… I’d never heard of anything like that before. Yet when we’d kissed, I’d felt something, something that I’d overheard others talk about as a myth.
Fated mates.
It happened so rarely that people didn’t believe in them anymore. Not that it’s what I felt because the one thing I fully remembered them saying was that it never occurred outside your own species. And that thought made me sad because of any of the males I’d met during my life, it was these three that I felt drawn too. They were the ones I’d want to be mated with even though I knew almost nothing about them. Yet it felt like I knew everything at the same time.
Once my shirt was off, Noel barked out more orders, telling Freddy to turn on the shower, but then Teddy contradicted him, saying a warm bath would be more effective. With a nod from Noel about the change, Freddy raced out of sight, but before I could take my next chest rattling, induced breath, I heard the water turn on.
And then I was moving through the air again.
“Teddy, can you turn up the heat and put on the fireplace? Maybe make a nest of blankets on the floor there.”
“Good idea.” He leaned over me, pressing his lips to mine in a quick kiss. I was glad he didn’t linger. Not because I didn’t want to kiss him—I did, boy did I ever after kissing Freddy—but because I couldn’t move my lips and I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want him.
Noel nuzzled the side of my face as he stepped into a room that was rapidly filling with steam even though I couldn’t feel the heat. Water surrounded me as he sat inside a large bathtub with me in his arms. Freddy climbed in on the other side of me and began to wipe my face and neck with a wet cloth before dumping full cups of water on my hair.
“She’s still really cold and turning blue. Do you think Amber infused some magic in the water?”
“Fuck. I didn’t even think of that. Do you know what could possibly counteract it if she did?”
“We could call Parsley.”
I watched as the play of light on Noel’s face as he thought over Freddy’s suggestion. I didn’t know who this Parsley was, but if she was anything like Amber, I wasn’t sure I wanted her to touch me with her magic. Instead, I focused on trying to remember some of the things I’d studied. My father had given me some books on magic that he’d gathered in case I developed witch skills. And while I never did, I had read over the books, learning everything I could.
The moment I remembered, I tried to force the words through my clenched lips, but the only thing that came out what a hiss of air. I tried again, and again. Finally, I managed to get my lips enough to move to say, “An egg.”
“Did she just say ‘an egg’?” Freddy questioned Mel.
“That’s what it sounded like.” He stared down at me. “What do you need an egg for?”
“C-cl-eanse sp-spell.”
“Cleanse the spell?” he clarified.
It hurt like hell, but I managed to make my chin move enough that they understood I was nodding.
“Teddy, bring an egg.” The loudness of Noel’s yell hurt my ears, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was for the cold to stop. I could barely feel any heat from the water. It was as if my skin had a barrier on it, keeping the heat away. That spell would have been nice to have during the heat of the summer in the desert, but our community didn’t associate with witches. It was why I was such an outcast. They never forgot or let me forget that some of my blood came from them.
