“Keegan!” Ignatius’s voice cut through alarms and gestured to Theron. “Can you try to heal him?”
Keegan hovered nearby, hands glowing faintly. “I wish I could, and you know I can only heal Drake. The damage… it’s too severe. There’s nothing I can do.”
I pressed my shaking hand to my mouth to stop a sob. Radiation had ravaged him beyond any ordinary healing.
Then Taz moved silently and gently took Theron from Ignatius. My chest slammed as frost bloomed over Taz’s skin, crystalline ice engulfing him in a ghostly cocoon. The ice crept from Taz into Theron’s battered body, sealing every shred of damage in a frozen shell.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, voice strangled.
“His dragon needs time,” Max said into my ear. “Ice will lock the damage in place—buy his dragon time to heal.”
“How long?” I choked out.
“Hours… days,” Max admitted, eyes haunted. “I don’t know. None of us expected this.”
“Put me down.” I stood trembling next to Max, my eyes glued to Taz at the center of the room, ice gleaming under the emergency lights. The fires had died. The alarms were silent. Only my ragged breathing filled the void.
Ignatius ended a phone call, face grave, silver glow in his eyes. “Cleanup crew’s incoming. The authorities won’t show. We need to move. I know a safehouse.”
Taz’s frost faded and he looked human again. I reached out, but he shook his head—soft warning in his eyes. “You can’t touch either of us yet.”
It was my fault. If Odin hadn’t used me as leverage, Theron would never have gone in there. He never would’ve been poisoned by that radiation.
The drive back was a nightmare. Taz and Theron were in Keegan’s car—Keegan could alter his body temperature enough he could withstand the car with them inside to drive them, and keep the engine warm enough to function.
The safehouse was somewhere past O’Hare, but I didn’t track where. I didn’t care. All I cared about was the dark SUV ahead of us where Keegan was driving Theron and Taz, and that I couldn’t see inside.
When we finally pulled up to a sprawling cabin tucked into the pines, Ignatius was barking orders before the engine died. Doryu had gone ahead—the lights were already on, a room prepared, a large bed.
I trailed after them like a ghost. Someone—Max, I thought—kept trying to steer me toward another room where I could lie down.
“No.” My voice came out cracked, barely there. “I’m not leaving him.”
“Dante—”
“I’m not leaving him.” I turned to look at Max, and whatever he saw in my face made him stop arguing. He just nodded once and stepped aside while I headed for a chair in the corner. Doryu eventually pressed a hot drink in my hands and tucked a blanket around me.
Taz didn’t move. Just sat on the bed with Theron in his arms and froze them both. I knew they had to be touching. In my head I knew that. I knew Taz was Cinder’s mate. I knew that Taz was trying to save his life.
But I wanted it to beme. I wanted to be the one that held him.
Hours passed. I knew because the windows went from black to gray to pink and then the sun started dipping again. Someone put a glass of water in my hand. Someone else brought a sandwich I didn’t eat. I was angry at myself when I realized I must have dozed off because when I woke, Max stood holding Theron while Cole and Doryu changed the bed. I looked up and Taz was shoulder to shoulder with Ignatius. “That’s all I can do,” Taz said quietly. His voice sounded raw, like he’d been swallowing ice. “His skin is intact. Hair will take time to grow back, but it will.”
I stood up too fast and had to grip the back of the chair. “Is he—”
“He’s alive.” Taz’s gray-blue eyes found mine. “But Dante—”
“He’s healed?” I stepped toward the bed. Theron’s skin looked pink and new, like a baby’s, but it wasskinagain. Not the ruined horror it had been. His chest was rising and falling, deeper now, steadier.
“On the outside.” It was Ignatius who spoke, and his voice was careful in a way that made my chest tighten. “Taz can only do so much. He’s stopped the surface damage, given Theron’s dragon a stable shell to work inside. But what that radiation did to his organs, to his blood, to the deeper tissue—we won’t know until he wakes up. His dragon has to do that itself. And we have no way to tell, from the outside, whether it’s working.”
I stared at Theron’s face. He looked like he was sleeping. Just sleeping. Like he might open his eyes any minute and tell me I was overreacting.
“What can I do?” I whispered.
Taz hesitated. He glanced at Ignatius, then back at me.
“He’s cold,” Taz said finally. “He needs to be warmed up gently. Body heat will work really well.” I didn’t need tellingtwice, simply stripped to my shorts and got in bed, curling myself around him. I heard the door close and started talking.
