Page 149 of My Undead Love Life

“It often is,” she clipped.

Mad sighed. “Do it.”

Keith turned to me immediately. “You okay with this?”

I swallowed hard. My body had been checked so many times since leaving the Oasis that nakedness had become less intimate and more procedural, but this was different. This was a stranger. A woman behind a glass. Cameras were in the corners. There were seriously bright lights, too. Still, the warmth was already saving us, and Luck’s leg was getting worse.

And if this woman wanted to kill us, she probably could have left us outside to let the storm do it for her.

“It bothers me more that she’s seeing you four naked,” I whispered back.

“Oh, are all four of them yours?” Sofia asked brightly through the speaker.

My face went hot.

Luck looked delighted despite being half-frozen. “I like how she just says the truth.”

Oxi rubbed two fingers over his forehead. “Of course you do.”

Keith’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Truth is good.”

Mad muttered, “Focus.”

I looked at Sofia through the glass, face burning, and nodded once. “They are.”

“Good,” Sofia hummed before poking at her panel. “Don’t worry. I promise to keep this professional. I won’t be staring at your men.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

She tilted her head. “I might make clinical observations, but I won’t enjoy them.”

Luck’s brows lifted. “I feel somewhat offended.”

“It’s honest.” She shrugged. “Taken men are the biggest turn-off.”

The five of us carefully set our weapons beside us and started peeling off our layers.

It was harder than I expected. The outer layers were frozen in place. My coat crackled as I pulled it off. My scarf was damp from my breath and stiff with ice at the edges. My gloves resisted when I tugged them from my fingers, and when the warm air touched my skin, pain sparked through every part of me.

Keith noticed immediately. He stepped closer, bare-chested now. “Hands?”

“They hurt.”

“That’s good,” Sofia called. “Pain means the nerves are still viable. Congratulations.”

Luck, balancing awkwardly as he tried to remove one boot without falling, glared at the glass. “You have a deeply unsettling bedside manner.”

“I don’t have a bedside. This is a decontamination chamber.”

“Point proven,” he grumbled.

We put everything in the bin exactly as Sofia instructed. Coats, shirts, pants, socks, boots, hats, and gloves. The pile looked pathetic and grimy in the bright, clean chamber, but it was evidence of everything we had survived.

When I was down to nothing, Keith shifted subtly in front of me. So did Oxi. Mad moved to my other side.

Luck, still fighting with his second sock, said, “I would also shield you nobly, but I’m currently losing a battle with frozen cotton.”

I huffed out a laugh. “That looks rough.”