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Frost leans over me, and his cool, steady palm rests over my forehead. “Amora. Can you hear me?”
I nod wearily.
“Shift.”
Maybe it’s the possible concussion, or the lingering, lightheaded effect of the poison attacking my body, but I pout. “This is my last pair of jeans.”
Kian growls something that I can’t hear through my fuzzy-headedness. His fingers go to my waistband, and he undoes the button on my jeans.
I slap his hand away, then roll to my side, clutching my arm to my body and screaming as my wrist protests at the violence. Frost’s cool palm vanishes from my skin.
“Do you want us to salvage your pants or not?” Kian roars.
“Not you,” I hiss back.
Malix waves him away, then rolls me back onto my back. The movement makes my head swim, and I find myself staring up at a sky growing bluer by the minute. Malix unzips my pants and gently works them off my hips, taking my boots with them. Once he’s tossed them aside, Frost’s cool palm rests against my forehead again, and his sexy, remote face comes back into view.
“Shift, Amora,” he says.
Closing my eyes, I reach for my wolf and let her wash over me.
The pain is agonizing. I feel every inch of my skin that’s been mutilated by the concrete. The road rash turns to flames licking my skin as the shift erupts over my limbs. I swallow back bile as my broken rib pops into place in my wolf torso, and my injured arm protests the magic elongating it. I don’t even try to get up—I just let my paws stretch off to the side and pant against the asphalt.
Frost’s cool fingers rub gently behind my ears. “Good. Let’s give it a minute, then you’re going to switch back.”
Oh yay, I think to myself, and a little whine comes out of my throat.
“It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs, and his voice is just so calm, so fucking steady, that I believe him. “Now. Shift back.”
It’s a struggle to focus on the change through the painful assault on my body. But Frost leaves his fingers against my forehead, and I focus on that little pinpoint of cool in a world of fire. My shifter magic races through me, tugging my legs back in, turning paws back to hands and my bent torso into a human one.
When I’m done, I’m lying on my side on the concrete with bits of broken glass, cigarette butts, and rocks beneath my naked body.
Frost’s palm slants over the side of my face. “Much better. Let’s do it one more time.”
By the time he coaxes me through another shift, and then back to human once more, I feel better. The shifter magic healed the worst of the road rash and knitted my broken rib back together. Whatever I’d done to my arm eased up, so now it just feels like a bad sprain.
New fingers touch a particularly raw spot on my outer thigh. Malix probes the semi-healed road rash as he says, “Good thing you aren’t human, kitty cat. That crash would have owned you.”
I laugh, but it turns into a cough and everything in my body starts to hurt. Like a low-level hum that you can only hear but not find the source of.
Frost’s hand still rests against my heated face, while Malix continues to check me over. His strong, capable fingers probe my injured arm.
Suddenly, I’m struck by the memory of him in the woods outside Erik’s house. His hands on me make me recall the way he was stroking himself, and for a split second, I’m back there in that little copse of trees, mesmerized by the beauty of him.
Even crashing my bike and ripping off acres of my skin can’t completely override the pull of my attraction to him. My breath catches in my throat as I stare down at his fingers wrapped around my arm.
Tension builds, like it always seems to. Even Frost’s hand goes utterly still on my face. The air is charged between us, with all the things we’ve left unsaid, all the things we’ll never admit.
Kian’s boots scuff over the concrete behind Malix. “Come on. We need to find this tree yesterday, before the poison kills her.”
Frost slips his hands below my arms and gently helps me sit up. “We have time.”
“Do we?” Kian asks gruffly. “Because I think maybe we were wrong about the timeline.”
I lean heavily on Malix’s arm as he and Frost maneuver me to my feet. It’s not easy, and I ache from the roots of my hair to my fucking toenails, but I’m mobile and I’m alive, so that’s good enough for now.
Once I’m vertical, I ask, “What do you mean we were wrong about the timeline?”
