7

Infusions, runes and an Alpha at my door

Anne

Nathan didn't let go of my hand for the next ten minutes.

Not because I was enjoying the contact.

That would have been unprofessional, and professionalism was very important when you were kneeling in front of a half-naked, feverish, and absurdly attractive Alpha.

“I need to get up,” I told him firmly.

Nathan opened one eye.

“No.”

“I have to make the tea.”

“Do it here.”

“The kitchen doesn’t fit under your bed.”

His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist, and a shiver ran down to my stomach. Nathan inhaled slowly, as if he’d noticed my reaction; the corner of his mouth turned up.

“You’re flirting again,” I accused him.

“Fever.”

“Convenient.”

Nina sighed inside my head.

Leave him alone; he’s wounded, and he’s gorgeous, she said with amusement.

Garret was gorgeous too, under the right lighting.

Don’t compare this monument to that design disaster.

I couldn’t argue with my she-wolf.

Orla approached with a tray.

“I need to administer another dose,” she said.

Nathan growled, and I looked at the vials.

“What’s in it?”

“Dream root, purified silver, and—”

“No.”

Orla looked up.

“Excuse me?”

“The silver is blocking her ability to expel the poison. Her body interprets it as a second threat.”

“I’m the chief healer.”

“And I’m the one who got the Alpha to stop trying to rip off heads. We have different talents.”

Cassian hid a smile behind his hand, while Orla didn’t seem to appreciate my contribution to medicine.

“What do you suggest?”

Carefully, I opened the old recipe book my mother had left me.

The pages smelled of vanilla, dried herbs, and time. Many recipes looked like simple desserts, but Mom had always hidden instructions within instructions.

I remembered a drink she used to make when I had a fever.

Hot milk, honey, cinnamon bark, orange peel, yarrow, and three black seeds she called “sleeping stars.”

We didn’t have those seeds, but Orla kept star anise in one of her cabinets.

“I need milk, honey, cinnamon, orange, yarrow, and anise,” I asked, and she looked at me as if I’d asked for a live duck.

“Are you going to cure the Alpha with a drink for kids?”

Nathan squeezed my fingers.

“Give her… whatever she asks for,” Nathan said firmly.

His voice came out hoarse.

Orla motioned to an assistant.

Then they set up a small table by the fire. It wasn’t a kitchen, but it had a pot, water, and enough space to keep anyone from losing an eyebrow.

As I heated the milk, I could feel Nathan’s gaze on my back.

It wasn’t a leering gaze; it was attentive, as if my every movement mattered.

“Stop staring at me,” I said without turning around.

“No.”

“You’re very obedient,” I said sarcastically.

“I’m an Alpha.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying no one ever disciplined you as a child.”

Cassian choked on a laugh, and Nathan smiled. It was barely a movement, but it transformed his entire face.

I found myself staring at him longer than I should have.

Nathan had a fever, his hair was tousled, and a bandage crossed his shoulder. Even so, he looked like the kind of man who could appear in a woman’s dreams and charge rent.

We’re lost, Nina announced.

I added the honey to the pot, and the aroma filled the room.

As I stirred, I thought of my mom, Helena. Of her hands guiding mine. Of her voice telling me that a recipe wasn’t just for nourishing the body but the soul as well.

“Every ingredient has a memory,” she would repeat patiently. “You must ask it to remember what it was created for.”

I closed my eyes tightly.

I asked the infusion to remember the calm, the warmth, the blood drawing in, and the warm sun. In an instant, the spoon grew warm between my fingers, and the drink glowed with a golden radiance.

Cassian took a step toward the table.

“Is that normal?” he asked.

“In my kitchens, yes.”

It was a lie, but it sounded convincing.

I poured the tea into a cup.

Nathan was still standing by the wall, though his breathing had gotten worse. I walked over and sat on the edge of the broken bed.

“You have to drink this,” I ordered.

“I’m not five years old.”

“Then stop acting like you are.”

Nathan tried to take the cup, but his hand trembled, and without thinking, I held it for him. Our fingers brushed against each other around the ceramic.

Nathan looked at me over the rim as he drank.

It was ridiculous.

I was just helping a wounded man; there shouldn’t be anything intimate about holding a cup. Yet I felt every breath he took and every brush of his lips against the rim I was holding.

When he finished, a drop remained at the corner of his mouth.

I wiped it away with my thumb before I even thought, and he froze.

So did I.

His eyes drifted down to my lips, and the atmosphere shifted.

For a second, I forgot that there were healers, warriors, and a possible war waiting outside.

Nathan tilted his head ever so slightly, but I felt his breath on my skin.

“Alpha,” Orla interrupted.

I pulled away so quickly that I almost spilled the cup.

“Next time we’ll charge an entrance f*e,” I murmured under my breath.

Nathan closed his eyes, but he looked amused.

A few minutes later, the trembling in his hands subsided and the black veins began to recede.

Orla stepped closer to examine him.

“The fever is breaking.”

“Yeah, that usually happens when the treatment works,” I said sarcastically.

She ignored me.

Nathan leaned back against the pillows. The partial transformation faded. His claws turned back into hands, and his eyes regained their natural gray color.

“Anne,” he said more clearly.

“I’m still here."

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

“You took an arrow for me. I thought it would be rude to let you die.”

“We’re not even.”

“We’re not?”

“I still owe you a cloak.”

I smiled involuntarily.

“The cloak fared better than my dress,” I admitted with a frown.

Nathan raised a hand and touched the black pin still pinned to my chest.

“Keep it,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“It’s yours.”

“It’s yours now.”

A tightness settled beneath my ribs.

I wasn’t used to receiving things without hearing afterward just how much I owed for them.

Nathan slowly withdrew his hand, then his expression changed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Cassian pointed to his chest, and black lines were beginning to spread from the wound.

The lines weren’t veins; these were symbols.

Slender runes, intertwined like branches, traced their way across Nathan’s skin until they reached his collarbone.

Orla turned pale.

“I’ve never seen that before,” she said fearfully.

I had.

I opened the cookbook with trembling hands and flipped through several pages until I found the drawing hidden beneath a recipe for spiced bread. They were the same curves, the same three circles, and the same crescent moon in the center.

“They’re identical,” I whispered.

Nathan’s eyes widened.

“What?”

I showed him the page, and the silence grew heavy.

Orla tried to take the cookbook, but I closed it first.

“No.”

Her eyes hardened.

“We need to study it.”

“And I need some privacy to figure out what’s going on.”

Nathan took a deep breath.

“Anne, keep the book.”

Orla wanted to argue, but Cassian shook his head.

“The Alpha has spoken.”

Nathan eventually fell asleep shortly after. I didn’t leave until his breathing became deep and steady. Before I went out, I tucked a blanket over his chest, and his fingers found mine even in his sleep.

He squeezed them gently.

“Home,” he murmured, and my heart warmed.

I had to step away before I did something stupid, like believing him.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

The runes, Mother’s voice, and the Tribunal’s deadline kept spinning around in my head.

I got out of bed to get some water.

When I opened the door, I found Nathan sitting in a chair across the hallway.

He was wearing dark pants, a shirt open over his bandages, and a worn-out expression. Even so, he looked like he could start a war before breakfast.

Two guards stood several meters away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Nathan looked up.

“Sitting.”

“Thanks for the demonstration. I was afraid you were trying to fly.”

He tried to stand up, but he staggered, so I grabbed his arm.

“You should be in bed.”

“So should you.”

“I wasn’t pierced by an arrow.”

“You were chained,” he said, his eyes fixed on the red marks on my wrists.

Nathan ran a finger close to one of them, without touching it.

“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, and that threw me off for a second.

“You were unconscious.”

“It happened under my authority.”

“You’re not responsible for every idiot who wears your emblem.”

“Yes, I am.”

I leaned against the doorframe.

“Are you making sure I don’t escape?” I asked with a hint of amusement.

Nathan shook his head slowly.

“I’m not watching you,” he said, glancing down the hall, where two counselors were talking in hushed tones. “I’m watching them.”

“Why?”

“Maxwell tried to get in an hour ago; he wanted to interrogate you while you were asleep.”

My outrage flared up completely.

“And you?”

“I told him that no one would cross this threshold without your permission.”

I looked at him.

Nathan was wounded, weak, and sitting outside my room because he’d decided to protect a boundary that I myself had established.

“You could have sent guards.”

“You don’t trust them,” he said simply.

“I don’t completely trust you either.”

“I know.”

He wasn’t offended, and that surprised me.

My heart did something dangerous and tender.

“Nathan…”

“I’m not going to hand you over,” he said firmly.

The hallway seemed to run out of air.

“You don’t know what that might cost you.”

“I know.”

“We’ve known each other since last night.”

Nathan held my gaze.

“And yet you took an arrow from my shoulder, faced off against five men, and entered a room where my wolf was trying to kill everyone.”

“It sounds worse when you list it all out,” I said with a smile.

“I’m not going to hand you over.”

Nina sighed inside me.

That man is sitting wounded in front of our door, she said emotionally.

I see him.

I was just checking to make sure your eyes were working.

I opened the door wider.

“Come in.”

Nathan looked inside and then at me.

“Are you sure?”

That question broke down another small defense.

“Yes. But only because that chair looks uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to die because of a piece of furniture. It would be an undignified end for an Alpha.”

Nathan stood up carefully.

As he passed by me, his shoulder brushed against mine; the contact was light.

The sigh we both let out was not.