Episode Eighty-Three

FROSTBITE

The relief is immediate.

I take in a deep breath as Bran wraps his cool hand around the back of my neck driving the sticky sweat from my skin.

The collar is off. I can relax and?—

"Hurry with the unbinding," Bran says.

"Maybe give her a minute," Baspin suggests.

"No." Bran's fingers press harder at my skin. "We have no time to coddle her. We do this now."

"Bran. I can't." I sob, body trembling as I hunch forward on my knees, arms wrapped around my chest. "Not yet."

"We can't wait, Mouse." He looks over at Rita. "Do it now."

With a frown, she swivels on her heels and digs into her bag again, producing the jar with my pendant inside. The same one Mom gave me all those years ago.

"Bran. Please ." Tears spill over my lids.

Even though this is what I've wanted all along, ever since I learned that Rita bound my powers at my mother's request, I can't think beyond the pain.

"You said not to stop, Mouse," he reminds me. "So we don't stop. Okay? You have more to give."

"I can channel some of the pain." Baspin crouches in front of me. "Give me your hand, Your Highness."

I don't balk at the title. I don't care what he calls me if he can help.

With one hand in Bran's grip, I give the other to Baspin. His hand is still bleeding, and his hold is hot and slippery, but as soon as our skin touches, warmth floods through me and the pain fades out.

I sway, leaning my weight into Bran's side.

The relief is sudden and damn near intoxicating, almost like a drug.

"Better, princess?" Baspin asks.

I nod. "Thank you."

"Go on," Bran says to Rita.

She sets the jar in front of me and pops off the top. The smell of the magic immediately permeates the air. This magic is different than the magic of the collar. It's crisper, cleaner, like a sharp winter breeze.

The scent of it stirs something old and forgotten inside of me.

Rita whispers a few foreign words and the nighttime breeze shifts across the garden, rattling the big leaves of an evergreen shrub behind me.

Next, Rita drops the pendant back into the jar, lights a match she pulls from a small box from her pocket, and drops that in too. The jar's interior ignites with a WHUMP as if it was full of gas. Blue flame licks along the glass, dancing over the rim.

Tingling starts in my fingers like my nerves have fallen asleep. The tingling spreads up my arms, then across my shoulders, down my chest.

Rita slams the jar's lid closed, hoists it over her head, then brings it down swiftly, smashing it into a thousand pieces on the cobblestone patio.

My body jerks back as if I have no control over it.

Bran locks his arms around me and Baspin grips my hand tighter.

The tingling morphs into a burn so bad, I feel like I've touched the sun.

Every nerve is fried. Every muscle locked up, cramping. I flail in Bran's hold. He brings my back to his chest and holds me tightly.

"Almost done, Mouse," he says to me.

I lose myself to the pain.

I think my eyes are squeezed shut, but I can still see the flickering twilight behind my closed lids and the twilight turns to frost until it edges my awareness.

Teeth chattering together, the heat turns cold, but the painful burn of it remains as the magic works its way through my veins, through every hollow of my body.

I know I must endure this to get to the other side, but in this moment, there is only the rawness of my body, and the persistent pain flooding every joint.

How much longer?

How long do I have to endure this torture to become who I was always meant to be?

A voice deep down at the far recess of my mind whispers: You were always you.

Like a snap of the fingers, the cold vanishes, the tingling fades, and power rushes through my body.

I suck in a deep breath, filling my lungs with fresh, crisp air.

"Mouse?" Bran says over top of me.

" Let me go ," I order and both Bran and Baspin drop me immediately.

I tip forward onto all fours, hands planted firmly on the cobblestone.

Frost spreads out from my fingertips.

My breath puffs out white on the air despite the warmth of late summer.

"Get back," Baspin commands.

"What's happening?" I ask, but my voice is hoarse and raw and the words are unintelligible even to my ears.

"Gods forgive me," Rita breathes out and when I look up, I see frost channeling up her legs, up and up toward her torso.

"Get out of here, witch!" Bran shouts. "Go, now!"

All around us, fully bloomed flowers glitter with frost, then burst like broken ice.

"It's too much power," Baspin tells Bran. "She can't control it."

"No shit." Bran reaches out for me, but hisses when our skin touches. His fingertips come away black with frostbite.

"How should she channel it?"

Baspin frowns and steps back as the frost spreads. "I don't know. This is a first for me."

"Christ." Bran scoops me up in his arms. His skin pinks, then blisters, then turns black. "Hang on to me, Mouse."

"Put me?—"

"Do not command me." His eyes are glowing like fire, the space between his brows pulled taut with annoyance and worry. "Don't even fucking think about it."

"Where are you taking her?" Baspin asks.

"Somewhere far away. You figure out how to help her control it while I figure out how to neutralize it for now."

"Got it. Call me when you can."

Bran nods, pulls me in tight to his chest, and takes off at a run.

The world is a blur as Bran races through the night and it's hard to mark the landscape to know where he's taking us.

It isn't until he slows to a jog that I recognize the pack house up on the hill.

Bran takes the stairs up to the front door two at a time, then drops me on the porch, his skin blackened with frostbite. He curses beneath his breath as he rings the doorbell with a jab of his elbow.

It's Fox who answers after several minutes. He sees Bran first and crosses his arms over his chest. "What the fuck do you?—"

He spots me next huddled on the porch.

"I need the Alpha," Bran says, holding his left arm close to his body as if he's trying to warm it up. "Hurry. We don't have a lot of time."

Frost licks up the porch columns. I'm shivering now, power radiating through my bones.

Why can't I stop this? Why can't I control it? It feels too big and I feel too small.

I thought unbinding my power just meant I'd have better access to my voice. No one told me about this . About ice and frost and the piercing cold.

Is this normal?

Am I broken?

The Alpha of the Midnight Pack fills up the doorway of the pack house. Several lamps are glowing in the house beyond him, riming his broad shoulders in golden light.

He looks from Bran to me.

"Heat," Bran says. "We need to counteract the magic and I run too cold. I just make it worse."

Cal thinks this over, then pulls out his cell phone and taps in a few commands. "I think I have an idea," he says and comes over to me, slipping his phone back into his pants pocket.

"Just be careful," Bran warns.

Cal frowns at me and I can see the sympathy in his eyes.

"Jessie?"

My teeth clack loudly together. Snow starts to fall in the summer air.

"I'm going to pick you up," Cal says. "All right?"

I can barely nod.

The Alpha ducks down and threads one arm beneath my knees, the other around my waist. He growls from the sudden chill, then the bite of frost, but his wolf's heat radiates through his skin, burning off the cold.

"I've got her," Cal tells Bran. "Go drink so you can heal."

Bran shakes out his blackened fingers. "I'm not leaving her."

Steam fills the air between me and Cal.

"You're no good to her missing fingers. Go."

Bran looks like he wants to argue but knows better. The Alpha is right.

"Don't leave her side," he says.

"I won't," Cal promises.

"The Summer Queen will be coming for her."

"Then I guess you should hurry up then."

Bran grumbles as Cal turns away, carrying me off down a darkened path into the woods.

"I mean it, wolf," Bran calls. "Don't leave her side."

The light from the pack house fades the further into the woods we go. Cal says nothing, but I can hear the steady drum of his heart through his shirt.

When the trees thin out to a clearing, I spot a little outbuilding shaped like a large barrel with a door and a long, rectangular window beside it.

Cal wrestles the door open, trying to keep me firmly in his grip, and when we walk inside, I catch the faint scent of cedar. The air is already warm.

"It's a sauna," he tells me and gingerly sets me on a bench along the far wall. "I started it up ahead of time with my phone so it's already nice and toasty. I use it for contrast therapy. It helps me regulate my wolf's aggression."

The chattering in my teeth lessens. "What's contrast therapy?"

"Hot and cold." He pulls off my boots, then my socks. They're stiff and ice flakes off the toes. "There's a deep spring nearby. I go into the cold water, then come into the hot sauna. Some days I have to go back and forth for hours. It seems to be worse since…" He trails off, his gaze going distant.

"Worse since what?"

"Sam," he says, almost a growl. "But that's another conversation for another time. Let's get as many layers off as you can. I'll turn around."

"I can't feel my hands."

With a grumble, he grabs the hem of my shirt and pulls it off slowly, then helps me wiggle out of my leggings leaving me in just my bra and panties. Within seconds, his back is to me and he's handing off a clean, dry towel to wrap around my body.

"Thank you." I tuck the thick cotton around my chest and then lay back on the bench, soaking in the heat.

The overwhelming rush of power dissipates taking the chill and the frost with it.

"That was bad," I tell him. "I didn't know…"

He drops onto the bench across from me, the steam of the sauna making him look more dream-like.

"You'll get it figured out."

I snort and close my eyes. "I'm not so sure. Every time I think I'm on a path to become more of who I'm supposed to be, something bad happens."

"Well did you think it would be easy?"

I glance at him with heavy eyes. "I guess I did, yeah."

"That was your first mistake."

"You sound just like Bran."

Cal laughs. "I'd ask you kindly to keep that to yourself."

I lay my arm over my forehead feeling infinitely better now that the hot air of the sauna is driving out the cold.

"You two are more alike than you'd like to admit."

"Probably true."

"Definitely true." I peek at him again from around the shadow of my arm. "So…Sam."

Cal sighs and looks down at his hands. He absently rubs his thumb over the opposite knuckle like he's trying to ease some of the tension in his joints. "I'm confident we'll work through our stuff."

I laugh through my nose. "Have you met Sam?"

He laughs too and leans back against the wall, hands now folded over his midsection.

My eyes start to droop.

"Get some rest, Jessie," Cal says. "I'll stay by your side until Duval returns."

With that promise, I'm immediately out.