Chapter 16: : Chapter 16

I clenched my phone as I took the elevator down to the lobby. Savannah had called me ten minutes ago and ordered me to meet her outside. Ordered.

.

I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

The doors opened, and I cursed the fates as I strode toward the glass door.

“Sir.” The bellman nodded and opened the door for me, and I handed him a fifty.

My truck was idling in front of the building in the zone, Savannah Caine sitting in the driver’s seat like she owned the godsdamned thing. The problem was, she looked fucking good driving my truck.

I reached for the door handle. It was locked. Savannah glanced at me and gestured with her thumb that I was going to be sitting in the passenger seat.

I would not have tolerated this shit from anyone else on the planet. Why her?

My patience dwindling, I crossed in front of the truck, not wholly trusting that she wouldn’t run me down.

I climbed up and clicked on my seatbelt. Savannah tossed a vial into my lap. “Where to, grumpy?”

She gripped the steering wheel, and I noticed the pink welts on her hand. Anger and protectiveness flashed through me, catching me off guard. I slid the vial into my pocket, worried I might crush it.

“What the hell happened to you?” I growled, my jaw cracking.

Startled, Savannah tugged her sweater sleeve down to conceal her hand. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

She didn’t understand, I couldn’t simply . That wasn’t the way the mate bond worked. I could almost feel her pain and couldn’t tear my eyes away.

But the last thing I was going to do right now was explain our mate bond. Hopefully, that would all go away with the cure. If it didn’t, I wasn’t sure what I would do. Maybe ship her off to Prague, or to another magical city.

The farther, the better.

I gripped the grab handle above the door, and something buckled in the roof of the cab. “I need to know.”

My voice was low and charged with enough power to compel the answer.

Savannah’s body tensed, and she stared at me. “Casey brought me to the family business. I went inside, and my skin blistered. It’s fine and already better than it was.”

? My head snapped to her, fury coursing through my veins. I’d torch that fucking place if I found out where it was.

Savannah glided her hand over the seat and placed it on my leg. “Are you okay?”

Her touch sent heat surging through my body, which only exacerbated my rage and added an unrelenting urge to claim my mate.

I glanced down at her hand, my chest rising and falling with each strained breath. I couldn’t help but stiffen as indecent images filled my mind. “That’s not helping matters.”

Shock and then understanding crossed her face, and she removed her hand. “Sorry. What can I do to calm you down?”

“Drive.” I punched Alia’s address into my phone and clicked it into the holder on the dash.

She would be able to smell my rage and desire just as easily as I could sense hers, so I cranked up the AC and rolled down the window even though it was a blistering hot day. Sitting so close to her was abject torture, and it took twenty minutes in traffic before I managed to wrestle my murderous and lecherous urges into submission.

We didn’t talk until Savannah pulled up beside Alia’s building and turned off the car. “Feeling better?”

I narrowed my eyes at her, detecting the faintest trace of amusement in her concerned expression. She had no idea how attractive my wolf found her.

“Let’s go,” I said, climbing out of the truck. “And give me the keys.”

After slamming her door shut, she stopped in front of the truck and dangled the keys out of reach. “Can’t handle a woman in the driver’s seat?”

I closed the distance and snatched them from her hands. There were only inches between us, and it was impossible to miss the swell of her breast as her pulse quickened. A bead of sweat rolled down her collarbone, and I leaned forward, wanting to taste it. I paused, breathing in her citrus scent like a fine perfume.

Instead, I dragged my nose up her neck, feeling the prickle of her skin as shivers worked their way through her. “You can drive my truck anytime, darling. All you have to do is ask.”

One more hint of her fucking sweetness, and I was going to lose my damned mind. I stepped away abruptly, leaving her breathless and wanting. Her desire wrapped around me, taunting me like a siren’s song.

Fuck, this was going to be harder than I’d expected.

Though instinct urged me to claim her and ravage her body like the queen my wolf wanted her to be, I couldn’t let that happen. Sex would seal our fate, and that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, no matter how much I wanted to fuck Savannah Caine.

We needed to cure her today before both of us did something reckless.

Steeling my resolve, I opened the front door to Alia’s building and waited for Savannah to enter.

She squared her shoulders and walked past me, feigning disinterest, though I could smell her heat, and it only aroused me further.

I dragged my hand through my hair and followed her to the elevator. The ride up was tortuously slow, and when the doors opened, Savannah bolted out.

The shifter standing guard in front of Alia’s apartment tensed but recognized me and spoke into a small radio on his shirt. A recent break-in had changed the potion maker’s perspective on the reliability of demons.

A few seconds later, the heavy wooden door swung open, and Alia appeared in a silky floral dress. “Jaxson.” She eyed Savannah and smiled. “And Savannah, nice to meet you. Please come in.”

She motioned for us to enter her loft.

“Thank you so much for helping us,” Savannah said.

“Of course. I’m sorry you’ve been afflicted, and I hope I can help with an antidote. But I just want to make sure you understand that the cure may be worse than the affliction. Depending on when you were…infected, it might take several days to work through your system. Whatever you experienced before, this will be far, harder on you.”

Savannah’s heartbeat raced, and I could smell the fear rising from her. It was one thing to hear this over the phone, another in person. She set her jaw. “Nothing could be worse than this. I need to be myself again.”

My stomach twisted as my desire to protect her wrestled with deep resentment. Her blatant disgust and horror at being a wolf was infuriating.

The sooner we got rid of her wolf , the sooner I’d be rid of the bond.

Alia nodded. “Okay, then. You have the wolfsbane?”

“Jaxson has it. I hope it’s enough,” Savannah said, taking in the huge space Alia had decorated with plants and books and faerie lights.

I gave the vial of the cloudy mixture to Alia, my claws aching at the thought of that poison. If Savannah knew how many people had been killed by that stuff, she might think differently of the LaSalles she called family.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.

The apothecary shook the vial as she crossed to a table in the corner that was covered in bottles and bundles of dried herbs. “This will be more than enough. I just need one more ingredient—your blood.”

Savannah spun around, her eyes dropping to the small gold knife and dish that Alia picked up from the table. She crossed her arms. “Absolutely not. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t give your blood to anyone.”

Alia shrugged. “Wise. I understand your mistrust. You don’t know me, and blood is a very powerful magical component. Thankfully, we can make do with other things.” She rummaged around on a shelf and held out a disposable plastic cup. “Fill this up a little. In the bathroom.”

Savannah looked on for a second without comprehending, and then her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Your choice. We need to test how it reacts with an essence from your body.”

Savannah turned red, and I could smell her embarrassment. I smiled and took a seat on the sofa, amusement replacing my earlier sour mood.

“Think of it like a pregnancy test.” Alia handed Savannah the cup and motioned toward a room at the other end of the loft. “The bathroom’s back there.”

Savannah’s jaw slackened, and then, glaring at me, she turned on her heel and stormed toward the bathroom.

After five minutes, she returned and awkwardly handed Alia the cup. “Wipe that grin off your face, Jaxson,” she said.

I most certainly would not. Savannah took great pleasure in irritating me and was due for a taste of her own medicine.

“So how does this work?” Savannah watched as Alia plucked various herbs from the table and crushed them in a mortar.

“It’s fairly simple.” Alia grabbed a tincture from the shelf and poured it into a beaker, then sprinkled in a mixture of red and white powder and stirred it with a glass stick as it fizzed and turned pink. “I’ll add the wolfsbane and urine, and the solution will turn red if you have lycanthropy.”

Savannah put her hands over her face and sighed. “Can’t you just give me the cure? I know it’s lycanthropy.”

Alia smiled. “I’m sure it is, but I need to be certain what you have before I administer you a potentially toxic antidote. Now, please step back as I pour in the wolfsbane. In concentrations like this, it’ll burn your eyes.”

Savannah didn’t need much convincing. She crossed the room and stood beside me, arms wrapped around her. Alia put on a pair of safety glasses, then opened the vial of wolfsbane and poured two drops into the beaker. Even ten feet away, my throat tightened, and Savannah launched into a coughing fit.

“Sorry!” Alia vigorously mixed the potion, adding in several more ingredients. “As soon as I add the pee, the wolfsbane will be rendered inert and it shouldn’t affect you.”

Savannah’s pulse was distractingly loud, and she nervously bit her lower lip. She wanted the cure to her lycanthropy, and though that’s what I also wanted, something about it still stung.

A muscle in my jaw tensed as Alia dumped the cup of Savannah’s urine into the beaker. I leaned forward, anxious for the solution to turn red. But it didn’t.

Alia gasped and took several steps back as the contents of the beaker turned a blueish purple and began bubbling. “Oh, no!”

She dropped into a crouch as the beaker exploded, sending glass shards across the room.

I was up in a flash, drawing Savannah’s body to my chest as the scalding projectiles embedded into my back. Growling at the pain, I looked down at Savannah, who was trembling.

“It didn’t turn red,” she whispered.

I said nothing because I’d seen it, too, and I had no fucking clue what that meant. The wounds on my back began to heal, and the glass shards dropped to ground as my body ejected them. Once I was certain Savannah was unharmed, I turned to Alia, who was inspecting the mess on her table.

“Damn. That’s never happened before,” she muttered.

“Yes, but what does it mean?” Savannah crossed toward Alia, wringing her hands in worry.

The potion maker inspected the base of the beaker with a frown. “Well, it means that it’s not fucking lycanthropy, and now there’s pee everywhere.”

Savannah braced herself against the table. “So I can’t be cured?”

My stomach knotted.

Alia sighed, traces of remorse in her beautiful features. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what this is, and the only cure I have is for lycanthropy. If you were to take it, it would likely kill you. It’s too risky.”

Savannah strode to the window overlooking the balcony, hugging herself tightly. Her deep melancholy tore at me, and my wolf surged in my chest. I stepped close and gently touched my hand to her back, subtly pushing my alpha presence into her to calm the turmoil of emotion behind her sad eyes.

Perhaps there was no cure.

My wolf strained in my chest with excitement, but I shoved him down and bent my head close to her ear. “Let’s go.”