Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,33

all over his skin and redwood needles tangling in his hair. But it was working, and his wounds were closing, shrinking so quickly I could see the skin knitting together with my eyes as well as with my magical senses.

I slumped back, sitting on my feet and drawing what felt like my first breath since I’d started. What was with this overwhelming relief that made all my limbs loose and weak? Parker was gone for now, and I wasn’t dying with Matthew, bound in manacles that cut me off from the ability to save myself — but my situation wasn’t much better than it had been. Dor was still hovering nearby, poised to incapacitate me — or possibly make me glow in the dark — if I tried anything. Ian was ready to kill me. The next step would probably be trying to force me to lift the spell on Matthew, and between Dor and Nate and Ian, they might be able to.

The spell. That reminded me. I reached out along the conduit of magic binding me to Matthew and adjusted the balance of it, carefully and subtly so as not to attract Nate’s attention. When I was done, I was completely free of the effects of it: I didn’t need to be in Matthew’s proximity anymore.

But I left it so that he had to be near me. Because I was pretty sure that if we were separated, it wasn’t going to work out so well for me, starting with Ian being able to threaten me without Matthew’s interference and ending with being locked in that fucking basement again.

I lessened the effects on him, too, though. I didn’t need more near-misses with being mated to brighten up my life.

When I opened my eyes, Matthew’s were starting to flutter open too. Ian had dropped down on his knees by Matthew’s head and was gripping his shoulder so hard his knuckles were white, the look on his face painfully naked, relief and love in his eyes and the set of his mouth.

But Matthew’s hazy gaze found me first. His lips stretched in a wonky sort of grin, and he blinked up at me loopily. “Anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?” he slurred.

“What the fuck?” Ian’s lip curled in disgust. “Did you scramble his brains even more?” He glared at me accusingly, and he was turning a dangerous shade of red.

“I had to channel most of my magic into him to save his life, and yes, it’s temporarily scrambling his brains even more,” I said, slurring a bit myself. Shit. I’d really drained myself. He’d been so close to death…I shuddered a little. The result of being low on magic, no doubt. “You’re fucking welcome.”

To my shock, Ian’s anger seemed to fade away a little. He looked down at Matthew, and then back up at me. “I still think you’re fucking scum. But thank you.”

I couldn’t help it; I started to laugh, dropping down cross-legged next to Matthew and resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. It was both the best and the worst expression of gratitude I’d ever gotten, since honestly? I couldn’t remember another time someone had thanked me for anything for years and years. Maybe I hadn’t done anything worth being thanked for.

I laughed harder, and it started coming out more like sobs. The skin of my face buzzed and tingled, my fingers were numb, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

“We need to get them both to the house. He’s used too much magic, and Matthew’s still out of it.” Was that Nate’s voice? Maybe. It stretched and throbbed, like the funhouse-mirror version of sound.

Hands pulled me up, whose hands I didn’t know, and then someone pushed me through one of Dor’s weird void-spaces. I emerged in Matthew’s bedroom and someone else shoved me onto the bed, where I landed next to Matthew like a felled tree.

Chapter 9

Down the Drain

It was quite a while later, going by the dark window and the glow of the lamp on the nightstand, when I crawled out of a groggy sleep to the sound of quiet voices. Long practice with waking up in strange places had given me the ability to come to consciousness without stirring or making a sound, so I lay there perfectly still, figuring out who was there before I let them know I was awake.

“…saved my life,” Matthew was saying. “He’s a little shit, but he’s obviously not a total psycho.”

Ah, they were talking