“What now, Kit?” he called back to me, brushing snow from his jacket and glaring daggers my way. Before I was able to respond, detailing all the excruciatingly painful ways in which he might die, the ground shook again. This time when it stopped shaking, there was an ominous rumbling from higher up the mountainside.
Without any further warning, a massive wave of snow and ice came crashing down onto the mountain road, directly where Simon had been standing. For what felt like an hour, but can't have been more than a minute or two, tons upon tons of snow flowed down from the mountain above and into the gully below while I watched wide-eyed in shock.
When it finally slowed to a stop, all that was left of the road where Simon had stood was a massive wall of white. From the way the road had curved around the edge of the valley we were in, I could tell that a section of almost three hundred yards had been wiped out by the mini-avalanche, taking my nemesis with it.
Well, fuck.
36
When the dragons found me again, I was still frozen to the same spot, just staring at the heap of snow and ice where I had last seen Simon.
“Hey, guys,” I said in a bit of a daze as they touched down on the road behind me. “Everything okay with the shifters?”
Vali’s warm breath ruffled my hair, and I dragged my attention away from the obliterated road and turned back to them. If I had thought the two of them had an intense stare as humans, it was nothing on their dragon stare.
“Wait, do you guys even have proper eyelids? Do you blink?” My balance was feeling a bit shaky, and I needed to brace my hand against Cole’s face to stay upright. “What caused all of this?” I waved my hand at the avalanche, but in the sudden absence of action, exhaustion was hitting me like a sledgehammer. My eyes rolled back as my legs turned to jelly, and I crumpled.
The sound of arguing woke me, and I looked around with barely open eyelids. From all appearances, I was in bed again. Patting around with my hand seemed to confirm this theory so I rubbed my tired eyes, then opened them a bit more.
From where I lay, I could see the shadows of the guys in the next room as they argued loudly with the door wide open. The discussion had obviously been going for a while before I woke up, so it took me a minute to work out what was going on.
“He’s right!” I yelled out, dropping in my own input without bothering to get out of bed. My body seemed to weigh a ton, and my joints were aching like I had the flu or something.
“Thank you, princess. For once you’re using your brain!” Austin yelled back at me.
“We weren’t disagreeing with you, Aus,” Caleb’s voice responded, a bit calmer than his twin was sounding. “We simply wanted to understand what you were saying. You weren’t making a whole heck of a lot of sense, bro.”
“He’s trying to say that I can heal myself faster and easier if I’m touching someone,” I offered because they were right that Austin seemed to be having a hard time explaining it. “And faster still if the contact is a bit more sexual.”
My eyes must have been playing tricks on me still because I could have sworn Cole and Caleb just did a rapid-fire rock-paper-scissors, then Caleb swore profusely.
“We will need your help in town anyway, Caleb,” Wesley said with a strange tightness to his voice. “Let me just check on Kit, and we can go—” There was a small scuffle out of my line of sight, then Wesley darted through the open bedroom door and shut it behind him.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered, meeting my eyes with a small frown. “You look…”
“Stunning?” I joked. “I know. I feel it too.”
Wesley cracked a small smile and knelt down beside the bed so his head was level with mine.
“We need to head out and help the town clean up, check on anyone left injured, things like that,” he told me, looking a bit disappointed about it. “But we should be back in a couple of hours. Did you want me to get you anything while we’re out?”
His thoughtfulness made me blink a couple of times in confusion, and he smiled with a bit more warmth. “All right, restock the coffee and buy Kit a cheeseburger. Got it.” Leaning forward, he gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek, then left the room before I could respond.
Once the door was open again, Caleb pushed in and halfway dove at me, wrapping me in a massive hug through the blankets and burying his face in my hair. Over his dark head, I saw Vali and Austin leaning against the doorframe.
“Kitty Kat…” Caleb mumbled into my neck as he moved my hair aside with his face and began kissing the soft skin below my ear. “You’ve got to stop with this fainting business. It’s scary as fuck.”
“I’ll try.” A laugh snorted out of me. “I promise it’s not intentional. Maybe this Vic guy can shed some light on my abilities and stop it from happening.”
“That would probably be useful,” Vali commented from the doorway with a dry tone of voice. “Come on, Caleb. I’d rather get this cleanup done quickly so we can get back here.”
Caleb lifted his face to look me in the eye, pushing up on his forearms as he frowned down at me.
“Try not to get in any trouble while we’re gone, okay? Otherwise, there will be trouble…” He narrowed his eyes at me in warning, and I laughed.
“Understood. Go; help these poor people. We can debrief when you’re all back.” Leaning forward to close the gap, I placed a light kiss on his lips, then prodded him in the side.
“Ugh, fine.” He sighed. “We will be back as soon as possible.” Smacking another quick kiss on my lips, he pushed off the bed and left the room. For a moment, Vali and Austin stayed where they were, then Vali gave me a nod and followed after Caleb.
“Asshole,” I greeted Austin with a small grin. “Thanks for the assistance earlier.”
“No problem,” he murmured, his gaze on me intense and unblinking. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks. So do you.” He really did. There was dried blood all crusted down one side of his face and into his hair, and the bags under his eyes looked dark and bruised. Neither of us spoke for a long, tense moment as our eyes remained locked on one another. Austin was the first to break our stare off, dropping his gaze to the floor and rubbing the back of his neck. Glancing back up, he opened his mouth as if to say something, then must have changed his mind as he just nodded thoughtfully and left.
As the front door slammed closed, Cole’s impressive frame appeared in the entrance to the bedroom. His face was carefully blank, his cold stone-like mask firmly in place, and it made me sit up a little in the bed.
“Hey, big guy,” I said softly, as if I were speaking to a wild horse ready to bolt. “What’s with the face?”
“What face?” he asked, meeting my eyes with his unwavering stare, giving nothing away.
“That one.” I pointed to his face. “You’re giving me your closed-off, emotionless face. Why? What’s going on in that head that you don’t want me to see?”