Page 46 of A Bloom in Winter

Never. Try never.

“What’s your favorite food?” he asked as they kept going, with him holding pine boughs out of her way.

And that was how it went. Back and forth, easy, but exciting. And when the platform came into view, Mayhem wished the damn thing was across the state.

“I just feel bad,” she said as she let the grain bag fall to the ground.

“Because you like mass-produced American chocolate? There’s no shame in M&M’s, you know.”

“No, the deer.” She looked around. “I’m leaving, and I worry that they won’t get enough to eat.”

“Where are you going?” he said softly.

There was a long silence. “I know, I know, they’ve been foraging for years through the wintertime, but I want to do something to help . . . someone.”

Out came a Swiss Army knife, and she made quick work of the top of the bag’s knitted fabric. With another grunt, she barrel hugged the weight up onto the platform and let the grain pour out. When things were empty, she shoved at the pile, flattening it.

“I think the birds get some. The squirrels.” Mahrci picked up the empty bag and rolled it into a ball. “I want them all to have a full belly—”

Off in the distance, a set of headlights flared through the trees and came down the lane. As Mahrci glanced at the strobing, her expression tightened with fear.

“Who do you worry’s in that car?” he asked grimly.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

God knows how many hours after Callum turned down Blade’s invitation to eat, the sound of the front entrance of the sanatorium opening woke him up. As he lifted his chin off his collarbone and opened his eyes, he was momentarily confused as to what time it was. But he knew where he was, even though the hallway outside of the private quarters was cast in shadows.

And his sore ass and stiff shoulders suggested that, yes, he had fallen asleep sitting up against the wall.

Maybe it was Blade coming back.

Sometime after the scent of scallops and asparagus had wafted through the door’s jambs, the other male had stepped out and said he was leaving for a while, but that any wolven on the property, especially ones who were—in his words—tense, wall-eyed, and twitchy, were welcome to stay as long as they liked.

Evidently, the male had bought the place from the Brotherhood after years of roaming—and was willing to be hospitable.

“I’m not wall-eyed,” Callum muttered into the dark.

Out in the waiting area, the motion-activated lights came on and the glow rounded the corner. Bending his legs up, one of his knee joints popped and he winced as his butt repositioned itself on the hard floor.

It was time for him to go, anyway.

As he went to get to this feet, he had to lock his molars. Funny, how you could turn into a board just by sitting on them—

Apex stepped into the hallway. “How’s your ankle.”

Callum froze.

Blink. Blink. Blink—“You came all this way to check on my leg?” he muttered.

“It’s not that far. As the crow flies.”

“How did you”—Callum grunted as he got all the way to vertical with the help of the wall—“know I was here?”

The vampire took that tube of Polysporin out of his leather jacket. “It wasn’t that hard.”

“You figured it out from an antibacterial lotion?”

Apex eyed the stuff. “It’s an ointment, not a lotion. And the tube was not in the same place I’d left it on the newel post, so I knew you’d seen it. And I figured if you took the plow off the front of the truck you were going on the highway.”

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