Page 51 of Threadbound

So he shifted forms, an unconscious scream ripped from his throat as his injuries pulled and tore, the timbre of his voice shifting from man to bird with his vocal chords.

“Holy fucking shit!” Jamie gasped, wondering if whatever it was that had caused Bran’s madness was now affecting him. Because?—

Because Bran had just?—

“Holyfuckingshit,” he repeated.

There was a giant raven sitting in his chair, half-covered with the blanket that had been on Bran’s lap. It let out a rasping, pathetic squawk and tried to move, one wing bent at a horrible angle?—

“Fuck,” Jamie repeated again. “Oh, fuck, that’s—You’re—Oh,fuck.” And he sat down abruptly on the floor, leaning forward and putting his forehead in his hands because his legs didn’t really hold him up anymore.

Breathing was proving a challenge Jamie wasn’t sure he was going to keep being able to do, and darkness was beginning to close in around the edges of his vision.

Maybe it was carbon monoxide poisoning. Because people didn’t—People couldn’t?—

But what if Momma was right?

All the stories, all the whispered legends that Jamie and his half-siblings had grown up listening to in the darkness under blankets and pillow forts, all the careful setting out of dishes of milk and honey, of fires at the edge of the woods, and crusts of bread or bits of cake that she had put out for the fairies…

Jamie had always assumed that it had been his mother who had made the bread or cake or milk disappear. Or neighborhood cats or squirrels.

Well, he was starting to reevaluate that position right about now. Because he’d just watched a man—a fairy—a fae—a whatever the fuck he was—just turn into a bird right in front of him.

A massive, black raven.

A lot like the raven that had followed Jamie’s running steps over the last several months.

And just as he was about to start panicking about the fact that Bran had apparently been stalking him as both a mananda bird, his thoughts were interrupted by a thump, a pained squawk, and rustling as the damn giant bird—Bran—fell off the chair and started trying to untangle itself from the blanket.

“No! Stop! You’ll hurt yourself,” Jamie insisted. He wasn’t about to try standing again, so he crawled over and put out a hand to stop Bran—because Bran was now a fuckingbird—from trying to move any more. He’d managed to get his head out, but the rest of him was fairly tangled. “You can’t—you’ve wrecked your stitches. And your arm… wing… whatever.”

The raven—which was absolutely huge for a raven, more like a raccoon-size than a bird—blinked at him, then let out a sad little caw.

“You’re the one who jumped down here,” Jamie pointed out, trying to smother the panic with dry humor. “And now I don’t know what todowith you.”

Bran cawed again, green eyes that had no business being on a raven staring at him. Willing him to remember what he’d just said.

“You seriously want me to take you to the Churchyard?Now?”

Caw.

“Shit.” Jamie ran a hand through his thick hair, wincing a little as his fingers caught in a tangle.

He didn’t know if Bran was really dying, but that’s what he’d said, and hewasa shapeshifter of some sort, and if he wanted to call himself a Sluagh or a fae or a were-bird, Jamie supposed that didn’t really matter. What was obvious is that he wasmagical, and Jamie didn’t know the least thing about magic that wasn’t in his medieval books, and he was pretty sure that bad drawings of plants weren’t going to be what helped Bran.

So he had to trust that Bran knew what he was doing. That he knew where he needed to go and why.

Jamie took a couple of deep breaths, trying to get control over his racing heart and internally-screaming mind, and pushed himself to his feet. Then he bent down and carefully—as carefully as he could, anyway—picked up the bundle that was Bran tangled in his mother’s afghan.

“Okay. But I can’t just… Can I put you in a tote bag?”

Bran squawked again.

“This is stupid. I’m stupid,” Jamie muttered. He couldn’t putBranin a tote bag. That was just… Ugh. There was nothing in Jamie’s life that had prepared him to take care of a shapeshifting man-bird. Or even a bird-bird, for that matter. He’d never volunteered at an animal shelter, never even watched any of the Animal Planet documentaries that had been on in the motels he’d stayed at when back in Tennessee to place flowers on his momma’s grave.

He could at least try to untangle Bran from the blanket, so he set the bundle down on the bed and started to gently try to work feathers and gnarled toes out of the looped yarn of the crocheted afghan. Bran made small noises as Jamie worked, and he could tell that Bran was hurting, even though he was trying very hard not to.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I can’t just leave you tied up in this.”

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