Page 51 of Seduced
Her pink lips form a stubborn pout, and a small crease appears between her dark eyebrows. She’s hurting, but she still wants to take care of me, too.
“Fine,” I grumble, then lie on the bed and hold in a grunt of pain as my blistered skin stretches. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
Hours later, a tap at the door wakes me from a deep, exhausted sleep. When Skye performed the spell, I threw myself open for her, lending her as much energy as she needed to heal first herself and then me. My skin knit itself together, the blisters and the dead skin sloughing away as fresh, pink skin regrew beneath it. It was strange—tender, smooth, and currently hairless, as though I’d just shaved it.
Skye caressed it and gave me a half smile. “I’m not sure the hair will grow back.”
“I don’t mind,” I told her. “At least it no longer smells like barbecue.”
That made her giggle, and I called it a win.
Now I rise from the bed, not wanting to wake Skye, but she lifts her head anyway. Ty and Jack stir in their sleep,
“What time is it?” she mumbles.
I glance at my alarm clock. “Eight in the morning. You should go back to sleep.”
Throwing on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, I go to the door. I’d already flashed half the clan, so I have no desire to parade around in my underwear.
In the hallway, Maya waits for me, a curious expression on her face.
“What’s up?” I ask, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
She shuffles her feet. “The villagers would like to speak with you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “At this hour?”
Maya heaves a sigh. “Yeah.”
“All right, let me grab my jacket.” Gods know what this is all about, but I’m their leader. If they need me, I will come.
But Maya touches my arm gently. “All of you,” she says gently. “They want to speak to all of you.”
Twenty-Three
Skye
This feels so muchlike a repeat of that evening when Devlin Ward attacked Aiden and hurt Maya. But the crowd gathered in front of the Lodge is larger this time, and I’m almost certain all of Amber Bay’s residents have come.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize why.
They’ve had it with me—with the trouble I’ve brought to the clan. Not only did my coven burn down half the village, now a witch hurt Aiden, their leader. This has gone far enough.
I steel myself for the inevitable and step out on the porch to stand beside Jack. He takes my hand and squeezes it tightly, our fingers intertwined. The show of support is lovely, and I know hemeansit, but he should never have to make the choice between me and his family. Whatever the guys feel about me, their first duty should always be to their own people, their clan.
“What’s going on?” Aiden’s voice booms out in the cold morning.
A hundred or so sets of eyes focus on us, and it’s more than a little unnerving. Every one of these villagers is actually a sea dragon, a magnificent beast ready to pounce. That they’re in their human shapes is comforting—at least they haven’t purposefully come here to be violent.
To my surprise, Cora steps forward, her hands clasped in front of her. “Well,” she says, her pretty face solemn, “we’ve been talking. And we’ve come to ask Skye to perform another protection spell, this time with the help of the entire village.”
I freeze in place with my hands clutching the railing, unsure of whether I heard her right.
“What?” Aiden asks. His eyebrows snap together in a frown.
Cora motions at the Lodge. “If we hadn’t had the protection spell set up here, we wouldn’t have had a safe space to retreat to. The kids were able to get to safety while the rest of us helped to protect the village.”
