Page 99 of Enspelled

Sera’s eyes widen in alarm the second before she tears her gaze from mine. “Briar, you have to stop.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I demand. “I thought you healed her.”

Sera hugs Briar harder. “I did. But her lungs were badly burned. There are some injuries that time heals better than any spell can.”

She levels a glare my way, and I know what she’s saying: Briar won’t heal while you’re here. Not with her crying as hard as she is.

My focus returns to Briar.

Without another word, I swing around and stalk toward the bedroom door. At the entrance, I pause. “I’ll be waiting outside.” And then I continue out.

I lean my back against the upstairs hallway of Erin Sue’s house, fold my arms across my chest and close my eyes as I battle with my wolf, who never wanted to leave Briar.

I want to shift, crawl into the bed beside her and comfort her… even if I’m the reason for her tears.

Footsteps move toward me and then halt a couple of feet away. Bodie.

“Keane?”

I don’t open my eyes. He will want to talk, and that’s something I can’t do right now. “Don’t, Bodie. Just don’t.”

My wolf is desperate to tear into someone. And right now, I don’t care whether that person is him, Sera, or a random stranger who crosses my path.

Bodie falls silent, but he doesn’t leave as Briar sobs in the bedroom. Nothing Sera says silences her tears, not for a long time.

Heartbreak. That’s what I’m hearing.

Because of her aunt, but not only.

Some of it is because of me.

30

SERA

Bodie hinted that something happened or was happening between Briar and Keane, but with the way Keane was looking at her, his refusal to leave, and Briar’s tears, I know his hints were true.

As I help Briar in the shower, leave her to use the bathroom, and then hand her a toothbrush loaded with toothpaste, I wonder what Keane did to have her sobbing like that.

But it must have been bad. Heartbreakingly bad.

“Do you think you could eat something?” I ask her when she’s finished brushing her teeth.

“Not really,” she says, her voice flat. There’s no smile, no… anything there.

She doesn’t sound like Briar at all.

What did that wolfdoto her?

“Well, you should eat. You need to regain your strength. Come on.” I take her hand and tug.

The old Briar would have complained or argued her way out of it, but this Briar follows meekly along, dressed in the pair of sweats I raided from Erin Sue’s closet.

Halfway down, I realize I’m not the first person to have had the idea to feed Briar, because bacon wafts up the stairs, along with frying eggs.

Bodie and his appetite. But at least this time it’s the right time and place for food.

Only the moment I get within sight of the kitchen with Briar close beside me, it isn’t Bodie I see at the stove frying up eggs and bacon. It’s Keane. I pause, and Briar stops with me.

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