Page 14 of Torment Me Knot
“Don’t.”
She stills, her scent spiking.
“Sorry.” She swallows. “I didn't mean to—”
“D... don't s... say his name.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. I won't. I'm sorry.”
My heartbeat trips, stutters, goes too fast and then drops, and I press my teeth together and breathe through it. It's fine. I just don't want to hear his name. That is a reasonable thing. That is not a crisis. That is—
“The doctor overseeing your care is Dr. Maverick.” She watches my face carefully as she speaks. “He may need to examine some of the injuries.”
My wrists throb instantly.
I fix my eyes on the wall.
“You don't have to agree to anything,” she says quietly. “But it would help if they understood what was in those compounds. What it did to your body. So we can make sure anything residual stops hurting you.”
Her scent shifts as she speaks. Cedar steady beneath a flicker of sharp basil.
“We found notes at the…” She clears her throat. “They mention an experimental compound that may have affected your scent receptors, and they think that could explain some of the lingering symptoms, but they won't know until they—”
Serum.
Let's try a higher concentration this time, Omega 7.
The hospital room drops away.
Cold table beneath my spine. Latex snapping sharp in the air. Antiseptic and that sweet chemical smell underneath it, the one that always meant he’d made something new.
Hold still.
My left arm already turned upward before he asks. Vein marked in black ink. Prepared.
You have fascinating biology.
The needle slides in.
Cold floods my vein instantly. Ice under the skin. Crawling toward my chest. It burns when it reaches the heart. My body arches anyway.
Somewhere far away, a machine starts beeping.
“Espie.”
Her voice. I know it but I can't reach it.
“Espie. Come back. You're safe. You're with me.”
Sera’s panic reaches me first. Basil and scorched cedar slam into my senses, fear splitting her scent wide open until it burns through the antiseptic residue poisoning my head. It’s real. She’s real. I drag myself toward her.
“Feel my heartbeat?”
There's a rhythm against my spine. Slow. Warm. She's behind me, arms around me, and I'm on the bed. The sheets are cotton. The light through the window is gold, going amber, afternoon bleeding toward evening, not fluorescent, not his.
“Sweetheart, come back to me. Whatever you're seeing isn't happening now. It's over. You're here with me.”
She's purring. The vibration moves through her sternum and into my back, and my bones go loose without my permission, the locked muscles unknotting one by one. Cedar and basil fill every breath. Just her. Just now.
