Chapter 286: Healing Hot Tub On Clusterfuck Carousel

"Guinevere."

Her skin was wrong. Cold where it should have been warm, grey where it should have been golden, and the dark veins under her eyes were spreading in real-time.

Nothing.

"Guinevere. Open your goddamn eyes."

Her lashes fluttered. Green locked on him for a second, dull and blurry, the eyes of someone staring up from the bottom of a well.

"There you are. Stay with me. You’re okay."

She wasn’t okay and he fucking knew it. His wolf was losing its goddamn mind and Nicholas wasn’t far behind, but melting down right now was not going to help her.

Her mouth moved and what came out was barely a whisper.

"I’m s-sorry."

His throat closed. Something cracked inside his chest that had nothing to do with the dark magic or his heart starting back up again. The pressure behind his eyes was so immediate, so savage, that he stopped breathing for a second to keep it in.

"Don’t you dare apologize to me right now," he finally managed.

Her eyes shut, her head lolled to the side, and the rest of her went limp in his arms with the absolute surrender of a system that had been running on fumes and had just burned through the last one.

No. Hell no. He hadn’t clawed his way out of death, puked up dark magic, and restarted his own goddamn heart just to watch her flatline in his arms like some cosmic punchline.

"No. Guinevere. I’m here. Hey. HEY."

Then the white fog that had been holding their asses up decided that was the perfect second to fuck off and dissolve. His stomach lurched before his brain caught up. The solid nothing they’d been lying on went from firm to gone with zero transition and gravity remembered where it left off.

They were falling.

Wind hit his face and ripped the white hair across her body like a banner. His arms crushed her against his chest on reflex, locking her into his body the way a man locks a door he never intends to open again.

The white void, he realized, was actually a cloud. The second they dropped out the bottom he got a view that made him question if he’d been roofied or just smoked from Satan’s personal bong.

Floating islands. Dozens of them. Connected by threads of light that hung between them like bridges built by a drunk god with a geometry fetish. This entire day had been one long, uninterrupted clusterfuck-carousel, and the ride was still spinning.

"WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?"

The wind stole the question and gave him nothing back.

CRACK.

He didn’t know what that crack was or the light that flashed. All he knew was one second they were plummeting.

The next—

CRACK.

Water. Impact should’ve been concrete-level punishment. But instead warmth and gold light swallowed them.

Nicholas’s back found the bottom. He hauled them both upright and spat out a mouthful of gold that tasted like sunlight, and thought, What in the absolute hell is this crap?

A warm bath. After dimension travel, cardiac arrest, and terminal velocity. Sure. Why not. He’d stopped questioning things three catastrophes ago. The water settled at his chest. At her neck. She was limp against him, her head on his shoulder.

He looked up and blinked a few times. Wood. No windows or door. No source of light except the glowing golden pool they were in and the walls. It looked like they were in the center of a tree if he were to guess but he had no fucking idea.

He had never seen anything like this in his life and he had exactly zero seconds to appreciate it because Guinevere’s pulse was getting weaker under his fingers.

When he looked down, he noticed glowing symbols crawling up his arms, spreading on his body in tandem with hers.

"That’s new."

Blood seeped from both of their clothes and dissolved into the gold water. Black smoke was coming out of Nicholas at the same time.

Aches faded on the spot and got swapped for something soothing. The water was draining the toxic shit out of him and healing him like a VIP guest.

But no smoke came out of her body. The gold didn’t seep into her skin like his. The person who actually needed healing was right there, in his arms, available, and being actively ignored by the enchanted jacuzzi.

Heal-the-dick, ditch-the-damsel protocol. Horseshit. Absolute, grade-A, gold-plated horseshit. Because why would it heal them both? That would be too convenient.

Her silver poisoning was the most pressing issue. He knew that. So he adjusted her in his arms, one hand on the back of her neck, the other pressed flat against her spine beneath the water.

"Okay, Gwen. I need you to hold on."

This was either going to save her life or piss off every god watching. Ideally, he would give her his blood, but that wasn’t on the table because he had no fucking idea where they were or if there was even an exit.

PLAN A: healer. Unavailable.

PLAN B: blood transfer. See plan A.

PLAN C: bite the dying woman in the magic tree pool and hope for the best.

Plan C it was. His strategic genius was truly unmatched today.

His mouth found her neck and he bit down.

The venom left him like a dam breaking, flooding into her bloodstream with the specific, singular purpose of helping her fight the silver poisoning because Alphas had a stronger resistance to it.

The taste hit his tongue immediately, iron dipped in arsenic.

Her body seized in his arms. A convulsion so violent water splashed over the pool’s edge and the runes on the roots flickered.

He held her tighter and pushed more venom.

I’ve got you. Let it work. Let it fucking work.

He kept repeating that in his mind. This was not a negotiation with the universe. This was a demand.

The taste started to fade. Slowly.

Then the pool responded like his venom had opened the door. Gold light from the water surged into her body. It poured into the runes on her skin the way rain pours into cracked earth, filling her with warmth that he could feel through their matebond.

Black smoke seeped from her body, just like it was doing to Nicholas’s now.

Thank whatever cock-up of a deity built this tree pool.

Her back arched. Another seizure. Then a sound came from her throat that was half human and half wolf, a raw, broken frequency that said something inside her was fighting to stay alive and had just received reinforcements.

His blood ran cold.

His wolf spoke with the softness of a sledgehammer, but he had already been thinking it too.

Strip. Now.