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“When they’re hot, we’ll put them among the blankets in the bed with Darcy to help heat her up a little more. I want her temperature up before I let her go to sleep.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked, fiddling with the positioning of the rocks and earning myself a burn to the tip of my tail.
“I trained as a nurse on Terratribe II. That, and I had five younger siblings who were constantly getting into all sorts of scrapes and situations.”
I was the luckiest man on this planet, but Oaken might have been second-luckiest to have been paired with a female like Magnolia. Kind, clever, and able to keep her head in a difficult situation, whereas it felt like my own was about to fly right off. I hadn’t been able to make sense of a single word I’d tried to read when Darcy had been seated and trembling before me.
“The tea’s not quite ready, but here, take this,” Magnolia said, grabbing a large rag from where it had been hanging on the back of the chair near the fire. “Go wrap this around her hair and start squeezing some of the moisture out. I’ll let you know when the rocks are ready.”
I barely heard her last words about the rocks because the warm rag was already clutched in my fist as I ran.
17
DARCY
Ithought being cold sucked the biggest balls, but nope. Warming back up was worse. Everything that had been numb before was now prickling with shocking pain. It was as if my limbs had been emptied of blood and now fluids were rushing back in at record pace, making everything snap and swell inside.
I wriggled and shivered in Fallon’s bed. I was sitting up against the plain wood headboard with blankets and the quilt pulled up to my chin so that my wet hair didn’t soak the pillows. Plus, Magnolia said I wasn’t allowed to lie down and fall asleep yet.
As if I could sleep while every single, strained nerve in my arms and legs was sending me a big, painful message that basically went, Fuck you, Darcy. You’re an idiot.
But despite the obnoxiously uncomfortable process of warming up, it was definitely working. I didn’t feel as desperately cold as before.
After I’d been brought in here, Magnolia had helped me into a nightgown and a pair of thick socks, as well as bandaging my right palm. Fallon had built up a big, crackling fire in a corner of the bedroom that I hadn’t even realized was a fireplace. The heat radiated nicely throughout the large room, easily reaching me here in the bed. I shook my aching head, remembering how Fallon had dragged the bed – with me in it – as close to the fire as possible, only for an ember to jump out and land on the blankets. Then he’d freaked out and pushed the bed back, humming and hawing over its position until he’d settled on leaving the bed right in the centre of the big room. Close to the fire, but not too close.
It had been kind of impressive, to be honest, how easily he’d shoved the big, solid wood bed around, especially with my own body adding to the weight. He hadn’t even taken his own wet clothes or boots off yet.
I’d make sure he did that the next time he came back in. Which turned about to be about thirty seconds later.
His soaked boots hit the ground with colossal speed and force as he hauled his big orange body into the room, not stopping until he reached the side of the bed. There was something crumpled in his fist.
Before I could take a breath or attempt to say a single word to him, whatever he’d held was dropped on the top of my head, briefly obscuring my vision until he scraped it back and wrapped it around my hair. Through the cool damp strands, delicious warmth radiated.
“This is for your hair!” he said, kind of chaotically, and definitely redundantly, as he was already quite obviously using the rag like a warm towel on my hair.
I swatted weakly at his hands. Even though I instantly regretted taking my arms out of the warm blankets, I tried to grab the rag from him anyway.
“I can do that!” I insisted, noting with satisfaction that my voice and clattering teeth only sounded winter-day-cold, not death’s-door-cold. “You need to dry off and warm up, too!”
Guilt churned in my stomach as I took in the soaked, heavy leather clinging to his legs and the sodden boots on his giant feet. The only reason he was that wet was because he’d had to charge in and rescue me. Bleh. I was glad that I’d gone and made sure that Sora and the calf were alright, but I hated that he’d had to help me. We’d been so close to clearing the creek on our own…
“I am fine. Zabrians have much more robust temperature regulation than humans. I read about it in the-”
“The book. Yeah, yeah. You’re a human expert.” I sighed and let my arms, now feeling extra heavy, drop. Fallon immediately started blotting at my hair with the rag/towel again. It felt alarmingly good to have him gently tugging and pressing on my long, tangled clump of soaked hair. “I still don’t like seeing you standing around in those wet clothes.”
“Then I will dispose of them immediately. Immediately after I get your rocks,” he amended.
“Rocks?” I asked, wondering if there was water stuck in my ears. Why the hell would he think I wanted rocks right now?
Without warning, he straightened, his cute, round little ears perking up.
“They’re ready! Magnolia is calling me!”
She was? I hadn’t heard a damn thing.
Definitely some water in there…
But when Fallon returned, he did indeed have a bunch of fucking rocks which he carried in a big tub in his arms.
