Page 64 of January Bell

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

LILY

I’m half dozing, half awake, holding what the women here have told me is called a chelda—a weird watermelon cucumber-like spritzer drink. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted since I woke up from the medicated coma they put me in.

I blink, trying to catch my bearings and figure out what’s woken me up— when I hear Bex shout again.

“He’s waking up. He’s waking up. Oh shit—no, he’s waking up. Lily, Lily, he’s waking up. He needs you; he needs to see you or he’s gonna freak out. We’re gonna have to put him under again.”

I leap out of the chair, the glass of chelda falling to the floor, smashing into a million bits, the cool liquid inside splashing against my ankles as I run for Zan’s sick bed.

I shove Bex aside and ignore her sounds of protest as I fling myself onto Zan.

His wing is supported by tethers in the ceiling in a strange posture that the doctors here on Sueva insist will help his wing bones set correctly.

The membrane is miraculously already healing, translucent and too thin in the ravaged parts from the worm’s toxin, but I don’t care about any of that right now.

All I care about is my mate, who’s slowly opening his eyes, long white lashes fluttering as he stares up at me.

“You’ve joined me in the afterlife,” he says. “I do not deserve this.”

I can’t help but break into a huge grin, tears dropping onto his face as I straddle his body.

“She’s gonna make him sick again,” Bex mutters.

“Let’s leave them alone,” a deep male voice says—probably Bex’s mate—and a door shuts behind them.

“You’re awake,” I tell him. Wet warmth tracks down my cheeks.

“I killed you,” Zan says. “That is my⁠—”

I slap him across the face.

He blinks up at me.

“Does that feel like you killed me?” I tell him, cocking my head. “No, you did not kill me. You tried to kill yourself. And then we were somehow transported here because when we chose ourselves, the entire game glitched, and they were able to pull us out and teleport us to Sueva. So, you’re not dead, and I don’t want to hear that bullshit anymore.”

I clamp my mouth shut, my nose crinkling.

“That’s not how I wanted to say welcome back,” I say slowly, but I narrow my eyes at him. “I am extremely angry. I have been in this forced heat for weeks now. Weeks! They had to sedate me so I wouldn’t try to kill everybody, because apparently your little Draegon heat did more than make me horny—it made me a complete rage monster. So, yeah, congratulations.”

“Is that how you wanted to greet me?” he asks slowly, his lips ticking up in that smug smile I’ve grown to miss so much that it hurts.

“I wanted to greet you by giving you a blow job and waking you up, but apparently that would just make my heat worse. So, every time I tried to do that, they pulled me off of you and had to sedate me again.”

That, more than anything, seems to rouse him from the sad, self-sacrificing bullshit he’s grown so attached to.

I feel his cock begin to stir behind me, the movement in the entire bed vibrating with the force of it.

“We are really alive,” he says.

Reaching up, he holds my face in his hand, his talons pricking my skin gently, but it feels so good to be touched by him that I just stay, letting him turn my face this way and that way.

“You were not hurt. You are alive,” he says with a moan, pulling me into an embrace.

I snuggle closer, then pull back.