Page 101 of May: Bloom & Bane

I reach down, my fingers shaking as I scoop the silver thread from the mud. It sears my fingertips. A pained groan echoes from the direction of the house.

Sage.

I shove the thread into my pocket.

I can’t believe I took so long. Leave it to me to try and coax a stranger into letting me help when my actual mate is in agony.

CHAPTER 31

i’m giving you approximately two seconds before i take control of your dick

—SAGE

The water is ice cold. Anything warmer and the pain behind my eyes turns molten, as if someone carved a channel through my skull and filled it with fire. Sitting on the shower floor is the only way to keep the world from spinning off its axis, my knees pulled to my chest while a soaked sheet clings to my waist. The vines that normally wrap around my legs hang limply against the tile. They’re withering, and I don’t have the strength to coax them back to life. My left side flickers.

Just breathe. This will pass, he murmurs unusually soft inside my fractured mind.

The water drums relentlessly against the back of my neck. Every time the pain flares, flashes of a different woman flood my sight.

Wrong. Wrong, all of it wrong.

I shake my head and immediately regret it. A low groan bounces off the slick walls, my skull throbbing in protest. I reach through the bond, searching for Eden’s warmth—for the way she always feels like sunlight breaking through the clouds.

She feels so far away.

“Saevúra?” My voice shakes, barely audible over the water. I squeeze the skin at the base of my skull and reach again, desperation filling my chest. My brain throbs behind my eyes like a second heartbeat.

She’s not here, Ashán murmurs.

Minutes bleed by before I catch the scent of something new drifting through the air. Something male.

My body goes rigid, the vines on the shower floor surging back to life.

“Sage?” Eden’s voice cuts through the dark like a life vest thrown into a hurricane.

The shower door creaks open, and a rush of cold air hits my wet skin.

“Sage. Oh my goodness, you look terrible.”

“Please… keep the light off, Eden.”

“You’re scaring me,” she whispers.

“Where were you?”

She’s covered in another male’s scent, Ashán growls.

“I went looking for some healing herbs for your head,” she stammers. “I wound up by the marsh⁠—”

“You what?”

She what?

“What if you had fallen in?” My eyes snap open. Ashán’s skelva dig into the grout.

Through the blur of falling water, I see the glowing thurása in her hands. (Hushroot)

She kneels beside me, and places a lavender petal on my tongue. The relief is instantaneous. A cool wave washes through my nervous system, dousing the fire in my skull. But as the agony recedes, his scent only grows sharper.