The Rejected Beast Bride's New Mate novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: After the Fever

Orrin came back to the ward at three in the morning smelling of candle smoke and wind.

I was sitting up.

I was eating crackers.

He stopped in the doorway and just looked at me, with his wings half open behind him.

"Your fever," he said.

"Ninety-nine point one." I held up a cracker. "I'm a little fine."

He crossed the room in two strides and knelt by the bed, which put his head level with mine.

He didn't say anything.

He put his face against my shoulder and stayed there, breathing, while I ate my cracker over his hair.

The healer kept me two more days to watch my kidneys.

On the third morning she pulled the drip out herself.

"Two weeks of rest," she said. "No night shifts. No stairs you don't have to climb. Your liver will forgive you if you let it."

"My apartment's on the second floor," I said. "Over an oven."

"Then don't go there."

Orrin looked at the ceiling very carefully.

"I have a loft," he said. "It's one flight up."

"It's an outside stair," I said. "With no railing."

"You won't be climbing it."

He carried me up it.

I made him do it the regular way, in his arms, not on his back.

The carvers stood in the yard and applauded, and the old one whistled through his fingers.

"Put her down, Boss, she's got legs," he called.

"Not for two weeks," said Orrin.

He put me in his oak bed under the skylight with the gray wool blanket up to my chin.

My stone fox watched from the windowsill.

That night he made me soup.

He'd never made soup.

I could tell from the bed, because he read the back of a bouillon packet four times and then stood over the hot plate with his wings tucked in, frowning at the pot.

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