Page 37 of Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Five

“Somewhere far away. You figure out how to help her control it while I figure out how to neutralize it for now.”

“Got it. Call me when you can.”

Bran nods, pulls me in tight to his chest, and takes off at a run.

The world is a blur as Bran races through the night and it’s hard to mark the landscape to know where he’s taking us.

It isn’t until he slows to a jog that I recognize the pack house up on the hill.

Bran takes the stairs up to the front door two at a time, then drops me on the porch, his skin blackened with frostbite. He curses beneath his breath as he rings the doorbell with a jab of his elbow.

It’s Fox who answers after several minutes. He sees Bran first and crosses his arms over his chest. “What the fuck do you?—”

He spots me next huddled on the porch.

“I need the Alpha,” Bran says, holding his left arm close to his body as if he’s trying to warm it up. “Hurry. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Frost licks up the porch columns. I’m shivering now, power radiating through my bones.

Why can’t I stop this? Why can’t I control it? It feels too big and I feel too small.

I thought unbinding my power just meant I’d have better access to my voice. No one told me about this. About ice and frost and the piercing cold.

Is this normal?

Am I broken?

The Alpha of the Midnight Pack fills up the doorway of the pack house. Several lamps are glowing in the house beyond him, riming his broad shoulders in golden light.

He looks from Bran to me.

“Heat,” Bran says. “We need to counteract the magic and I run too cold. I just make it worse.”

Cal thinks this over, then pulls out his cell phone and taps in a few commands. “I think I have an idea,” he says and comes over to me, slipping his phone back into his pants pocket.

“Just be careful,” Bran warns.

Cal frowns at me and I can see the sympathy in his eyes.

“Jessie?”

My teeth clack loudly together. Snow starts to fall in the summer air.

“I’m going to pick you up,” Cal says. “All right?”

I can barely nod.

The Alpha ducks down and threads one arm beneath my knees, the other around my waist. He growls from the sudden chill, then the bite of frost, but his wolf’s heat radiates through his skin, burning off the cold.

“I’ve got her,” Cal tells Bran. “Go drink so you can heal.”

Bran shakes out his blackened fingers. “I’m not leaving her.”

Steam fills the air between me and Cal.

“You’re no good to her missing fingers. Go.”

Bran looks like he wants to argue but knows better. The Alpha is right.