Page 45 of Unhinged Magic (Cutters Cove Witches #2)

Skye

I gasped as air filled my lungs, propelling me awake.

“Ohmigod, Skye!” Morgan’s voice teared through my ears, and I winced. I blinked at the group staring down at me, nothing but pure disbelief distilled in their posture. It emerged in shaking fingers, tear-stained eyes and slightly parted lips.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” said Tyler, moving his gaze over me in haste. He gave Morgan a sidelong glance, but it seemed she was lost for words.

I sat upright, my vision distorting slightly and making me dizzy. “Am I…” I struggled to finish my sentence.

“Alive.” Reid’s clipped tone tore me from my confusion, he moved out from behind Morgan, his focus hardened to mine.

It was like staring at a side of him I’d not met before.

I found his constricted torso wound tightly, his shoulders hunched as if heavily burdened.

Like life had just taken something of importance from him.

A muscle in the side of his jaw twitched, and he clutched something in his fist. A cloth maybe?

“Reid?” I didn’t need to speak my question, my wobbly voice sounding everything it needed to.

He steeled his gaze to somewhere behind me, closing the space between myself and whatever held his sight in a vice grip in seconds. I turned, following his long strides until he knelt beside a body.

Wesley.

Every cell inside of me froze. My whisper cut through the ghastly silence filling the walls of the familiar manor.

“Wes?” I scurried over to him, Morgan’s cry to be careful barely registering in my mind.

I was lulled back to my final moments with him, when something tore me from his embrace which such ferocity, I imagined I was being dragged into the afterlife.

Only it seemed I had been wrong. Because here I was, alive.

But it seemed Wesley was not.

“Is he?” I couldn’t say the word, my tongue not letting me speak it aloud.

Reid bent at the knee, his free hand drifting to Wesley’s wrist. “I can’t say for sure.”

I stumbled on my words, struggling to put together the scene before me.

“What do you mean? What happened?” Dropping to my knees on the other side of him, they hit the ground with an ache, my hands sweeping over him without touching him once.

His lifeless figure lay spread at an unnatural angle, dust collecting around his body like a shrine. A shiver tore down my spine.

Staring up at the group, uncertainty etched itself into their eyes. Tyler palmed the back of his neck, Morgan wrapping her arms around her front. I eyed Reid, still clutching something in his hand in a tight fist.

He darted a look at Tyler, who opened his mouth as if to speak before Reid interrupted. “He asked me to break his neck.”

“What?” I exclaimed, my brows pitching high. “Why would he ask that of you?”

Tyler threw Reid a look I couldn’t decipher.

Reid scrubbed a hand over his mouth, refusing to look at him. Something about that snagged my insides. “We thought you were dead. He said he was prepared to die trying to save your life if he had to.”

Air lodged in my throat, constricting my breathing. My heart beat loud in my ears, each thump bringing me closer to realization.

“Did you… bring me back?” I asked him.

He paused, a swift nod.

“And Wes?”

“I tried. But I’m unsure of his… condition.”

I stared down at Wesley, his thick dark lashes in slumber.

Open your eyes, Wesley. Do this one thing for me. Please.

I imagined his glistening emerald irises snapping open to find mine. The rush of endorphins that would ensue. The possibility of the mate bond being repaired after all this time. What that would mean for us. I wanted all these things so desperately I could scream.

“How long does it usually take?” To bring someone back . I couldn’t speak the words, like saying them out loud could jinx this. That and the fact I’d heard from Scar that Reid was extremely tight-lipped about his gift.

He watched me with unease, not wavering from my heady glare. “I haven’t done that in…” He sucked in a deep breath, the motion lifting his chest. He shook his head. “It’s different every time. Minutes… days.”

Days.

The thought brought bile to the back of my throat, unease stirring in my stomach like a whirlpool, dragging me into its vortex of hopelessness.

It latched onto me like one would a life raft amid a storm gripping me tightly with its gnarly, salt-stained fingers.

It was a horrible feeling not being able to help. Not understanding the process exactly.

I choked on a sob, and it wracked my chest.

“What do we do?” I said, not taking my eyes off of him. “Please, I don’t know how this works?”

Reid spoke from behind a clenched fist. The one still gripping something tightly. “Let’s get him out of here.” He veered his gaze to Tyler, who briskly nodded. Some unspoken understanding between the two.

Tyler came closer, kneeling beside Wesley, avoiding eye contact with me. Scooping his arms beneath his lifeless torso, he heaved Wesley over his shoulder, gravity reaching for his limbs either side of Tyler’s frame.

Seeing Wesley in this condition almost rendered me immobile. I waited for the twitch of a finger, any sign he was still with us. I longed for him to wake and say some smart-ass comment that would be so wildly inappropriate we would gawk at him, but it never came.

I had mixed feelings about leaving the manor.

It was the place I had both met my husband from a previous life and Wesley’s brother.

Both had graciously accepted their fate, passing to the other side, or whatever came next after this life.

All I needed now was for Wesley to wake. For whatever Reid did to work.

We made our way back to the car, Reid stopping to take Wesley from Tyler, lifting him over his shoulder with a grunt.

I swung the car door open, getting in first, motioning Reid to lay Wesley over the back seat.

“I’ll drive,” said Tyler, his gaze dropping to Reid’s hand, which no longer clutched whatever it had earlier.

Reid’s voice tightened. “I'm fine to drive,” he snapped.

Tyler gripped his shoulder. “I’ll do it, you get in the back with him.” His expression didn’t mirror Reid’s angst. He was calm, like he somehow understood Reid, something I absolutely did not.

I didn’t have the capacity to unlock what was going on between the two of them. All I wanted was for Wesley to wake.

Begrudgingly, Reid caved, sliding in beside me and resting Wesley over us both. His head nestled in my lap, and I studied him closely in a way I hadn’t done before. The hard angles of his face had softened, and I ran my hand over his jaw, up into his hair.

Tears slid freely down my cheeks, dripping onto his face. I swiped them away with my thumb. I couldn’t lose him, not after everything. All he had risked for us, his friendship with Tyler.

I vaguely heard a phone ringing, Tyler’s gruff voice sounding tight words.

I found myself so enraptured by Wesley that I hadn’t even noticed the car had pulled into my drive.

Morgan turned around from the front seat to speak. “We figured you would want him here with you?” She looked at me with an understanding that I couldn’t comprehend. Maybe it was the mate bond she and Tyler had. It let her understand my situation in a way no one else could.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll pick up your car for you tomorrow,” she said quietly.

My car. With everything going on, I’d completely forgotten about it.

I nodded.

My car door opened, and I was surprised to see Colton appear at my side, tugging Wesley off my lap and over his shoulder with what seemed to be little effort.

If I weren’t already fated to my own imperfectly perfect mage, I would be more than impressed at the solid muscle that made up Colton’s physique.

Hauling him inside, I vaguely registered Scar and Jade’s gasps as the group entered the house.

Scar fixed me with a look of horror. “Holy fucking shit, what happened?”

Still, no one answered. Tyler, Morgan and Reid refused to give any more information than I already knew.

I flew up the stairs, holding my bedroom door wide for Colton to enter, his bulky frame barely fitting through the space between me and the door frame.

Striding inside, he lay Wesley down on my bed, his penetrating stare moving to the rest of us standing nearer to the door.

“Mind telling me what the fuck just happened?” His crystal blue depths were cold with questions, continuing when no one answered. He veered his steely gaze at Reid. “Did you use your magic?”

The group remained silent. Only Reid could say what truly happened here.

I swerved my gaze to Tyler, who ground his jaw.

Colton’s voice vibrated the walls this time. “I felt it,” he said lowly, fixing his gaze to Reid. “You brought him back?”

Reid paced to the window, his hand clenching then flexing wide again.

Repeating the process before he finally spoke.

“Both of them.” He sounded distant as he stared outside for what felt like minutes before turning to the group once more.

“Since when has that been a crime? It’s my magic.

I get to use it as I wish, as you do yours. ”

Colton stilled. “Both of them?” he questioned, and his gaze flicked to me momentarily.

His sturdy frame tensed, his mind ticking over the words that obviously meant more to him than it did the rest of us.

“You know what this…” He didn’t finish his sentence, and I wondered what his last words would have been.

“Of course I know. How could I not? What the fuck is wrong with you lately?” Reid barked, and the room turned to stone.

I couldn’t move, held in whatever this was between the two.

I’d never heard Reid raise his voice.

Colton stabbed his finger toward him. “Don’t make this about me.”

“Where were you today? We needed you.”

Colton’s voice slithered from him, like Reid’s words had struck a chord. “That is not your business.”

It was too much. All this needed to be dealt with elsewhere.

“Whatever this is, please stop!” I cried out, just as Tyler moved between the two.

I tore my gaze from them, unable to cope any more. I needed to be alone with Wesley.

“I need you to all leave. Please, just let me have this time with him.”

It wasn’t a question. I didn’t know if these were Wesley’s last moments or the start of something new. Whatever it was, I needed to drown in it. Feel it all .

“We’ll be downstairs if you need us,” said Tyler, motioning for everyone to leave the room.

The tension dissipated the moment I was alone with the man I loved. The man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But if this was my last night with him, I would hold him in my arms until dawn spilled its brightened hue over us. Until the very last second.

Moving to Wesley’s side, I pulled off his boots and socks, resting them on the floor beside the bed.

It felt wrong undressing him this way, unbeknownst to him.

But if our mate bond had any healing capacity, I needed to be at his side.

Unbuckling his belt, I loosened his pants, tugging them over his thighs and off him.

I struggled with the bedcovers, pulling them from beneath him until they covered him to his chest. I climbed in beside him in my underwear, curling myself around his body, our legs tangled together.

The cold of Wesley’s skin bristled the hair on my arms, and I pulled him closer.

Resting my head in the crook of his shoulder, I lay there, waiting.

I curled my hand under his top, my hand on his chest.

“Please come back to me. I don’t think I can live my life without you.” My voice pierced the room’s silent blanket.

I pushed away every negative thought threatening to stampede my mind. He would come back to me. He had to. I lay there for hours, willing his chest to rise as sure as the stars would fade. Eventually, sleep tugged me into its powerful grip, my prayers left to the unseen force that was fate.