Chapter 21 · Shake

"Get your hands off me." Levi's voice came out wrong, thin, and the wall he was braced against did more of the standing than his legs did.

I didn't let go. "You're bleeding through the shirt, Kade. Sit down before you fall down."

"I said—"

"I heard you." I put my palm flat on his chest and pushed, not hard, just enough, and he folded into the chair like his knees had been waiting for permission. Up close his skin was too hot. Fever hot, not blast hot.

The patch on his throat, the little square of medical tape that never came off, not once in the twenty months I'd been watching him — it was gone. Torn off in the explosion, or ripped off crawling out of it. Either way it was gone, and the collar of his shirt was open, and I could smell him.

Really smell him.

Not the flat chemical nothing he always carried. This was underneath that. Warm, sweet at the edges, gone sharp where the fear was. My whole body reacted before my brain caught up, some old animal wiring going off like a fire alarm: omega, omega, omega.

"Don't," Levi said.