Housebound with the Blackridge Heirs novel Chapter 115

Chapter 115

Chapter 115

Maya

I didn’t feel well.

So I didn’t even see where Leo took me.

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I noticed the way his fingers clenched the steering wheel, and how he shook as if he was holding back a shift. But he brought me to my destination without stopping.

“Elise?” I asked, confused and dizzy.

Leo nodded once, curt. “I remember you saying she said she would take you. The sun hasn’t fully set yet. That’s the only reason I can even stand here without losing my mind, so you need to go now.”

My wolf shoved against my ribs again, furious, impatient, and I pressed my hand to the wall to steady myself.

Leo’s gaze flicked to the movement, then away, like he was trying not to look at me too closely, like he was trying not to see me as anything other than someone he needed to protect.

“Can you

walk?” he asked.

“I think so,” I whispered, though my legs were shaking.

“Stay behind me,” he said, and then he hesitated, and his voice dropped even lower. “Do not touch me.”

The way he said it was not cruel. It was not rejection.

It was fear.

Of himself.

That reality punched through the haze and made my chest tighten with something like gratitude and grief all at once, because even now, even with my scent wrapping around him like a hook, he was still fighting not to.

I nodded quickly. “Okay.”

We moved to the house like we were sneaking through a battlefield.

Outside, the cold should have helped.

It did not.

The winter air hit my overheated body like a shock, steam rising off my skin as if I were fevered. For a moment the cold actually felt good, because it bit at the burning, because it gave my nerves something else to focus on, but then the heat rolled back in with a vengeance, and I had to press my lips together to keep from making a sound.

Leo walked ahead of me, tense and rigid, like every step was an act of restraint.

I could smell him, even from behind, and it was maddening. Warm skin under cold air, the clean bite of pine, the deep earthy scent of wolf, the faint sweetness of his bond to me that my wolf recognized too easily

Leo’s breathing hitched once as if he sensed my struggle, and his shoulders pulled tighter.

“You’re almost there,” he said, and it sounded like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me.

By the time we reached Elise’s door, my vision was shimmering at the edges and my body felt like it was made of lightning

18:40 Tue, Dec 30 M.

Chapter 115

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and glass. Elise opened the door before Leo even knocked properly, her eyes wide and terrified, and the moment she saw me, her expression softened into frantic concern.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Maya.”

Leo didn’t come inside.

He stopped at the doorway like it was a line he couldn’t cross, and his hands were shaking so slightly I almost missed it.

“Take her,” he said to Elise, and his voice cracked on the last word like he hated needing to say it.

Elise nodded quickly and pulled me in, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. The warmth inside her house made my body flare hotter, and I gasped, clutching at her sleeve.

Leo took one step back, face hard, jaw clenched, and then he turned away and walked into the pale dying light without looking back, like if he looked, he would lose the last of his restraint and come back for me.

I stood there in Elise’s doorway, trembling, watching him disappear, and I didn’t know whether to feel grateful or heartbroken.

Elise shut the door and locked it, then she looked at me like she was staring at a disaster she loved.

“Okay,” she said, voice shaking. “Okay, we’re going to get you through this.”

I tried to nod, but the heat surged again, stronger, because the sun was slipping and the moon was rising, and my wolf lifted her head inside my mind like she could feel the night coming.

Elise led me to the couch, then tried everything she could think of.

Cold cloths pressed to my neck, ice water to sip, fans turned on even though the air was already cold, blankets pulled back and then pulled up again when my body started shaking from a different kind of trembling.

It didn’t matter.

The heat came in waves, brutal and consuming. Each one rolled through me like a tide, leaving me gasping and raw and desperate, and then it would ease just enough for me to think, only to slam back in harder.

I lost time.

I woke up on the floor with Elise’s hands in my hair, her voice repeating my name like a prayer. I blinked and realized my cheeks were wet, and I didn’t remember crying, but my body remembered everything.

At some point, I turned my head and looked out the window.

And there he was.

Rohan.

He stood near the treeline, half-shadowed, watching the house like it was his entertainment. He didn’t look hungry the way I expected. He looked annoyed and impatient. Like he was waiting for something to happen and it was taking too long.

My stomach twisted.

I tried to sit up, panic cracking through the haze. Elise followed my gaze and stiffened.

“What is it?” she whispered.

I couldn’t answer. My throat was dry, scraped raw, and another wave hit me so hard my vision blurred and I collapsed back against the couch, shaking.

18:40 Tue, Dec 30

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