BRYCE
By the third day, the fever finally broke. I woke up and my head was clear for the first time in seventy-two hours. The fog lifted all at once, like someone had yanked back a curtain I didn't know was there. My skin didn't burn anymore.
The desperate, clawing need was just... gone. I was myself again—lying in my wrecked bed in my wrecked room, and everything that had happened was still there waiting for me. Then I noticed a presence in my room and my eyes widened when I noticed who it was. Sloane was still in my room, and sitting in a chair.
She looked exhausted in a way that went bone-deep. Dark circles carved under her eyes like bruises. Her clothes were the same ones she'd been wearing when she showed up three days ago—wrinkled beyond saving, stained with sweat and god knows what else. Her hair had completely given up on whatever it had started as, falling around her face in tangled waves.
"It's over," she said quietly. Her voice was hoarse. "Your heat broke."
