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"It sounds like you did some reading last night if you managed to get the history book off the shelves."

"Oh my God, I nearly fell so many times, it was freaking scary. I don't know who designed that ladder, but they did an absolute shit job, and then I had to prick myself."

Lachlan grabs my hand. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the history book I grabbed, it had some kind of blood curse on it or something and I had to spill my blood onto the cover to⁠—"

"Lass, you didn't," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"Show me where you hurt yourself," he says.

I frown.

"You're not wearing a bandage, and God only knows what you've got in your head to stab yourself with in order to enact a blood curse, no less, on the goddamned history book in your fucking library." He's practically shaking with rage.

"You're taking this whole bodyguard thing to a level that I think is slightly ridiculous."

He practically drag-walks me over to the sink. I uncurl my thumb from my palm, rolling my eyes as he lathers it up with soap.

"You're lucky your kind don't get these sort of things that humans have to worry about. What is it you did this with? It's all jagged. There's a whole flap." He wiggles the flap on my thumb at me, as if I needed to be shown what it is he's talking about.

"One of the corkscrews," I tell him.

I don't know what to think about this version of Lachlan. Sure, he's grumping at me and angry, but he's also trying to take care of me in his own weird way.

It makes my stomach flutter, just a little.

Right up until the moment where Lachlan finishes rinsing my thumb and proceeds to spit on it.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I tell him, jerking my hand away. He lets me take it. "Thank God—you're fucking spitting on me?! That's disgusting!"

"I just told you, you don't pick up diseases the way the humans do."

"I've been sick enough times in my life to know that's not true. Migraine is practically my middle name.”

"Have you now?" he tells me.

I scrunch my lips to the side because he might have a point. "I've been sick before."

"And what kind of sickness did you have, lassie?"

"Erm..." I pause. “Headaches. Bad ones.”

"That's right. You don't get the human sicknesses," he says.

"Has anyone ever told you you sound like Scrooge McDuck?"

"You're fucking insulting me?" His eyes seem to glow as he scowls at me. "And after I try to help you. Ungrateful is what you are."

"Why did you spit on me?" I interrupt him, staring at the glob on my thumb in disgust.

"Because my saliva will heal you.” He rolls his eyes. “You think I’m just doing it for fun? Fuck off.”

"Oh, right. Okay." I shrug a shoulder and glare at him. “Because that’s a normal thing I should have known.”

He sighs, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but his expression softens, just a little bit.