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A branch reached out and whipped him across the muzzle.
Reluctantly, the wolf wheeled away, and Aiden cloaked them. He veered left as the wolves took off through the woods, but his trail was gone. He should have left her far away. They’d find her in minutes, and then they would finish him off.
Well, we tried.
He came back into his skin at the base of a maple tree with a groan. He’d just made everything worse than if he’d never tried at all.
His wolf rumbled within him, grumpy at being leashed.
The beast was right. It had been going terribly before he shifted. Maybe he should let them finish off the pack. He put a fingertip to the corner of his mouth where the poison had found a little crease in his lip. It burned.
His beast was a formidable fighter, but it was also a danger to itself. Whatever genius witch had cast the spell to create dire wolves centuries ago hadn’t made the human half immune to its own poison.
“I don’t see too much blood.”
He tensed and looked up. In another first, his wolf hadn’t warned him anyone was coming. Goldie stood above him with her hands on her hips.
“Where is your family?” he asked her.
“Running through the woods.”
“They didn’t find you?”
She shrugged and crouched, and he realized he was naked on the ground. He rolled away from her, and she raised an eyebrow. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” She appraised him with a total lack of embarrassment. “Wow, actually not. There’s something about shifters.”
“You didn’t go with them. "
“And lose my table?”
“They didn’t find you.” They wouldn’t have given her a choice.
“It’s a look-away spell. Took me for-freaking-ever to get right as a kid.”
“Even against your family?”
“Especially them.” She prodded at the worst pain in his shoulder, and he stopped breathing for a second.
“My sister is the healer, but I think you’ll live.”
He’d live, and she hadn’t run back to her family. He peered up at her. “Thank you.”
“You’re paying me. No need to thank me.”
“I wanted you to go back with them tonight, but they were right. I don’t speak for my pack. We don’t even really have a pack.”
She stared at him with burning eyes. “I’ve never seen them so bloodthirsty. It was kind of cool.”
He lay his head back on the ground.
“Not that I want anyone fighting over me,” she added. “Mostly. But I didn’t know they cared.”
“Of course, they care. They’d do it for anyone.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her face shuttered, and that luminous intensity slid into a mask of indifference. “You’re right. So what now?”
He twisted around, forgetting his nudity, and trapped her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”
He was now worse off than before. He attacked her family. Technically, he shifted, and then her family had attacked him, but something told him they wouldn’t pay attention to that distinction. Add that to the kidnapping and the previous fight, and peace was further away than ever.
