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Daniel came back with the first aid kit and handed it to Kade, who had her shirt nearly off.
“What now?” Daniel asked. Kade knew that later, they’d talk about why, exactly, he had come home human, naked, carrying a girl and being followed by a pack of wolves, but Daniel knew how to handle himself in a crisis.
It was one of the many things Kade loved him for.
Kade handed his mate a pair of scissors.
“Get the rest of her clothes off,” he said. “Do your best to make sure that there’s nothing stuck in the wounds, or it’ll get infected.”
Kade brought over a desk lamp — the best light he could find — and went to work getting fibers and moss out of the huge claw mark on her back, washing it every so often with a saline rinse that had also been in the first aid kit. She was still bleeding, but thankfully, the blood had slowed to a trickle instead of a gush.
Still, she was in trouble. She didn’t have much more to lose.
Daniel cut a sleeve off, then gently tugged her shirt out from under her. Then, with his fingertips, he gently brushed the light brown hair off the back of her neck, carefully placing the wet, dirty strands behind her head.
In that moment, Kade looked up at his mate’s face, and he saw himself reflected there.
Neither of them knew why, but they’d both fight fifty wolves for this girl. A hundred. The number didn’t matter.
“Who is she?” Daniel asked softly, his face determinedly neutral.
“I don’t know,” Kade said. He plucked a long blue strip of cloth from the wound, wincing as the girl gasped in her sleep. “She was about to shoot me.”
Daniel’s eyebrows went up.
“And?”
“And the wolves attacked her.”
Daniel went quiet again, carefully cutting up each of the girl’s pant legs. Despite his enormous size, he had fast, meticulous fingers, rough with callouses. He had no problem easily lifting each of the girl’s legs to yank her pants off. Now the girl was naked and face down on their kitchen table, still unconscious.
Kade stepped back and looked at his work. Her wounds were mostly clean now, though the table was an awful mess. If she lived, he’d probably hear about it from Daniel — he’d have to sand the table down to get the bloodstains out.
Daniel had made that table himself, years ago, when he and Kade had finally become mates. It was the place where they ate their meals, did their work, shared their lives. Daniel’s version of an engagement ring, almost, and now it was stained with a human’s blood.
Kade hoped that wasn’t a dire symbol of some kind.
Any other time, he thought, he’d have appreciated her body. Underneath the ugly, masculine clothes she’d been wearing, she was muscular but curvaceous, the sort of thing that ought to make his mouth water.
There was too much blood for that right now, and she was unconscious, besides.
“Kade,” Daniel said, his voice finally breaking through Kade’s thoughts. The other man stood at the foot of the table, his arms crossed. He looked somber.
Kade looked up at his mate.
“Her wounds are too deep,” Daniel went on. He had a powerful, low voice, but he rarely raised it. “She needs stitches.”
“I can’t give her stitches,” Kade said.
He felt the panic begin. Was this girl — this incredibly important girl, whoever she was — another person he couldn’t save?
How many are there going to be?He wondered, the adrenaline driving a spike though his heart.
He felt a big, warm hand on his shoulder, and there was Daniel, looking into his eyes.
“I’m not taking her to the hospital,” Kade said. “I’m not taking her anywhere they can get her.”
“Call your cousin Hunter,” Daniel said.
Then the girl gasped, and her eyes flew open.
