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“Fuck,” the new guy muttered under his breath.
“You can still stitch her up, right?” asked the naked man.
The new guy dropped a case on the floor, bent, and started going through it. It was obvious from the precise-yet-jerky way he moved that he was half worried and half furious.
“Yes,” he said, tersely. “And when I’m finished, I expect a full fucking explanation for why I’m stitching up a half-dead human on your kitchen table, Kade.”
Charlie had two thoughts at once: I hope that half-dead person is okay and Which one’s Kade?
“Bring me another table,” the man said. Charlie could see his jaw flex as he flicked a syringe full of something, tiny droplets coming off the top.
He’s also cute, Charlie thought through her haze.
The other two men brought a smaller table into the room, and the new one began laying things out on it. The clothed man knelt in front of her face, his beautiful dark brown eyes worried.
“Hunter’s going to give you some stitches,” he said. “You’re hurt pretty bad, but we’re afraid if I take you out of here, the wolves will finish the job.”
Charlie didn’t answer for a long time. Her brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and she could only think at half-speed.
“Kade?” she finally asked.
“That’s Kade,” he said, pointing at the naked man who was glowering by the fireplace. “I’m Daniel, his mate.”
He pointed at the angry man wearing latex gloves and arranging tools on a table. “That’s Hunter, Kade’s cousin, and he’s going to fix you up.”
You’re under arrest, she thought. She tried to make her mouth say it, but it was too complicated. For the murders of two wolf-shifters.
“I’m going to sedate her,” Hunter said.
“She’s pretty sedated,” Kade said, his voice gruff and angry.
“Do you want me to help or not?” Hunter snapped, and Kade’s jaw flexed. He rolled his eyes.
Hunter propped her arm up on a chair, then felt around for a vein, frowning. It took a long time before he found one, but he finally slid a big needle into the inside of Charlie’s elbow, then attached a tube to it, the syringe on the other end.
“Okay,” he said to her. Something in his manner seemed slightly uncertain, like he wasn’t used to talking to his patients. “Count back from a hundred.”
“A hundred,” Charlie began. Immediately the numbers started swirling, and she couldn’t remember what was next. “Ninety... nine? Ninety...”
Darkness closed in again.
This time she didn’t dream about anything.
* * *
The next timeshe woke up, everything was clearer. Her back still hurt, dully, and she felt lightheaded, but she no longer felt like she was thinking in half-speed, or like her brain was stuffed with cotton.
The three men sat across the room, in wooden chairs, gathered around a huge stone fireplace, drinking something and talking quietly. She couldn’t hear them, and could only see their profiles against the firelight.
Charlie seemed to remember that the one on the left was Kade, the fire making his hair nearly glow red-gold. Across the fire from him was the man who’d said he was his mate Daniel, all dark eyes and dark hair, the sort of chiseled, square jaw that movie stars and superheroes had.
We didn’t know that Kade had a mate, she thought. Charlie didn’t move. Now that everything didn’t hurt so much, and now that she could think clearly, she wanted a moment to observe them.
I hope they don’t have a female mate,she thought, unbidden.
Then she blinked in in surprise.
I do?
