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The important thing was he'd escaped to his sanctuary. If he was going to die, he was dying as a wolf.
The vampire jumped back, his eyes hard and glittering as Rand finished the transformation and made it to his feet, panting hard, swaying but standing. His ears went flat on either side of his head as he bared his teeth and crouched, prepared to spring. The effort to think like a human was discarded, intent narrowed back to the simplest terms.
Run. Leave. Fight if he tries to stop me.
He charged.
The vampire stepped aside and let him go. Deep inside, what was already desolate became even more barren. The wolf had a disturbing, confusing image in his mind. A hand reaching out, the sensation of touch, the first he'd felt in a long while that meant more than nothing.
But it wasn't enough. He wouldn't let it be.
Cai let him run. Restraining a wild animal when he was already injured would only stress him out further, particularly when he was in a fighting mood. He suspected Rand had been in a fighting mood for a while now.
But holy fuck. Even injured, the guy had damn near made the killing blow. Only the speed of Cai's reaction had saved him, and he wasn't sure it would have, if the shifter was at full strength. Go figure. He supposed most vampires went through life assuming they were the biggest, baddest things ever. Which just showed they hadn't had the shit kicked out of them enough. Didn't take long to lose that sense of superiority.
Unfortunately, it meant the wolf had done it again. Despite the male's intriguing physical attributes, Cai doubted he would have broken camp to chase after the surly canis lupus if Rand had no more to offer than the novelty of watching him shift--check that off the list--and being a hot alpha male human--double check. Cai had already invested more time in him than he'd expected, hauling Rand's two hundred plus pound body far enough away from the hunter kill site.
But thinking the shifter might be a match for him physically? Well that made the challenge of having his ass all the more irresistible. Definitely a departure from the usual same-day, different-shit mantra Cai carried inside him.
Even so, for form's sake, Cai grumbled at the need to pack up camp, including the cooked rabbits, but he completed the necessary tasks, pulled his damp clothes back on, and went back on the hunt.
Based on Rand's fever, how he'd been shaking and the severity of his injuries, Cai estimated the wolf might make it a mile before his wounds dropped him. He made it three, winning a grudging smile from Cai, and something else.
When Rand had gone after him with the spit, trying his best to get Cai to kill him, the up-close-and-personal depth of his agony had penetrated Cai's cynicism, something he admittedly maintained to a hard-as-rock exterior.
Part of it was how the wolf hadn't been entirely self-sacrificing about the matter. He would have been happy to take Cai down with him, a convenient perk to his suicide wish. The shifter was hurting, grieving, and yet pissed as hell. A worthy opponent. He wanted to die, supposedly, yeah, but he wanted to go down in a struggle to the death with an adversary, someone he could fight to deal with that grief.
The loss of his pack. His family.
Yeah, that part wasn't hard to decipher. Everyone had pain and loss. Big fucking deal. The shifter had lost his family. Boo-hoo. Yet the look in his eyes when he'd spat out those words, decency, morality, had made Cai feel...less. That intrigued him.
Anyone who could get him to feel anything intrigued him.
As he dropped to his heels next to the wolf, Cai probed with all his senses to be sure he was unconscious, not wanting a replay of the hunter's mistake. This time he hadn't shifted back to human. Since the guy obviously preferred his quadruped body, Cai guessed there were states in which the shift was involuntary, like when he'd become human in front of Cai, despite an obvious desire not to do so.
His gaze coursed over the wolf. When Rand was standing on all four feet, his lifted head would damn near reach Cai's shoulder. Cai revised his opinion on the weight issue. Given the bone structure of both man and wolf, he expected Rand was probably two hundred and fifty pounds or more in full health, and the wolf wasn't far from the same. The guy had looked a little on the lean side, like he hadn't been eating as much as he should to feed all those muscles.
At least Rand had fallen out near a fresh water source, a gurgling creek. Spreading out his bedroll, Cai considered moving Rand's bulk onto it, but decided on something else first. Dropping back to one knee, he laid his palm on Rand's rising and falling chest. His breath was shallower than it had been before. The dumbass had pushed himself.
"You're not dying." He wasn't taking any more shit on this from the Grim Reaper. This wolf was going to live, at least long enough for Cai to enjoy a good, thorough fuck with him.
Creation was a multi-faceted tool, even when staying clear of the darker side of its coin. It could reach out and feel so much, translate different kinds of languages, all unspoken.
Cai closed his eyes, connecting to it, and to what was beneath his palm. Rand's energy...it was earth and blood, wind against his face. And pain. The wolf and the man had experienced the grief and loss together, but the wolf was less self-destructive than the human side...and more protective.
Could he have done it if Rand was awake, in control of his faculties? Probably not without a hell of an ugly fight, but it was a path Cai was able to follow right now, probably because it served both his interests and that of the wolf's.
He let the energy unwind and then broke the contact as whatever was inside Rand took over, triggered by Cai's push and the shifter's unconscious will to survive. Literally.
The shift was smoother this time, more like watching sculpting clay shape itself on a spinning wheel. A few breaths later, the man lay there, not even a tuft of wolf hair remaining.
"Nifty." Cai grunted. He cleaned the wounds again, ripping up one of the shirts in his pack to bind them. Because vampires healed instantly from anything but death blows, he didn't carry a first aid kit. A quick trip to town might eventually be needed. He really was investing an unreasonable level of effort in this guy.
But the hunter's vehicle was a few miles off. He could use the SUV to save him some running time. Leaving it even farther away from the kill site wouldn't be a bad thing.
With some antibiotics and other supplies to keep the wounds clean and dressed, Cai suspected the shifter's own healing ability, and his second mark upon Rand, would do the trick.
Teasing the male's lips open with the neck of his water bottle, Cai massaged his throat to get him to swallow. Small amounts at a consistent pace to keep him hydrated. Cai also dampened a piece of the ripped shirt and ran it along Rand's face, neck and groin area to help cool him down. It was a pleasure to touch his body, to handle his inert cock and heavy testicles, the tender crevices, pale lengths of inner thighs. He had a nice crisp layering of hair on his legs that Cai stroked with his fingertips as he rubbed the soaked cloth over his feet, bemused by the long arches and surprisingly smooth soles.
"Why not...let me die?" A strained whisper.
"Because I'm
pissed at the world, too," Cai said shortly. "It isn't a good enough reason to check out. You're right, there's nothing after, so how the hell can you make everyone else miserable if you're not around?"
At the resulting silence, he looked up. Rand's eyes had closed tighter, as did his mouth, reflecting a pain that had nothing to do with his wounds. "Can't fight what you can't change," the male said. "Hurts. Just want to stop...hurting."
Abandoning the cloth, Cai poured some of the water over his hand and used the flesh-on-flesh contact to cool the flaming skin. "You're less vindictive than me, wolf. If I'm hurting, I want everyone else to suffer with me."
"Love...not like that. Only...assholes."
Rand's eyes opened to mere slits, the gold-flecked blue. His fingers reached out, questing, and Cai looked down as the male touched his chest, the place through which Rand had almost succeeded in shoving the stake. The shallow puncture had already healed, though with his current state of hunger, Cai could still feel the throb beneath the skin. He'd had some of Rand's blood when he'd given him the second mark, but he hadn't taken more than a swallow or two, not wanting to drain the injured male's strength.
"You're delirious," Cai informed him. "Which makes you very attractive, but not very credible."
Rand's fingers coiled and dropped limply to Cai's denim-covered thigh. The wolf was out again.
Cai passed the time keeping him cool, listening to the forest sounds, getting more water into him. On a usual night, he'd enjoy a run through the forest, covering miles and miles. Climb trees to the topmost branches that could bear his weight, and stare out at the view. Chase down deer or smaller game to hone his reflexes and speed. Keep his senses tuned for any human activity that could result in a meal, when it was time for him to feed.
But after all those things were done, often his night didn't look much different from this. Sitting and listening, not doing much thinking. Just experiencing freedom. Solitude. Things that had been so absent during the first century of his life that he hadn't caught up with the unquantifiable need for them, even after hitting his two hundredth birthday.
As he returned to his patient's side, a touch told Cai the fever was turning to chills. The male was mumbling, talking to someone, nothing intelligible. Delirium was taking hold.
