Chapter 1
Sable
Merric’s forearm is laid open to the bone. I work quickly, cleaning the wound with steady hands while he sits motionless on the exam table. The gash runs from wrist to elbow—four parallel lines where claws dragged through muscle and tendon. Not deep enough to sever anything vital, but deep enough that I’m going to need to stitch the layers separately.
“Hold still,” I tell him, though he hasn’t moved.
Behind me, Dane is slumped in a chair with an ice pack pressed to the back of his skull. His pupils are even, tracking is normal, but he hit that wall hard enough to crack plaster. I’ll need to monitor him for the next twelve hours.
Garrett is somewhere down the hall getting his ribs wrapped. I heard him refuse pain medication twice. Typical.
Outside, voices carry through the open window—pack members cleaning up from Mia’s adoption celebration, their conversations careful and quiet. Someone drops a serving dish,and the crash makes Merric flinch. The whole compound is rattled.
Mia’s big day. The first joyful ceremony this pack has had in years, and it ended with three of our strongest fighters bleeding in my healer’s quarters.
“How bad?” Merric asks.
“Bad enough.” I thread the needle. “You’ll have full mobility back in a week if you don’t do anything stupid before then.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything that requires this arm. No strenuous activity.”
“I’m the alpha’s second. That’s all I do.”
“Then you’re going to have to learn to do it left-handed.” I start the first suture, precise and methodical. Merric’s pain tolerance is legendary—he doesn’t so much as twitch as the needle pierces skin.
Footsteps in the corridor. Light and quick. Brenna.
She appears in the doorway, eyes sweeping the room. She takes in Merric’s arm, Dane’s ice pack, the blood-stained gauze in my disposal bin. Her jaw tightens, but her voice stays level.
“How’re we doing?”
“Merric needs stitches. Dane has a mild concussion. Garrett has bruised ribs, possibly one fractured, but he’s mobile.” I don’t look up from my work. “No one’s critical.”
“And him?” She jerks her head in the direction of the room where our anonymous wolf has been staying.
“Sedated. Stable.”
She nods once, then crosses to where Dane sits. “Never thought I’d see the day you’d go down in a fight,” she tells him. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, alpha,” he says.
“You hit a wall.”
“Wall should’ve moved.”
She snorts out a laugh, but it doesn’t sound natural. She stands and turns her attention to Merric. “What happened?”
“Someone heard him wake up. Heard the furniture breaking.” Merric’s voice is calm, factual. “We went in to contain the situation. He was half-shifted. Disoriented. We tried to restrain him and he…” he glances at his arm, “reacted.”
“Reacted?” Brenna repeats.
“Faster than I’ve ever seen anything move,” Merric says. “I didn’t even have time to fully shift before he’d put all three of us down.”
I tie off the first layer of stitches and start the second, not adding my own reply to Brenna’s question. But I know I’m not going to be able to avoid it for long.
“Sable,” Brenna says. “A word. When you’re done.”
