Blood floods the grass under both bodies. The larger form sags, head dropping. It settles heavy and stays.
Decker rises to his back feet, breathing in short, wet grunts. The burns on his back steam. The chest wounds run freely. He shifts human before I can track the change—skin and muscle reforming around the damage, still bleeding, still marked. I see it. I hold onto it while everything else starts going soft at the edges.
He turns and closes the space between us. Crouches. Looks me over with the same flat, unhurried face he gives everything. I don’t have the air to speak. I wouldn’t know what to say if I did.
He slides his arms under me and lifts.
I’m back in my own skin, and I don’t remember changing. His chest is bare and warm, and his scent is right there, filling every breath—the same rich, warm scent that undid me in that storeroom. My body curls toward it without my permission. My wolf goes still. Settled. Like the running is over.
Traitor,I tell her. She doesn’t care.
He starts up the mountain, and I start losing time. I focus on my breathing. Cold air in my lungs, the scent of blood, the slope tipping under his feet. Then warmth. His heartbeat. His skin against my cheek.
He’s bleeding. He’s carrying me up a mountain with his chest torn open.
Stubborn idiot.
But his arms don’t loosen. He doesn’t put me down.
I come up one last time, and one thought is waiting for me, clear and cold.
The Syndicate sent that thing to kill me. Not to bring me in. There’s no way back inside, no phone call coming, no deal left tomake. The people holding my sister just told me what I’m worth to them, and it’s nothing.
And here I am, wrapped in the arms of the man I ran from, my face against his chest, warmer and safer than I’ve felt in years.
The dark takes me before I have to work out what that makes me.
Chapter 17
Decker
She stays under the whole climb. Her body has stopped doing anything except heal. That’s the wolf’s way—burn hot, go deep, fix what’s broken while the woman sleeps through it. A bear heals slow and stays on his feet. A wolf drops everything and repairs. I keep my pace even so I don’t jar her ribs, and I let her burn.
She’s bare against me, skin to skin, and there’s nothing I can do about that except carry her carefully and keep my head on the slope. Her cheek rests over my heart. Every breath I take pulls her scent in with it—blood, crushed grass, and underneath it the scent that’s been undoing me since the yard.
The bear should be losing his mind right now. There’s a dead dragon on the mountain behind us, more where it came from, and Viktor’s people working their way up the range. Instead he’s steady. Focused on the female in my arms and nothing else.
The den mouth comes up through the fir. I crouch, keep her against my chest with one arm, and roll the boulder with the other. It costs more than it should. The burns across my back pull tight when I put my shoulder into it, and the gashes down my ribs open up and start running again.
Dammit.
Blood’s getting in my way.
The stone shuts behind us, and silence settles in.
And the bear lies down.
Just like that. All the way down. Dragons in the sky, two organizations hunting us, and he’s calm as a winter sleep because she’s inside the stone and nothing can reach her here.
I stand in the dark with her in my arms and let that sink in. He’s never once been calm when I needed him sharp.
I light the lantern one-handed and lay her on the cot.
Now the damage.
I check her over the way I’d check anyone: start at the worst, work outward. The claw caught her left haunch in wolf form; on the woman it reads as three deep tears across her hip and up her flank. Still bleeding, but slow. Her right shoulder is swelling where she landed on it, the bruise already coming up dark. I press two fingers along her ribs. She doesn’t stir. Cracked, maybe, but nothing moving that shouldn’t. Her breathing is shallow and even. I part the hair above her ear, where the dumpster edge split her scalp in the alley. The wolf’s already closed it—tender but nothing left for me to do. That one she healed without me.
Then the long tear down her left side, the one she gave herself squeezing through the gap in my wall. It’s ripped wider now. It runs right through a series of old burn scars.
