Her hand lifts off the cot. It moves slow, fingers open, and stops just short of the gashes. She doesn’t touch. She holds it there, close enough that I feel the warmth of her skin against mine.
I don’t move.
Days of fighting me with everything she had, and this is what she does with the first strength she gets back.
“Your—” It’s barely a sound. She tries again. “Your chest. You should—”
“I’m good.” I keep it low. “Rest now. Let the wolf do the healing.”
Her mouth opens like there’s more coming. Nothing does. Her eyes slide shut, and her hand stays where it is, an inch from the wound. I stay under it and don’t move at all.
She goes down deeper as the night comes on. Her color’s better. The bleeding through the bindings has stopped. Once, near the middle of the night, her brow pulls together, and her breath goes ragged.
I put my hand flat on her uninjured shoulder and say, “Still here,” and she settles without ever coming up.
I get up, pull on pants, then sink back down next to the cot and just sit.
I’ve spent twenty years learning what I am. Solitary. No pack, no mate, no one waiting anywhere for me—and that always sat fine, because a bear alone answers to nobody and loses nothing.
Then I think of her running flat out across that open ground with death dropping on her from the sky, no idea it was coming, and the anger flares up fresh and hot. Someone sent that thing. Someone will keep sending things.
Let them try.
I want them to try.
That’s the thought that finally worries me. Not the danger in it—the need to hurt whatever caused her pain. I turn it over and can’t find the part of me that objects, neither man nor bear.
Her breathing shifts. Deeper, slower, the wolf easing off as the work finishes. Real sleep now. The kind that means she’s through the worst.
I stay where I am, my back against the cot frame, my own blood drying on my ribs.
She’s already run from me twice. She’ll probably run again the second she can stand.
And I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do when she does.
Because the thought of not having her close is suddenly intolerable.
Chapter 18
Grace
Pain wakes me. My hip, deep and hot. Then my shoulder. Then my ribs when I try to breathe in deep.
I stop trying to breathe in deep.
Something presses warm against my hip. Holds. Lifts. Presses again. Cloth, wet and warm. Hands doing slow, careful work.
His hands. I know it before I know anything else.
“Easy,” he says. Low. Close. “It’s me. You’re all right.”
And here’s the thing that makes no sense: I believe him.
My head has nothing to do with it. My head isn’t even working yet. The words go in somewhere lower down, and something that’s been wound tight for days loosens a notch. My wolf lifts her head toward the sound.
I want to fight that. I’ve got nothing to fight with.
The dark pulls me back down.
