Page 2 of Property of Prophet

In the center of those impossible wing prints lies a man.

Bear’s barking cuts off mid-sound, replaced by a whine that raises every hair on the back of my neck. The dog backs up three steps, then sits hard, refusing to approach any closer. Smart. I should follow his instincts. I should turn around, head home, and pretend I haven’t seen whatever physics-defying impossibility lies bleeding in the snow.

Instead, I slide down into the crater, rifle ready.

He is huge—six-two, maybe six-three, broad through the shoulders beneath what’s left of a leather vest. Dark hair streaked with silver falls across a face, and blood, so much blood, stains the snow crimson beneath him.

Too much blood.

I drop beside him, two fingers to his carotid. He has a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.

“No fucking way.”

The bleeding comes from dozens of lacerations, nothing arterial but enough small wounds to add up. His airway is clear, breathing shallow, no obvious skull fracture. Broken ribs almost certainly. Internal bleeding likely. Hypothermia is already coming for him.

He should be dead.

Somehow, impossibly, he isn’t.

I check his pulse again, anyway.

My fingers brush the hair away from his eyes, and something moves beneath his lids.

Light.

I jerk my hand back. Blue-white veins of it move under his skin where no light should exist.

Bear whines behind me.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I saw it.”

His vest catches my eye. Not the leather, but something else. Something blackened and scorched that took the same impact that should have pulverized every bone in his body. Patches cover it. A skull wearing a crown. Words in a precise thread.

Kings of Anarchy MC

Alaska Chapter

Prophet

Chaplain

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

A biker. A chaplain. Who apparently just fell out of fucking heaven.

Around us, the woods have gone silent. No birds or wind, just the sound of his breathing and mine, and then, movement at the crater’s edge.

Wolves. Five of them, gray and massive, their eyes reflecting what little light remains in the dying day. My rifle comes up, and my blood goes cold. They don’t approach or circle. Instead, they stand there, watching and waiting. Their attention is fixed, not on me but on the man bleeding beneath my hands.

Bear’s whine pitches higher, urgent now.

“Don’t.”

The wolves ignore him. One of them, the largest, the alpha, I realize, takes a step forward. Then another. Its eyes never leave the fallen man.

I bring up the rifle, my finger finding the trigger, and aim it at his massive chest. The movement draws the alpha’s attention. Gold eyes meet mine, and in that gaze, I see something that makes my throat close. Not hunger or even aggression, but something else. Something almost like awe.

The wolf dips its head.