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But this sure as shit wasn’t how I expected to spend my night. Not to mention, I feel like a fucking perv holding her while my cock dangles freely beneath her ass. Shifting into a wolf is great as long as you don’t need clothes when you shift back.
Still barely conscious, the girl moves restlessly in my arms, wincing as she draws her injured wrist to her chest. The limb is wrapped in a hard brace, which I take to mean it was hurt before she took a tumble down Devil’s Ditch and landed at my pack’s doorstep.
Something that tastes a lot like pity wells up inside me as I glance down at her sleeping fa
ce. She looks like a princess in the moonlight, small and fragile and beat all to hell. She deserves a white knight to carry her off into the sunrise on his noble steed.
Instead, she got the fucking big bad wolf.
What the fuck was she doing all the way out here? Devil’s Ditch isn’t even accessible by road. It’s miles from any civilization that doesn’t belong to my pack. Humans can’t just stumble onto our land like they’re out for a hike in the national park or some shit. We’ve made sure of that.
Jesus, she’s lucky I even found her.
I almost took a different route tonight. The protected boundary stretches atop the cliff, and I came out this way prepared to climb up and check on our sigils to make sure they were still firmly intact. Some vague instinct kept me from climbing to the top of the cliff—wolf’s intuition or some shit—and coaxed me into the ravine instead. If not for that, the girl might have laid out there and died as the temperature dropped overnight, then became vulture food tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately, her presence means my patrol got cut off early. Not a good night for a distraction.
We've heard rumors of dark witch activity scented in the area, which is exactly why I wanted to check out the boundaries to begin with. Typically, where we smell a witch, there’s a witch to be found, and having to lug this injured lamb back to my cabin is gonna keep me from doing my duties as alpha. My pack’s protection comes first and foremost.
It’s supposed to, anyway.
So why the actual fuck am I carrying this chick back to my cabin? Why do I even care that she looks like she’s been torn to pieces and tossed out like trash? She’s not a shifter, and she’s not my responsibility. I should drop her in a soft spot away from anywhere she could be exposed to danger and leave her there. Not my problem.
And yet… I won’t.
For one thing, I’m not that fucking heartless. She’s young and fragile-looking, and I guarantee she wouldn’t know how to survive out here even in broad daylight. I’m not a monster, even on days when I feel like I am.
So I readjust her weight in my arms and press on.
I keep my steps light as I stride into the quiet village my pack has built for itself. Most of us are night owls, but it’s late even for wolves, so the majority of the pack is sleeping. We’re sometime in the darkness before dawn is my best guess. I was on foot for a couple hours before I came across the girl, and I started my patrol pretty late.
Moving quickly and silently, I make my way through the small village. My gaze roams the shadows surrounding my pack members’ homes, searching for any sign of life. Nobody here would be happy that I’ve brought an outsider in. Sure, I could growl and grunt and pull rank, but the path of least resistance seems best in the current moment.
And that path is stealth.
I’ll get her cleaned up, wait for her to wake up and figure out her story, then decide what happens from there. Maybe she just needs a ride somewhere. Maybe she was taking a hike and lost her way. Wouldn’t be the first time some idiot hiker nearly died in the wilderness for biting off more than they could chew.
I shift her weight into one arm so I can open the door to my cabin. My hand is dangerously close to the girl’s nicely rounded ass, and a tingle of warmth shoots through me. I rein in the beast with a stern, for fuck’s sake, man, she’s unconscious and beaten, and shove the door open with my bare foot.
The house still smells like the dinner I cooked earlier, a medley of lamb and rosemary. I add the scent of her body to the mix—the thick, cloying smell of dirt, the tang of a mountain stream, and something a little more feminine underneath it all. Flowery.
This cabin isn’t acquainted with flowery.
I carry her to my bedroom and gently lay her on top of the covers. She’s soaked through, which is the source of the mountain stream smell, I’m sure. I peel off her torn, filthy sweatshirt and discard it on the floor, then reach for the button on her jeans. I’m trying desperately not to notice the perfect mounds of flesh cupped by a delicate pink bra, but it’s hard not to.
Studiously avoiding her tits, I tug on the waistband of her jeans, struggling to get them over her ass. When they finally begin to peel away, they expose a pair of soft cotton panties. They’re not anything special, not fancy lingerie made of lace, but my heart skips a damn beat at the way they hug the curves of her hip bones.
Jesus fucking Christ. Gritting my teeth, I avert my eyes and head for the closet. I need to cover her, and even more than that, I need to cover me.
How did I end up in this situation?
I yank on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, then find an old, worn pair of pajama pants that might not fall off her gorgeous ass. They’ll have to be rolled eighty times to keep from tripping her up, but they’ll do.
I toss the pants over her hips, hiding those infernal panties so that I can take stock of the situation without distraction, and lean over her, running my gaze over her wounds. Whatever she did, she got torn up anywhere she had bare skin—the kinds of small scratches that might come from sharp tree limbs and a full speed chase.
But the scratches aren’t the only thing I notice, and my eyes narrow as my gaze moves over her small form.
The girl’s covered in scars.
