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Elijah and Charlotte. They’re the only others here in the room, along with Suyin. The medic must have said family only was allowed.
“Where is he?” a voice says in the corridor.
Mateo.
I can’t see them—I can’t open my damn eyes, the light hurts too badly. I wonder if this is how Tilda felt when she was shot in the stomach.
I need her here to tend to the wound. Her bite could heal me in a few hours.
Where is she?
“He’s…oh God,” Mateo’s voice says. I hear him kneel next to the bed, despite Suyin’s hissed warning to let her work. “Santa Maria madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, los pecadores ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte, amén…”
He takes my hand, his fingers clenched so hard around my palm that it distracts me briefly from the pain in my chest. This must be bad if he’s so worried. He hasn’t prayed in nearly a decade.
Not since he lost Julia.
“Teach me the words?” Charlotte says quietly behind him. I hear him shuffle over, and then she joins him, putting her hand on my knee. “Santa Maria madre de Dios…”
I can feel myself slipping away, my breaths harsh as I struggle to inhale.
The ride was too long, too hard.
The scent of blackberries fills my lungs.
Live.
I can heal fast if I get through this moment of crisis. All I have to do is live.
?
The first thing I register upon fully waking is the sense of deep, all-consumingwrongnessin the den.
I feel adrift…weak. And more than anything else, wrong. There’s something missing here, something at the core of who I am.
Tilda.
My eyes snap open and I’ve nearly gotten out of my bed before I’m pushed back down. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m not even in my bed, though; I’m in the clinic, an IV connected to the crook of my arm, my chest swathed in bandages. I try to suppress the rising panic that threatens to swallow me whole, finding a familiar gaze in the low light of the room.
Charlotte is sitting next to me, Elijah at her shoulder. Her brown eyes are wide with concern, her face flushed from pushing me back. Elijah looks ruffled himself—they must have both been fighting to keep me from hurting myself.
“You’re…how did I get here?” I ask.
I can barely remember anything from the past two days. Last I knew, Tilda and I were saddling up the horses to head out to Homestead, and then…
It comes back in a rush that leaves me breathless. The approach to Homestead’s walls, the shooting, my wolves coming to rescue me despite my insistence that theystay home.
Elijah was one of them.
“You were shot,” Charlotte says quietly. Her eyes are filled with tears, ringed red from what must have been hours of crying. “You’re not quite healed up yet. Please stay in bed.”
“I…” I pause, clutching my forehead. It aches like a motherfucker, probably a mixture of pain medication and blood loss. I look at Elijah with a grimace. “You disobeyed me.”
Elijah sucks his lips into a tight smile, his pale eyes darting toward the floor. “You never gave me a direct order,” he says, probably expecting to be chastised.
“Thank you,” I breathe. “You, Grant, and Arden. You all deserve my thanks.”
He lets out a sigh of relief, shaking his head. “It was all Arden, actually,” he says. “She was insistent that the two of you weren’t safe, so we just followed to keep an eye on you. And you know I’m always down for a run.”
