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He narrows his eyes at me. “How can you afford not to?”
He says nothing more, just shifts and glares at me over his muzzle. This is his first order and I’ve already questioned him. He looks like he’s about to leave, so I scramble to my feet and start hauling a half-conscious Jax to a sitting position. This new wolf lays down, growling ominously, and I do my best to heft my mate onto his back. The wolf moves, bouncing Jax onto his back better, and I’m relieved to see that Jax’s body isn’t too big for this large, strange wolf to carry.
The stranger gives me a look full of impatience, so I push through my own shift. He watches me, eyes growing wider, and seems to realize how much I’m struggling. With a sigh he begins to walk forward, leaving me to finish my shift alone, but he stays close. I struggle to catch up to him, struggle to match his stride, and it’s obvious that he’s going much slower than he ever intended to for my sake.
“I won’t leave you, sickling, but I cannot slow down. If you want your mate to survive you must be faster!”
He speaks into my mind and I try to stifle my emotions, but they flow freely to him. Desperation, determination, despair.
“If you think he’ll die anyway then I’ll drop him here and carry you, no reason for both of you to die.”
“No!”I scream, and fury spurs me onward. I can’t feel my paws, and the numbness is slowly climbing up my legs, but I will not let my illness kill my mate. I’ll run until my paws are worn away and I have only stubs to stand upon. I will not let my mate die!
By the time the stranger begins to slow I’m numb up to my shoulders and hips, and by the time he leads us into a yurt, I collapse into a raging seizure. The wolf slides Jax to the ground and shifts to quickly bind his leg before he slides across the dirt floor to me and turns me on my side. He holds me safely as I thrash on the floor, putting a strip of dried leather between my teeth to prevent me from biting myself.
The seizure is severe, but short, and as soon as I still and my breathing regulates he leaves me. He stirs the coals of a fire back to life and puts a metal rod directly in the flame. Sparing me a grimace of distaste, he leaves my line of vision.
Somewhere behind me I hear cabinets slamming and the man cussing like a sailor. I don’t care what he’s doing, I care about Jax, so I drag my weak body to his side and collapse against him. He has enough strength to wrap his arm around me, but not enough to hold it there.
When the stranger returns, he has tweezers and a bottle of moonshine. He pours some down Jax’s throat, making him cough and sputter, and then he pours some on the bullet wound before he stabs the tweezers in to search for the bullet. Jax is screaming, eyes wide as tears pour out of them, and I’m using every ounce of my remaining strength to hold him down. Finally, after what seems like hours, the stranger pulls out a bullet and throws it to the side. He pours alcohol over it one more time and then grabs the metal rod from the fire.
“What are you doing?” I shriek.
Before I can move, he stabs the red-hot poker into the hole in Jax’s leg. The scream that comes from Jax is inhuman, foreign, terrifying, then dies in his throat when he falls unconscious. I’m trembling in fear, tears falling freely, and I stare at the stranger in disgust.
“That was cruel!” I accuse.
He stands and glares at me. “That was saving his life, little pup, the correct response to a life-saving measure is, ‘Thank you, Rowan, thank you so much!’” He tosses the metal rod to the side and storms out of the yurt without another word.
“Thank you,asshole!” I scream behind him.
He roars in anger and I immediately feel guilty for it. I’ll apologize, but not now, not when my love is so hurt. Sobbing, I lay next to Jax and curl up around him, naked and shivering in front of the meager fire.
Within seconds, exhaustion takes me under.
* * *
When I wake I’m warm, safe, content. At first I think we’re still in the safehouse, that it was all a horrible nightmare, but then I feel the hard packed dirt under me and hear Jax moan in discomfort. My eyes fly open and I sit bolt upright. The fire is bigger now, there's a bear fur laying over Jax and I, and in the corner the stranger in a rocking chair drinking out of the bottle of moonshine he used to sterilize the wound.
“He’s alive,” Rowan says gruffly, his voice slurring slightly as he takes another swig from the bottle. “You, girl, have a look about you that I recognize. You aren’t Silver Dawn.” He says it like an accusation.
I bristle at his rudeness. “And you, Rowan? What pack do you come from?”
“I claim no pack, but I obey Ryder.”
“Dark Moon…” I whisper.
Rowan spits. “I. Claim. No. Pack,” he reiterates, biting off each word like a threat.
“Then why did you save us? If you’re such a lone wolf, why do you care?” I snap at him, so angry that the fact that he saved us isn’t even registering. I should be thankful, I should be simpering, I should be meek. All I want to do is bite him.
“Scraps cares,” he says, nodding towards the door as a little black cat walks in the room with a dead rat in her mouth. “Heard her yowling and wondered what she was doing so far up the mountain. Why did you bring a defenseless cat all the way up here, woman?”
“She didn’t give us a choice…” Jax groans, pulling himself up on an elbow and blinking a few times before he sees me sitting naked in front of a stranger. Jax moves so fast it’s as if he was never hurt at all, throwing himself over me and growling in warning at Rowan.
“Calm your tits, muscle man. I have no interest in your sickling.” Rowan spits again, and it dings off the side of a metal bucket and splashes on the floor. He doesn’t seem to care. He stands, naked as the day he was born, and throws an old threadbare shirt at me.
“I’ve no use for clothes, so it ain’t much,” he says, eyeing Jax. “But like I said, I have no interest in you or your woman. As soon as you’re well enough to go, I’ll run you out of here like the trespassers you are. You better never come back, you hear? Never.”
