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The door opened behind me, and Shea poked her head out. “Evie? What happened?”
“I’ll explain in a minute. Go back inside.”
I waited for the click of the door then tiptoed into the rain with the carbine at high-ready.
Thirty paces into the dark, I froze. Up ahead, Roark’s silhouette bent over a huge lump, his hand moving along the dark outline. The lion lay motionless on its side, its flank and neck bristled with arrows.
My heart twisted then collapsed inward as Jesse carefully gathered something from the ground. Several feet from Roark, he rose, turning toward me with a bundle of black fur draped over his arms.
“Jesse?” Confusion spun through me. Why was he cradling a wild animal? “What is that?”
He bolted forward, and the urgency in his approach kicked up my pulse. As he ran closer, my eyes adjusted on his taut expression, then lowered, taking in the thing he carried so gingerly. Black hair. Long bushy tail. The triangular point of an ear.
Leather collar.
No. No no no no no. I dropped the carbine on its sling, my hands covering my mouth. “Jesse? That’s not…”
It couldn’t be. Darwin was safe in the mountains. With the Lakota. Hundreds of miles away.
“Evie! The door!” The strained catch in his voice launched me into motion.
I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, as I sprinted toward the animal clinic, slamming a shoulder into the door and fumbling with the handle. “Shea!”
The door flew open, and I stumbled in, my toe catching on the metal lip. Shea had lit a kerosene lamp, the dim light guiding my way.
I grabbed it, darting for the nearest metal counter and wiping it clear with a sweep of my arm. “Shea. My dog. He’s hurt. He’s—”
My throat closed up, my attention on the wall of cabinets, the doors hanging from their hinges. I scanned for medical supplies, bandages…fuck. What the hell was I looking for?
Shea ran to a lower cabinet and dug through its shelves. “You have a dog?”
Jesse burst into the room and skidded to a stop beside me, shouting something at Shea. His voice garbled through my head, his profile blurring in my periphery. He faded away as all of my senses narrowed on the limp, skeletal German Shepherd he laid on the counter.
The black and tan fur was thin and spotty, balding around crusty green sores from head to tail. Blood caked around his toenails and muzzle, and trickled from a fresh gash along his ribs. His chest heaved, his jaw a rictus of pain, tongue lolling against the counter, as he whined and wheezed.
I buckled over him, my hands clenching around his hackles, my fingers brushing the engraved Darwin in his collar. His eyes rolled up, dull and cloudy as they locked on mine, and he whined louder, his head lifting weakly as if to lick my face. He yelped, and his head dropped back to the counter, his tongue slavering anxiously over his jowls.
We should have brought him with us. I could’ve protected him from making this journey alone. What if he hadn’t reached us? What if he—?
Pain swelled in my throat, robbing my air. My fingers tightened in his fur. What have I done?
I sensed Roark entering the room behind me, but I was too frozen, my chest hurting so fucking badly, to pull my eyes from Darwin.
Shea pushed me toward the direction of Darwin’s head as she lined up plastic packages and metal instruments beside his bloody body. Her movements were focused, calm and clinical, like her voice. “Roark, there’s a black case on the floor in my bedroom at the house. I need that, as well as some supplies from the shed.”
She listed off the labels on the boxes she needed, and Roark’s footfalls faded quickly beyond the doorway.
“Pulse is weak,” she said softly beside me. “Dehydration. Blood loss. Infection. It’s going to be a long night.”
I dragged my gaze away from Darwin’s big brown eyes and placed a hand on her face. “How are you feeling?” Can you do this? Can you save him?
“Honey, I’m fine.” Her skin felt normal, her expression alert, but her mocha complexion still lacked its warm color from this morning.
She prodded the chewed up flesh around Darwin’s gash with gauze. “Let’s just focus on your boy. What happened?”
I slid my hands over his bony cheeks, cupping his head in my hands. When my fingers reached his ear, I bumped into scabbed skin and torn cartilage around the ear against the counter.
My pulse hammered in my throat as I angled for a closer look. Oh my God. Where his left ear used to be was now just a twisted hole of severed flesh and dried blood. I gasped, and a mass of emotion clogged my voice.
"Evie." Shea glanced at me. "Looks like he lost that ear a couple weeks ago. I need to know how he got the laceration on his side."
