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As my wolf began to wake, her apprehension became mine, rolling in the pit of my belly. Her disorientation and fear mounted as she struggled to regain full consciousness. Up until recently, I’d fought against my wolf, convinced she was a monster, but we’d managed to come to a sort of truce. Hopefully, the tentative truce would be enough to convince her to listen to me, and I could control her escalating panic and keep her from forcing me to shift.
I sniffed the air. Through the pungent cleanliness, the stale aroma of my brother’s scent slammed into me.
Adrenaline flooded my system, and I struggled to sit upright and crawl out of bed. They’d found me. Here. In Blackwood Creek.
I had to get out of here and warn Ridge. He wasn’t safe. Hell, nobody in town was safe. This was all my fault. I’d brought them here.
Then, all at once, memories of the past day’s events rushed through me. But I wasn’t certain I could trust my own memories. There were too many holes, too many things that didn’t make sense.And I remembered very little of Kyle’s visit.
What I did know was that Kyle had been in this room with me, and I was weakened when he’d found me. I was still here, still alive, when he’d had a perfect chance to change that. Instead, he’d warned me away.
The biggest stumper of the whole ordeal was: if he’d traced me here, why warn me off? Why hadn’t he captured me and dragged me back to our father when he’d had the chance? Was it the thrill of the chase or some new, twisted hunter technique? A fact-finding exercise, maybe. Scare me, then let me go and see where I run—who I run to—before apprehending meandanyone assisting me.
I kicked at the blankets tangled around my legs, clenching my jaw to avoid yelping at the sharp, shooting pain in my stomach. The stitches from my stab wound throbbed. That fucking psychotic librarian with her wolfsbane, silver knife, and bullets—a veritable arsenal against shifters—apparently had ties to my father.
When I finally managed to lower my feet to the ground, the cold tile floor sent little shockwaves of shivers through me. Fortunately, though, the cold chased away some of the drug-induced fog, making me more alert. Using the bed as an anchor, I stood on leaden legs and tried to make my way through the thick, gelatinous feeling induced by the sedative Kyle had given me. Because I had no way of knowing how long I’d been unconscious, I could only hope he hadn’t had too much of a head start. I needed to get to Ridge before my father got to him.
My father preferred to take his work home, avoiding setting up shop outside his compound whenever possible. Solitude was essential to his work. He didn’t want anyone muscling their way into his operation; he wanted complete control of his prisoners and needed the shifters to be incapacitated before they were brought to his workshop, where he could work undisturbed and unchecked.
Thinking of my father made my blood run cold. He might be evil, but he wasn’t stupid. No, he was a tactician—he’d never send just one hunter into a situation, and if his in-town spy had given him accurate information about Blackwood Creek and its citizens, there was no way in hell he’d have sent Kyle into a shifter town alone. I may have only seen Kyle, but there would be other hunters here. They might still be here, and no one would know.
In a sudden frenzy to get out, I ripped off all the patches, tubes, and wires that attached me to the monitors. I ignored the shrill alarm that squealed loud enough to do some damage to my ears. I smacked the power button, and the racket died down. Hopefully, I’d gotten to it before the noise prompted any medical personnel to come check up on me.
Wearing nothing more than the hospital gown I’d woken in, I scrambled out of the room, using furniture and arm rails for support as I hobbled and struggled to the exit. I didn’t make it four full steps out of the room before a deputy standing beside the door called out. A nurse looked up from the nursing station, her eyes wide with alarm as she rushed around her counter and demanded that I get back into bed. The deputy joined her, and they tried to manhandle me back to the room. His fingers curled around my biceps, and the nurse moved to stand between me and the way out as I pulled and used my body weight to try to break free.
I could hear them speaking, but the pounding in my skull and the foggy haze in my brain made it impossible to make out the words. The bright lights in the hall exacerbated the throbbing pain in my head, and I had to narrow my eyes at the deputy and the nurse.
My wolf growled inside me, but due to the wolfsbane, silver, and drugs, she was incapable of building enough strength to take over. The last thing I needed was her running free in the hospital. I sure as fuck wasn’t strong enough to handle her right now.
I scanned the hospital corridors for the exit and tugged free of the deputy’s firm hold. With the sudden freedom and the inertia, I almost tripped on a gurney before the nurse caught me.
“Please, miss, you need to get back into bed. You’re injured.”
No shit. I’d been stabbed. But that didn’t matter when the real danger was here. And I wasn’t the only one in danger.
I shook my head. I had to get to Ridge, had to warn him.
It took a few seconds for me to get a good grasp of my surroundings. The ER was destroyed. I blinked several times, trying to clear my mind. What I was seeing couldn’t be right. The once-gleaming floors were now marred by scuff marks. Torn curtains hung haphazardly from their rails. A stethoscope left abandoned on an examination table beside a crumpled medical chart showed how quickly the attack had occurred.
Shards of shattered glass and broken equipment lay scattered in pieces. Antiseptic pooled on the floor, and my nose twitched and burned from the scent. Half the beds in the small ER had been tipped over, every drawer and cupboard ransacked, their contents left strewn across counters and floors.
A sheriff’s deputy worked with the nurses to restore order to the chaos. People were clearly terrified. In one corner, a woman tried to comfort her traumatized child.
I silently fumed at my brother’s callousness. Children had no place in this fight. No one in Blackwood Creek did. The only mindless monsters I could see here, in what was left of the ER, were the hunters.
I worked hard to get my head on straight and piece together everything I knew.Kyle, a top hunter, had brought a team with him. They’d ransacked the place like it was nothing, as if they weren’t in a town of heavy-hitting shifters who were capable of doing them severe damage, and humans who might get hurt in the crossfire.
I was missing something. Why would Kyle be here, in the same room as me, then leave? The hunters had been chasing me for four years. Why not grab me when he had the chance? Adrenaline flooded my system, burning off a little more of the drug-induced haze as I remembered Kyle being in my room. Just before he’d knocked me out, I’d scented…
Blood. Ridge’s blood.
Now that I was in the hallway, the smell flooded my senses. Had Kyle hurt Ridge? Had he taken him? No…no, Ridge had to be nearby. After all, why would Kyle leave me and take Ridge? It didn’t make any sense.
Fear overtook my rationality, and my wolf frothed to gain control and tear this place apart until she found him. I had an inexplicable need for him. It went right to my very soul, and there’d be no convincing me or my wolf otherwise.
I shrugged away from everyone who grasped at me or held me, and then I limped as fast as possible—which wasn’t fast at all—out of the hospital, using the walls to support myself. Need pushed me, drove me forward. I had to find Ridge. I was resolute, and nothing would sway me or my wolf. We were determined to keep going.
Before I came to Blackwood Creek and met my fake fiancé, there had been no “we” because my wolf and I didn’t work together. She was the stuff of nightmares, a creature to be avoided. But thanks to Ridge, I was learning everything was not as black and white as I’d been taught. I wasn’t sure my wolf and I would ever be besties and painting each other’s nails—claws?—anytime soon, but thanks to this man, I was learning that maybe my wolf wasn’t something to be afraid of and that we could co-exist.
