Clarissa was in a bed. That was the first thought in her mind when she opened her eyes. When was the last time she had been in a bed? She looked around, her gaze finding her mate immediately. She’d probably always seek him in a room before she looked for anything else, just to make sure she hadn’t dreamed him up.

His head was on his knees, which were tucked against his chest, his back pressed to the wall. That couldn’t be comfortable. Why was he on the floor? And why did she feel so good? Not perfect, but better than she had in a long time.

She rose, and August’s head shot up. He was on his feet almost the second her feet touched the ground.

“Are you okay?”

Clarissa rubbed at her eyes. “Feels a little weird to be wherever here is. The last thing I remember is relief you took down that dragon.”

“That was yesterday. You’re with the pack now. Your sisters are here. You’re safe.”

His words were meant to soothe her, but hearing them set off a small pounding in the back of her head. “My sisters.”

Auggie cocked his head to the side. “Do you not like your sisters?”

“I do, very much. I just never thought to see them again and certainly not in my present situation. What is my present situation, by the way? I feel sort of good right now.”

He walked over to the window. “Some sort of step down process that will eventually get you off the drugs. Do you wish to shower? There is hot water. And one of my brothers brought by some food last night and left it in the kitchen. We can eat.”

He was very efficient, this mate of hers, and she was not going to complain about it. “I’d love a shower, and I think I could eat right now.” A step down process? She would need to hear more about that. But first, an actual shower while she had the energy to take one? Nothing sounded better.

Dizziness swept over her on the way down the stairs toward the kitchen, but she ignored the feeling. She was upright and didn’t want to be otherwise at the moment. The house was completely empty, save for the bed she’d been in upstairs and two towels in the bathroom. She’d used one and saved one for August.

He stood at the window in the kitchen looking out. Somewhere, children were shrieking with happy laughter. Otherwise, she smelled nothing out of the ordinary. What was he looking at? He’d gone to the window upstairs, too.

Her mate turned at her arrival, his face impassive. Handsome didn’t begin to describe him. His gaze swept over her, and she swallowed through the dryness in her throat.

He didn’t speak, so she had to. “It has been such a long time since I looked in a mirror. I pretty much don’t recognize myself.”

His response was nothing more than a grunt before he indicated some food on the table. “You should eat while you’re still hungry.”

Well, at least she knew how he felt about her physical state—not enough to warrant a comment. She slipped into the chair and started eating the eggs. They were good. Tasty. Fresh. He must have just cooked them. How had she missed the scent? Her senses weren’t online. Would they ever come back, or was this a permanent problem?

All her own fault, anyway.

“Are you eating?”

He sat across from her. “After you do.”

That struck her as funny. She wasn’t sure she understood. “Why after?”

“I want to make sure there’s enough for you first. You eat your fill, and then I’ll fix myself what’s left.”

A thought dawned on her. “August, did you eat any turkey? When we were in the woods.”

“A little bit when everyone else was done. My system is pretty efficient, after years of going without. I’m rarely hungry.”

That didn’t mean he shouldn’t be eating. She rose to her feet. They were unsteady, but as long as they kept her upright that would do. The eggs had to be in the icebox.

“What are you doing?”

She didn’t turn around. “Making you some eggs.”

“I just told you that…”

Clarissa interrupted him. “Yes, I heard you. But that’s ridiculous. You need to eat, too, and if this is some male thing where you won’t feed yourself because I haven’t eaten, then I’ll have to feed you instead. I’ll do it if you won’t.”

He rose, the chair going backward with a screech. “Sit down. If it’s important to you, I’ll fix myself some eggs.”

She nodded, heading back to the chair. He scooted around in the kitchen, and she watched his quick movements. For a person as physically imposing as August, he had a grace about him. He never adjusted or tweaked anything because he got it right the first time. The eggs cooked quickly, and as he flipped them around in the pan, he never had to do anything twice. Perfectionism didn’t come naturally to her. She was always lacking in some way. Did August do everything that way or just eggs?

“Eat. They’re going to get cold,” he spoke to her without turning around. The hard muscles of his back were visible through his shirt as he cooked. She sighed inside. Did he carry the weight of the world on those shoulders?

“I’ll eat when you do. We can eat together. It’s called sharing a meal.”

He snorted, his back jiggling slightly with the sound. Had she amused him? Yes, his scent was more upbeat. “Stubborn.”

“I guess I used to be. Maybe I can be again.” Someday.

August sat down across from her, and with a glance in her direction, started eating his eggs. She dropped her gaze and did the same. They were slightly cooler, but she preferred them that way anyway. Too hot always burned her tongue.

“Are you not looking at me because you feel in some way submissive?”

“Yes.” There was little point in lying about it. That was just the way it went sometimes. She’d always been mid-level in dominance. He was way above her. It was everything she could do not to keep her eyes perpetually at the ground.

August cleared his throat. She raised her eyes just slightly. Was he okay? Why had he done that? He lifted his eyebrows at her when she finally met his gaze. “You’re my mate. That puts us on the same level. You will make eye contact with me whenever you want to. And I think you know that. If you were really feeling submissive, you wouldn’t defy me or snip at me verbally. I like both of those things. I want your eyes on mine, too.”

All right, maybe he had a point. “Perhaps it’s something else. Not submission. Maybe it’s…”

“Fear?” He shook his head. “I’ll never hurt you.”

No, that hadn’t been what she was going to say. She’d grasped very quickly that while he was gruff, he was a caregiver. A warrior wolf with a gentle soul he probably didn’t even see clearly himself. Her wolf perked up at the thought, and she could swear she felt his brush against her, too. Auggie’s gaze stayed firm on her own. If he noticed their canine exchange, he didn’t indicate it in any way.

“Shame.” There, she said it.

He’d finished eating and set down his fork. “What are you ashamed of?”

“Being in this condition. You’re back from the war. You’re hunting the dragons that are still around. You’re clearly amazing—that trick shifting in the air was nothing I’ve ever seen before. You came home and found a mate who let this happen to her.” She looked away.

He took her hand across the table, linking their fingers together. “Clarissa, the first thing you did was save my life. Dragged me out of the river. You’d gone there to put an end to this, to live as a wolf, to hurry your decline and instead you yanked me out of the river.”

That was true. She forced herself to stare at him again. “Having seen your wolf now, you would have probably gotten yourself out.”

He shook his head. “I was done. Out cold. No memory. I’d have drowned.”

“Okay, well you saved my life. More than once. So even though it’s not even, why don’t we go ahead and call it even?”

August leaned forward. “There doesn’t need to be evenness between us. We’re mates. It just is. I’ll say that we’re done saving lives. No more near deaths for us.”

That worked. Since she’d opened the door to the discussion, she walked right through it. “I took the dragon drug for the first time with my sister Elizabeth. She got into it with her mate, who was a soldier. He came back addicted.”

August sucked in his breath. “I was in such a different situation. I didn’t know for a long time that our soldiers were using. The dragons did that on purpose. Wore down our forces. Go on. I’m sorry.”

She needed to hear his story. He’d been reported dead. What had happened?

But she was going to finish her own first. “For the first time in years, I wasn’t scared. I knew better. I knew I wasn’t supposed to really feel that way. That it was a false sensation and it couldn’t last. I’d have been fine if I’d just stopped after that one time. I could give you a list of excuses about what happened the next day. Four dragons came through. So many friends dead.” She looked away, forcing the memory to go wherever the others went, somewhere else. “They’re just excuses. I took it a second time. Then I was hooked. Elizabeth robbed our family, a few times I think. I never did that. She and I didn’t stay together very long. She and her mate left, and I ended up on my own. For a while, I seemed capable of both using and working.”

“That stopped.” He filled in for her, and she nodded.

“It did. My job disappeared anyway. The building was firebombed by the dragons, and the government said we were non-essential.”

“What did you do?” He still hadn’t let go of her hand.

“Would you believe I helped wolves hold off their descent? To keep from going into their permanent wolf state until they had their affairs in order. Medically. I was a healer. I knew herbs and such.” She rubbed her eyes. A healer who let this happen to herself.

He hadn’t commented, and she waited. Finally, he spoke. “Do you want to go get some furniture for the house while you have the energy? We could go do that.”

That was it? He didn’t want to tell her how foolish she had been? How stupid she was for making those decisions? He wanted to go buy furniture?

“Sure.”

“Great.” He nodded once. “Then let’s get to it.”

Did he have an internal list he checked off in his brain? Sleep. Bathe. Eat. Shop. Didn’t he want to say anything at all about what she’d told him? His scent was hidden from her. She sighed. Clarissa needed to pull herself together. She was lucky he didn’t throw her out onto the street. She was a drug-addled mate who looked like she’d been eaten by a dragon and spit out.

“Let’s.”

“Clarissa.” Lena tugged her into a hug, and Clarissa let her youngest sister do so. Lena had been the one left behind to tend to life with their parents when they’d all fled. Now, she was a beautiful woman mated to Devin Knox with a baby on her hip.

She had nieces and nephews. Wow. That was just amazing.

“Lena,” she said, hugging her sister back. “Look at you.”

Her sister beamed. Happiness was beautiful on her. “You came back to us. Mated to August. We weren’t sure we’d ever see him again.”

“Right.” The sun was really bright. There was furniture all over the place that she was supposed to be looking at. Devin made most of it, apparently. August seemed preoccupied with it.

“Seriously?” Her mate shook his head. “Furniture?”

Devin laughed. “Sure. This is what I do now. I’m not really interested in helping Robbie run strategy. If our Alpha needs me, he knows I’m always there for him as both packmate and brother. But he has Dougal. He has Homer. I like to build things.”

Clarissa smiled at Lena. They’d both paused to listen to them speak. “He’s very talented.”

“I know.” She swung around. “You smell better today than yesterday—I mean the drugs. Nothing about your personal hygiene.”

She could have meant that. Clarissa had really stunk before she got in the shower, and considering that she still wore the same clothes, it wasn’t much better. She started to walk through the dresser section. They used to have stores like this before the war. How was Clarissa going to pay for this? Her head started pounding, and Lena’s face fell. “Well, you did smell better. Now you’re in pain.”

That was the thing about wolves. They had no personal privacy from each other. In her pack, the wolves left each other alone. Why mention misery when that was all there was?

August was by her side suddenly. He placed his hand on the middle of her back. “Too much too soon. My fault.” He turned to Lena. “Pick out some nice things for us. We need everything. If she hates anything, I’ll bring it back.”

“Oh.” Lena brightened at the invitation. “I’d like that.”

“You were always very artistic. I’m sorry, Lena.”

She scratched her head. “For what?”

“For… cutting our reunion short. For being such a problem.”

Auggie tugged her against him. “Stop that. You have nothing to apologize for.”

Lena held up her hands. “I wasn’t suggesting she did.”

“Come on.” He ushered her away from the crowd looking at furniture and occasionally staring at her, back toward his home. “There is not one person in this pack—not one—who is perfect. Okay? You’re very kind. You made a mistake, and the person paying for it is you. Do not, under any circumstances, go around feeling you owe anyone an apology.”

His words brought tears to her eyes. He could smell her distress for sure. She couldn’t cover it. “I get low when I need a hit. It’s funny. I wasn’t feeling high, particularly. Just normal. Then it crashed. I guess normal is high?”

August made one of his grunting noises that Clarissa couldn’t interpret. What did it mean when he did that?

Finally, he used words. “I’m not an expert on this, but given that my sister-in-law is the one giving out the stuff, I’d guess it’s very high quality in terms of drugs. She’s dosing you with the good stuff. I doubt you’ve been on the good stuff before. Maybe how you felt is just because of that. But, yes, you’re crashing. She’ll be by this afternoon with more of it. If I’d kept you home, I bet you wouldn’t have burned through it so fast.”

She pointed to her hair. “It’s the red in my hair. Didn’t you know? Redheads don’t process drugs like everyone else.”

He blinked fast. “You do have a lot of strawberry in that blonde.”

August linked their hands together. With his fingers entwined with hers, breathing came easier and her headache waned a bit. Had he done something?

“How are the others?”

“Your pack? They’re fine. About the same as you. Everyone is holding steady. No more deaths.”

She stopped walking. “August, we were all prepared to go any day. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we knew better than what we did. What little we discussed it, we all knew what was likely going to happen.”

A rush of anger hit her, wafting through the air on a hot burst before it instantly fled. “Don’t ever talk about your death as though it’s something that just might have been. As though you deserve it. Like it’s not a big deal. I lost those two. I will not lose you.”

Clarissa had never, not even as a little girl, had someone make her feel as though she was important before. Her breath caught in her throat.

August bent over, pressing their lips together gently. She closed her eyes. This was their first kiss. They stayed like that for a long moment. He smelled like man and like wolf, all mixed together in a clean, homey scent. She could have melted into him.

He sighed against her lips. “When you’re better.”

Clarissa swayed slightly, and his arms held her still. She’d thought maybe Auggie could support the world on his back. He picked her up like she weighed nothing. “Tomorrow, we know. Not so much, not yet. We’ll hang around the house. Nothing wrong with that.”

Her mate was a dragon hunter. She doubted very much he wanted to hang around the house. Still, she wasn’t in any position to argue. Not when her head decided to pound so loudly she could hear it in her ears.

August settled her in bed before he went to get a washcloth. He then laid it on her head. “I hope it’s okay I asked Lena to get the furniture. I can’t have you living here without any, and I don’t know when it’ll be time for you to venture out to choose things.”

In the sunlight of the all but empty bedroom, August was beautiful. Who was she kidding? He was always beautiful. Like moonlight was beautiful, the sky before a storm, and the way a river sounded when it pounded hard on rocks. Nothing about August was easy or simple—but he was intense in how gorgeous he was.

“I don’t care about decorating. That’s not what I wanted out of life, even when I imagined having a life that didn’t include looking for my next fix.”

He furrowed his brow. “Which was what? What did you imagine?”

“Pack. Mate. My mate not to be dead.” She wished she hadn’t said that. At some point, they’d discuss it, but this was maybe not the time. “Sorry. You’re obviously not dead.”

August didn’t speak, and she thought maybe he wasn’t going to. But then, finally, he spoke. “We made a decision to help form a special unit to help fight the war. We did a lot of things the government couldn’t sanction. Our command was adamant we had to be dead. No one could be asking questions about us. So we faked our deaths. Destroyed our families. I really can’t tell you why we thought that was a wonderful idea. At the time, we were so gung ho. I understand, Angel Face, how you can do something that is so completely stupid and then have to live with the consequences. If I’d even suspected you lived in the world, I wouldn’t have done it. It pains to me to think my mate thought I was dead. It pains me to think that what’s happened to you was because I…”

Clarissa put her hand over his mouth to stop him. “I didn’t do this because of you. The blame stays right on my shoulders.”

He kissed her palm, and she wished for a second that she never had to pull her hand away. Eventually, she did.

“You should sleep,” he said, his voice low. “Take the edge off until it is time for Tatyana to come back with the dose.”

She would love a nap and that was just pathetic, considering she’d been up for maybe three hours. Her need for it warred with a desire not to lose this time with August. “Could you lie with me? Maybe we could hit dreamland together for a bit. Better than the floor, anyway, right?”

He climbed in next to her. “I’ll lie with you. I’m not going to sleep. I barely do. I never have anything but nightmares.”

“What?” That sounded awful.

“I’ve never told anyone else that, ever.” He made the bed warmer, and as she shifted under the covers, she knew she would, for once, not be cold.

He only had nightmares? “I won’t tell anyone. We can have secrets that will just stay between us.”

August might have actually smiled at that for a second. Then the look faded, replaced by his impenetrable, unreadable hardness that made no sense to her. What was he thinking? She wanted to cuddle but held off the instinct. Her mate didn’t give off a come cuddle with me vibe.

She yawned, and her eyes closed of their own accord. Someday, she would have control of her own body and mind again.

When she woke up, she was stiff, like she hadn’t moved in hours. She wasn’t on her pillow. Instead, she’d sprawled out, one arm over August’s chest. He breathed steadily, his eyes closed. Well, she’d cuddled him—whether he liked it or not.

His face was passive in sleep. He didn’t look hard or quasi-angry. Instead, August was soft. She almost reveled in the beauty of this moment, and then she realized she was drenched in sweat. Oh no, that wasn’t good. Usually the sweat was followed by the shakes and, finally, throwing up. These were withdrawal signs.

She groaned, and her mate’s eyes flew open.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not. Feeling. Well.” Yep, she was cranky, too. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

A sound downstairs had August getting out of the bed. She closed her eyes, nausea moving through. The throwing up would come later.

“Tatyana’s here. With my brother.”

The idea was utterly horrifying. “I don’t know if I can do visitors just yet.”

“She’s here as your doctor, and my brother…” His voice trailed off. “He needs an Alpha allegiance from you. Make you part of the pack. They’re talking downstairs. I can hear them.”

That was amazing. “You can hear them? Smell them, yes. Hear them, no.”

He shrugged. “I have always had very sensitive everything. He’s coming up the stairs. You’re covered, yes?”

She was. In fact, she was in the only pair of clothes she owned. They really needed to be laundered. Her body was clean before it was sweaty. Her clothes never were.

Robbie knocked and then came through the door. Alphas tended to do as they pleased in her experience. It was nice he knocked at all. “We can be fast about this. I waited for you for last to give you guys some time. Your pack is my pack now, Clarissa. Blood, please.”

She forced herself to sit up. “Okay.”

Half shifting had always been hard for her and now it was downright impossible. August walked over to her. Bringing her palm to his mouth, he bit down just enough to draw blood. Clearly, elongating his fangs wasn’t a problem for him. It pinched, but she hardly noticed it against the rest of her pain. Robbie bit down on his hand, and soon, they were blood to blood. Her wolf stood up and howled. Yes, she liked this.

This was real. This was pack. This was family.

She’d always be Robbie’s to command, and in turn, he would see to her future, to that of all of them.

Assuming she had one. Tatyana pushed past her Alpha mate to get to her. “Let’s make this better. Little less than yesterday. Step down. One day at a time.”

It was going to be long and tough, but the pain would be worth it in the end.