A knock at the door made me grumble words that might have been come in, or might have been fuck off, I didn’t care. If it was my clan and not one of the forest animals, they’d come in. I was arm deep in gutting a V-Twin engine and didn’t care what was happening to the world outside of my cabin.

“Fell? It’s Sabina. We need some help here, honey.” Her voice came through the simple pine boards of my door, and I glared. She was one tempting woman, one I didn’t want to want, but she was temptation all but wrapped up in a bow. The fact that her smile made me grin stupidly didn’t help.

“Fine, but only because it’s you.” I muttered out loud as I went to the door and opened it, to see that Sabina and her new mate, Tavin, held a woman up between them. “We found her…”

“In the parking lot. I know, bring her in.” I was the closest thing my clan had to a doctor for more serious cases of injury and a sometimes psychiatrist to those in need. The woman that hung limply between them had been beaten to within an inch of her life. And she was human. My eyes narrowed as I shifted into medic mode. “Put her on the table.”

Sabina knew I meant the exam table in a back bedroom and guided her mate and the woman back there.

I looked out into the forest beyond the door to the world spread out in the distance. Another injured human in need. How many times could the dumb fuckers hurt each other like this and go on functioning? I knew the answer to that more than others, so I just shut the door, and walked back to my exam room.

Something started to buzz in my head as I walked closer to the woman and looked down at her battered face. You couldn’t see much through the swollen mess of her blood-soaked face, but I knew one thing the moment I looked down at her.

Mate.

Dammit!

I swore under my breath and clenched my fists together against the rush of awareness that shot up my spine. I’d never expected to feel that surge of energy, hadn’t wanted it after a while. I’d gone out to look for my mate once upon a time, and the consequences had led to a solitary life where I didn’t have to deal with screams, death, and despair. Now, my mate was here, and it was the last thing on Earth I wanted.

Not now, not when I’d finally found some peace. Not when she looked closer to death than to life. I looked away and swore again. Now I was going to have to kill some stupid son of a bitch for this battered human woman. Great. Just fucking great.

I looked at Sabina and saw her curiosity. I gave her a look that said ‘I’m screwed’.

“Oh.” She said. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

“What, what did I miss?” Tavin looked between us, lost, but curious.

“This, my darling mate, is the ever so hot Fell’s mate.” I growled when she winked at me teasingly. “Our reclusive mountain bear has just met his match.”

Why can’t I just die now and get it over with?

I sighed and got to work, instead. I settled a mask over the long dark beard on my face and a cloth over the dark brown hair that came down to around my chin. I needed to keep her wounds clean. I looked down at her battered face, the blood stains that covered her top, and wondered if she’d survive.

I sighed as I put on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed some cotton padding and a bottle of alcohol to wipe away the blood. I couldn’t tell where exactly her injuries were all from with the amount of blood on her.

“He’s so grouchy when he’s saving people’s lives.” Sabina teased, an impish grin made her beautiful face even more beautiful.

I hate company, I thought to myself, I like my books and my engines. This stranger, so determined to bleed out on the table was my mate, not just company. Damn, why did I have to have a mate? Why couldn’t I be one of the lucky ones of my kind that died alone?

My huge hands looked massive as I pulled her shirt up to find out why the white spandex top was covered in blood. I probed at the knife wound there on her left side, my fingers far more gentle than their size said I should be capable of.

“There’s no tear in the top; she wasn’t wearing this when she was stabbed.” I pointed out to no one in particular. I said it to make sure I remembered it later, when I put the whole picture together. Sabina found a pen and some paper and started to make notes anyway. My first observation must have prompted her.

The redhead was pretty, beneath the blood and dirt on her face. I think. I couldn’t tell for sure as I cut away her clothes and began the process of examining her for more injuries. I viewed her body with a detached gaze. I was in medical mode, not male mode, so while I noted she had a nice shape, I didn’t really pay it much attention. I needed to find all of her injuries before she bled out.

From the looks of her, she’d either lost a lot of blood or somebody else had joined in to bleed all over her.

“What’s her blood pressure, Sabina?” I prompted the other woman in the room to move. She pulled a blood pressure cuff from the cabinet where the medical supplies were stored and took the measurement.

“That sounds good, I guess some of this blood isn’t hers. Her blood pressure would be much lower.”

She had a laceration to her right arm that would need stitching, a fracture in her left arm, three broken ribs on the left, and a tear above her right eye that would probably need stitches too. Her feet were covered in bruises and scratches that would need to be cleansed but nothing that would need stitches. She’d come a long way on bare feet, that was obvious.

“Sabina, I need you to prepare the materials to make a cast for her arm and find the bandages I’ll need to wrap her ribs up. Tavin, can you hold her left arm for me so I can turn her over?” I looked up and the handsome devil that had bewitched Sabina complied without complaint. He was a decent guy, after all.

We turned her and all three of us gasped. Her back was covered in scars, infected burn wounds, bruises, and more lacerations. She had been abused for a very long time. Anger surged through me, but I kept my cool as I let her roll back to her back.

“Alright, you two. This is going to be tough, but I need your help.” They both looked as angry as I felt for the poor woman and did what they could to help me.

I probed the knife wound in her side, cleaned it out when I found it wasn’t too deep, stitched it up, then moved on to the cut above her eye. Sabina handed me the tools to irrigate the lacertaion and stitch that wound up as well, before we tended to the fracture in her arm. We then moved on to her back.

“Are those cigarette burns?” Tavin asked, a wobble to his voice that I could tell was suppressed anger.

“Could be. Looks like it.” I cleaned each wound, 32 in all, but didn’t count the healed wounds. I had to stitch up three of the longest lacerations on her back, they were too deep not to, and then bandaged it all as well as I could.

“Are you a doctor?” Tavin finally asked as I started an IV line and administered pain medication and antibiotics. Now was a fine time to ask, I thought with a smirk that didn’t reach my face.

“No, our old veterinarian trained me. Back in the day we kept a lot of farm animals, but those days are gone and I take care of the injured that make their way to our doors now. I’ve done some studying of human medicine since then. We had to have someone once outsiders started to show up.”

“I see.” Tavin said from his spot in a simple pine chair in the room. “Necessity made you a medic?”

“Yeah, something like that.” I pulled the mask away that had covered my face as I worked over the injured young woman and sat down in a chair of my own.

“I’ll tell you the proper story one day. For now, we have to wait and see if she can fight her way through this. On their own, her injuries aren’t fatal, but together? And with infection settled into some of them?” I paused and stared at the woman with the dirty face. I didn’t think I needed to say out loud that the woman had a slim chance of recovery. Especially if the infection in the burns had spread to her blood. She didn’t have a temperature, so that was a good sign.

“What about the rest of her?” Sabina asked and I looked down at the woman’s legs. She was right. I needed to inspect all of her. With a sigh I stood up. Sabina helped me and we soon had the woman covered with a blanket to hide her nudity as I inspected her for further injury.

“Nothing that I can see. How about you, Sabina?” Sabina was on the woman’s other side inspecting her closely.

“Nothing, not even a bruise.”

“She has a scrape on her right knee and her ankle on this side is swollen. Nothing major.” We settled the blanket on her and I sat down again.

“I guess that’s all for now. You two want to report to Tavin, Quinn, and the rest of the Ursas?” I didn’t want to go down there, I rarely did and luckily, Sabina knew all about it. She would, though, I was the reason her parents were dead.

“Yeah, I’ll fill them in. You come get me if you need me, you hear?” Her look was pointed and I shook my head in agreement. “Yeah, I will.”

I followed them out of my small cabin and lit a cigarette as I watched them go. The dream of Sabina had ended long ago for me. I was older than her, by 20 years, and she’d always been too wild of a spirit, even for me. Then she’d found Tavin and he was exactly what she needed. The woman smiled most of the time now, instead of her normal frown, and that made Tavin okay in my book.

I flicked the cigarette into a coffee tin filled with sand and went back in to check my patient. The drugs would keep her out for a while, but I wouldn’t leave her alone. A woman that abused would wake up terrified, I’m sure.

“What happened to you, sweetheart?” I asked, and sat down in the chair at the side of the bed we’d placed her in once we had her all sewed, bandaged, and cleaned up. I looked at her and wondered what she looked like under the bruises on her face and her swollen lips. I’d cleaned the blood and dirt away earlier to reveal more purple and red splotches. She had an old scar, about four inches long that ran down the hairline on the right side of her face. I couldn’t tell how old it was, but it didn’t look very old. Not like something she’d had since childhood. The jagged edges also told me it had never been cared for properly.

Her injuries had all been recent, but the burns and that scar on her face? Those told me she’d been in pain for a long time. The woman had been through a war of some kind. I stared down at her to will her chest to rise and fall, I knew that at some point, whoever did this to her would die. Because I was going to kill that fucker.

I propped my feet on the table beside her in the small room, and leaned back to close my eyes. The cabin was small, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a larger room I used as a living room and kitchen/workshop. This was a guest room, though the only guests that had ever used it were also patients. The place didn’t seem so empty now, with her quiet breaths to whisper noise into the air.

I dozed off for a few minutes but jerked awake when a noise caught my attention. She was awake and had tried to sit up, but her painful ribs wouldn’t let her. She looked as I’d expected, brown eyes terrified, full of fear and pain. There was something else too, determination. To escape?

“You’re safe now, sugar. Relax.” I grabbed her right hand by instinct, careful not to move it around too much. That laceration was deep and looked painfully raw when I cleaned it.

“Help...” Her voice cracked and I reached for the bottle of water I saw there. Sabina must have left it.

“You’re safe, sweetheart. I promise. I’m Fell. Nothing’s going to hurt you now. I promise.” I made those promises with the intention to keep them. I’d protect her to my last breath. She was my mate, after all.

I moved the bottle of water to her lips and warm brown eyes looked into my cold gray ones. I felt heat flow through my veins, warmth unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I didn’t realize I’d stopped all movement until she moved her right hand up to mine.

I tilted the bottle then, and my eyes focused on her lips. Soft, plump, peach colored lips trembled beneath a bruise that shouldn’t be there. She took a drink, choked a little, and then swallowed before she sat back on the pillows again.

“Is that enough?” I asked her, not sure it was, but she was asleep again already. Auburn lashes rested against swollen cheeks and I wanted to stroke her face, but it looked too painful to touch.

I wanted to know her story too, I wanted to know who it was I had to kill, but I’d have to wait for those answers. She needed the oblivion only sleep could bring. I checked her medicine bottles and went to check my equipment and supplies to let her rest in quiet for a bit. Travis and Quinn managed to get me everything I might need for emergency cases, anything more serious would have to go to a hospital. I’d learned a lot over my decades as the clan’s healer/medic, and most things I could handle. I wasn’t so cocky I’d try to save someone that I knew I shouldn’t, but I knew my limits.

I could keep this woman alive, if I could keep the infection at bay. And if her spirit was strong enough. I remember the fierce determination in her eyes, a reddish color that wasn’t just brown, and knew she had the will to live. Now, I just needed to make sure she had the medicine that would help her win the fight.

I had enough antibiotics on hand, and in a variety that would treat a variety of problems. I’d have to order more of the ones I had her on now though, she’d go through them before this was over. I made a note on a form, and then went back in to work on the engine I’d dissected earlier in the day.

It needed a little TLC but I’d been in the process of reassembly when Sabina showed up with my new mate. Mate. Damn.

I put the parts in my hands down and looked back in the direction of the woman’s room. It was down a short hallway and to the right of where I sat on the left side of the kitchen by the only doorway. I didn’t need a mate, but it seemed I had one. I wasn’t one to shy away from facts, and I had to face this one in a huge way. She was my mate, and someone had obviously tried to kill her.

How did I deal with that? Let it go? Kill them? Yeah, kill them sounded like the most satisfying option. Even if their actions had brought her to me, at last, I knew that whoever broke her like that would pay. I’d make sure of it with my own bare hands, even if I did have to go out into the human world to do it.

I hadn’t stepped foot in that world since the day Sabina’s parents had died. My head dropped at the memory, but I pushed it away. When I sat back up, my head high, my eyes blazed with a determination of my own and anger that would not be quenched. Just as soon as she was better and could give me a name, I’d face my biggest regret, and whoever had dared to touch her with anger.