“How did it go?”

It was the question Harper had been dreading all morning, and the reason she'd dragged her ass in getting down the mountain.

Her rest had been uneventful, save for the part where she'd woken to finding Shan petting her. She had spent the morning convincing herself that it was a very realistic dream, because the alternative was not something she had the mental bandwidth to contemplate.

When she'd woken to daylight, she'd been alone and chilly. It was another overcast day and a cold front had swept through the mountains, making her exceptionally reluctant to put on her wet clothes. She'd remained huddled in bed for a while, contemplating the series of bad decisions that had gotten her to where she was.

“I asked him,” Harper said. “He said he'd 'take my request under consideration,' whatever the fuck that means.”

She had fallen asleep so mad at him. There was no way she'd let him pet her, no way she'd enjoyed it.

“Did he say anything else? What did you say?”

Jo offered her the stack of neatly folded clothes, compliments of Rosa. Harper hoped that the clothes had been procured by Rosa and did not belong to her, otherwise there was no way she'd fit in them.

“I barely remember what we talked about. To be honest, I was a little bit stoned.”

She removed her shirt and braced herself for Jo's wrath.

“Jesus Christ, Harper. Couldn't you have waited?”

“I was stressed!”

She pulled on the buckskin shirt. It barely fit over her chest and left some serious mid-drift.

“He wasn't going to budge anyway. I feel like the more I ask, the more resolute he'll become. If we drop the issue for a few days, he'll probably have Gareth give him back.”

“So, we're going to go get him right now, right?”

Harper tapped the side of her head. “Duh. You know how I feel about waiting.”

“Awesome!” Jo said, her irritation forgotten. “Okay, what's the plan?”

Harper sucked in a breath as she tried tying the waistline of the pants. They fit her, just barely, but were tailored for someone about five inches shorter than her, making them fit more like capri pants.

“Step 1, we find Ian. Step 2, we kick the asses of anyone who gets in our way.”

She could see Jo's enthusiasm wilt. “What do we do about the part where I can't fight and everyone can turn into wolves?”

“I never said it was a perfect plan. You can stay here if you want,” Harper said, motioning back towards the campsite. She could see Rosa through the trees, threading beads on a string and pretending not to listen.

“Really? I can?”

Harper clicked her tongue. “You're supposed to say, 'No, I wouldn't let you go without me, Harper.' Geez.”

“Yeah, but I kind of feel like I might just get in your way. Stop looking at me like that, I'll come. Next time, don't ask me if you're going to make me come anyway. It's like when you ask me where I want to eat and I tell you and you say...”

Harper tuned her out as she bent to put on her shoes. The clothes felt far too tight, and she was surprised that the pants didn't rip as she bent over.

Jo was still ranting when Harper had finished putting her shoes on. She stood and glanced around the area.

“All right, which way to Gareth's camp?”

“It's on the other side of the stream,” Jo said. “That's why we didn't see it yesterday. Come on, I'll show you.”

* * *

Shan met with Gareth in the relative privacy afforded by the river. The sounds of their conversation wouldn't carry over the rushing water, but their scents would. Members of their pack would know better than to disturb them.

“Now rotate it counterclockwise,” Shan instructed, watching Gareth's face, rather than his arm. The man had more pride than sense, and when Shan saw a slight wince, he knew that Gareth was still in a great deal of pain.

“I'm ready to shift,” Gareth insisted.

It had started to rain again, precipitation coming down in a fine mist. If the temperatures held, it could be snowing by evening. An October snow was not unheard of in the mountains, but it would make the pack grow even more restless than they already were. It was well past time for them to return home.

Ignoring Gareth's weak assertion, Shan said, “I think I'm going to send you back. You can lead the pack with Eko and West. I'll keep a few of the scouts to deal with this nuisance to the south.”

“I can stay and help you fight.”

“I don't want to fight with them. Not unless there is no other alternative. And, to be frank, if it comes to that, I will not need you.”

Gareth was not insulted. He'd been with Shan since the beginning and had seen him fight in a hundred battles.

“You're not infallible,” Gareth said. “Everyone survives until they don't.”

“Stretch it out. Good. Now bend it.”

“Fuck!” Gareth snarled his arm.

“You're not ready to shift,” Shan said. “You'll begin moving preparations tomorrow. The following day, you're going back to The Steppes where Merry can take a look at you.”

“I just need another day!” Gareth snapped.

“You need a fortnight, at least.”

“I wasn't aware you'd become a healer.”

There were few in his pack that would speak to him as Gareth did. Shan suspected that half the reason the pack feared Gareth was that he and his sister were the only ones who would show him disrespect. The other reason was that as the leader of the enforcers, Gareth personally carried out most punishments and, when the crime called for it, executions.

“Fucking human bitch,” Gareth sneered.

“Enough of that. You should have known better than to fight in human form.”

“If I shifted, I would have killed her.”

“You are all trained to subdue humans without harming them,” Shan reminded him.

“She had a knife.”

“How many more excuses are you going to try and lean on before you realize that I don't care? Forget about the human, and you're not shifting yet. If I catch you in your wolf form before this injury is healed, it will be another strike.”

It would be Gareth's third strike that year. If he got another before the growing season began, it would mean demotion. He would be stripped of his rank within the enforcers and forced to be supplicant for the following year. For Gareth, having to spend a year on the lowest rung of the pack would not only be unbearable, it would also mean the death of his reputation, a blow from which he was unlikely to ever recover.

Shan said, “We should go and find Eko now. I'll walk with you.”

Offering to walk with an injured pack mate was a sign of compassion. In Shan's case, he simply didn't want to shift again. He had already joined the hunt that morning, which meant that he had only one shift left. He usually used it in the evening before he retired, if at all. In all of their years together, he had never told Gareth this, or even Kalla, whom he trusted perhaps more than anyone living. There was a chance they might have inferred it, but neither had said as much.

As they walked along the river, they passed by a group of healers bathing, all of them sporting identical sun tattoos on their upper arms. They were all females, as was common. Females tended to gravitate towards the nurturing roles of healers or the diplomatic roles of the scouts, just as males tended towards the enforcers and the hunters.

Gareth paid them no mind. Shan had never seen Gareth display much interest in females. When he did, it always seemed forced, as though he were trying to prove something. It was not unheard of for their males to desire other males, but whenever anyone came close to broaching the subject, Gareth would meet them with violent denial.

“There is the issue of the human male,” Shan said.

It was the real reason he'd taken time out of his day to speak with Gareth.

“What of him?”

“Tonight, you will turn him over to West's camp.”

Gareth came to a halt. “Why?”

“Does it matter? What use do you have for him?”

“This is because of her,” Gareth surmised. He wasn't wrong. “She wants him. I wasn't aware that you allowed humans to dictate your decisions now.”

Shan cocked his head. “I never said you could keep the human indefinitely. He is not our prisoner, as I've heard you've been treating him. It was an oversight on my part, to not take him from you yesterday. Somehow, I keep forgetting that the leader of my enforcers needs to be micromanaged.”

The blow touched a nerve with Gareth. He took a breath to calm himself, and then crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. I want the female, then.”

Shan almost laughed. “Don't be ridiculous. She's a human, not chattel.”

Gareth's lip curled. “I deserve recompense.”

“When will you learn that injury is not a scale to be balanced?”

“Would you be saying any of this if she were a male?”

It was a fair point. Though, if Harper had been a male, entering his territory armed and injuring one of his betas, she might not have lived long enough for Shan to be having this conversation.

Shan countered, “Would you be this angry if she were a male?”

The silence that followed was contemplative. The bathing females had quieted down, and Shan could sense their ears straining for scraps of gossip. He waved a hand, motioning for Gareth to move farther downstream.

Once they were out of earshot, Gareth said, “Her scent is all over your fur.”

And it was driving him mad.

“Your point?”

“You're going to mate with her,” Gareth spat.

Shan felt no immediate urge to deny the assertion.

He had woken beside her early that morning. He'd been hard and wanting her, his need exacerbated by the fact that she was cuddled close to him. The fur she'd been wearing acted as a barrier between them, and the only thing holding his control in place. Had he woken to her semi-nude body pressed to his, he'd likely still be in bed now, taking his fill of her.

He'd settled for stroking her hair. She'd woken at one point, but she'd remained still and had pretended to still be asleep. In the quiet moments that followed, Shan had discarded all concerns of the future and allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to have her as his mate. It was a strange, but not unpleasant thing to imagine.

Before he could form an adequate response, they were distracted by the sounds of barking. Two wolves broke through the forest, running towards Shan and Gareth at full speed. He knew them at once, by sight and by scent. Yorick and Harruth, two of Gareth's betas.

They skidded to a halt in front of Shan and Gareth, one of them kicking up mud onto Shan's legs. He barely noticed. There was blood on Harruth's muzzle. Human blood.

Gareth demanded, “What is going on?”

“Whose blood is that?” Shan asked.

There were no right answers, but there was at least one that would piss him off.

Yorick was the first to shift. “The human that attacked Gareth. She assaulted us while we were drawing water. We only acted in defense.”

As Harruth took human form, Shan grasped him by the jaw. “This is her blood?”

“Yes, sir,” Harruth choked out.

“Where is she now?”

Yorick said, “Back by the stream. She took the human male from us. That's why we came to you.”

Gareth was growling. “Why not take him back, then?”

“We were worried we might have to kill her in the attempt,” Yorick said. “She wouldn't listen to reason.”

“She had a gun!” Harruth said.

A gun was one of the few excuses a wolf in his pack could claim when blood injuring or killing a human. Lying about a gun to account for a blood injury to a human was a strike. If the human died, then the consequences were far more severe.

Harruth's lie was obvious. Not just in the panicked way that he'd blurted it, but also in the way that he looked to Yorick, silently pleading him to corroborate. Yorick looked away.

“She might have had a gun,” Yorick said lamely. “I didn't see it, though.”

Shan could hardly stand to look at either of them.

“Deal with them,” Shan said. “Severely, or I will.”

He almost reached for his wolf, but immediately thought better of it. He knew that if he took his wolf form now, his wolf might lash out at Harruth and Yorick, and the wolf did not understand non-deadly force.

Instead, he walked briskly towards the stream, running as soon as he hit the forest. His mind tried to form a picture of what he would see once he reached the stream, but he had too few details to work with. All he could see was Harruth's muzzle, coated in blood.

When he arrived at the stream, he only had to follow his nose to find Harper. Her scent and the scent of her blood were carried on the wind.

He found her crouched in front of Ian, tending to a small cut on his head while blood poured freely down her arm.

“Harper, please,” Ian was saying. “You don't have to do this. Just sit down.”

“Shut...up. I'll be...fine.”

There was something wrong with her breathing. Each word sounded like a struggle, and when she inhaled, it was as if her airway had shrunken.

Joana was the first to notice him. She ran up to him, tears running down her face. “Please. She needs a doctor.”

Harper looked over her shoulder. When she saw Shan, she glared.

Shan cleared the distance between them and grabbed her by her uninjured arm. “Get up. Now.”

She jerked her arm back, and Shan had to release her for fear that she would injure herself.

“Don't touch me!”

Her reaction seemed, at first, to be wildly disproportionate, until he realized that she was in a state of panic.

Shan crouched down to her level. “What is wrong with your breathing?”

Ian answered for her, as she was still struggling to take in air after her last words.

“She has asthma.” Ian put his hands on her shoulders. “I'm okay, really. Don't worry about me. You need help, now.”

Ian gestured towards her arm with a nod, and Harper looked down. Her eyes widened, as though she were noticing the blood for the first time.

“Okay,” was all she said.

Shan said, “Do you know where the healer encampment is?”

“I do,” Joana said.

“Good. The two of you go and find a healer named Gwen. If she's not there, then just bring whoever you can find. Let them know she needs antiseptic, bandages, and an inhaler. Be very specific about the inhaler, don't just say she needs something for her breathing. Understood?”

Once they left, he guided Harper to the stream. The fight had left her, and she followed him in a daze. He washed the blood from her arm and got a better picture of the wound.

It could have been worse. Harruth's fangs had punctured her upper arm once, but the punctures were deep and must have hit an artery. It seemed she'd been bleeding for a while, and the wounds showed no sign of clotting.

“It will scar,” he said, feeling almost as pissed about that as he was about the attack. The feeling was hot and intense, and he knew it was coming from his wolf. To his wolf, this was not simply an attack, but another male marking what was his.

“Tell me what happened.”

When she responded, her sentences were clipped and punctuated by wheezing breaths.

“They hit him with rocks. I told them stop. They hit me with rocks. So I kicked their asses.”

He might have laughed, but he didn't want to encourage her. “What you did was nearly get yourself killed.”

She raised her chin. “They had to shift...to beat me.”

“This is not a dojo. They are not going to adhere to any rules of combat or what you consider to be fair play. If you attack them, they will use whatever means they have to their advantage, including shifting.”

“I know that.”

He sighed. “Then why attack them in the first place?”

“Because they had Ian. This is your fault. I told you I needed him and you...left him back with those...assholes. Would you have...stood by if people had...one of your pack mates captive?”

“Stop talking. It's painful listening to you,” Shan chided.

“You're the one who...”

He put a finger to her lips. “I shouldn't have asked you anything. And as per your analogy, no, I would not have stood by, because I can shift into a wolf. The situation hardly parallels yours.”

Shan pulled her into his lap. He thought she would resist, and was surprised when she leaned her head against his chest.

“What's it like?” she asked.

“Shifting?”

“All of the shifters you've allegedly interviewed and you've never thought to ask?”

“You're different. You're...”

Shan started talking, mostly so that she wouldn't.

“It's intense, invigorating, and somewhat unsettling. Sometimes it feels as if my wolf and I are two sides of the same coin. Other times, it's like we couldn't be more different.”

It was as close as he'd ever come to admitting his lack of control.

“Does he scare you?”

Shan paused to consider the question, and then said, “Not anymore.”

He waited for her to ask more, but she didn't. Her eyes fluttered shut and her body went lax against him. He would have been worried, if not for the sound of her labored breathing.

“I already told Gareth to turn your friend over to West's camp,” he told her. “You got yourself hurt over nothing. Now, Harruth will have to be disciplined.”

“Good. Screw him.”

“Not good. You need to stop creating conflict in my pack. Come to me next time—”

“—I did—”

“—and trust that I will handle the matter for you.”

“You like me,” she said, her lips quirking.

“Do you think I'd be letting you bleed all over me if I didn't?”

“You shouldn't. Nothing will come of it. I don't want to be your mate.”

“The purpose of courting you is to convince you otherwise.”

One blue eye popped open. “Since when are you...courting me?”

“Since I returned your friend. Now stop talking.”

She would have probably talked herself hoarse, had her friends not returned then, Gwen and three other healers in tow. There was no need to bring so many healers, and it was obvious the others had come just so that they could collect fodder for the evening's gossip.

Shan kept his hand on Harper's back as she used the inhaler. The effect was immediate. After only two puffs, her airway no longer sounded strangled. By the time Gwen had begun anesthetizing the wounds, Harper's breathing had returned to normal.

“Does this happen often?” Shan asked. “Your asthma attacks.”

“Only when I'm almost mauled to death.”

Joana was pacing, her hand twisting around her ponytail. “She's so pale. Are you sure she won't need a blood transfusion?”

“She'll just need food and rest,” Gwen said. “And perhaps some stitching.”

Pleased with Gwen's assessment, Shan carefully slid Harper from his lap. She grabbed his arm as he began to stand, but quickly released him.

“You're going?” she asked, not making eye contact with him.

“I have things to do.”

Making sure Harruth was being properly dealt with was chief on that list.

Shan smoothed her hair, and then pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. When he heard her heart begin hammering, he half expected her to have another asthma attack.

“I'll see you tonight,” he said, reluctantly standing.

He left her in the care of her friends and his healers, knowing full well that by that evening, Gwen and her underlings would have told everyone what they'd witnessed. For the first time in his life, Shan was courting a human female.