Pale and enervated as she lay on the bed, Harper looked more like a doll than a living, breathing being. It made the sight of her being stitched up seem all the more surreal to Shan. He wished she would complain, moan, or even twitch as the needle wove in and out of her flesh. He wanted any sign of life, other than the sound of her erratic heartbeat.

A full day had come and gone since he'd found her by the river, bloodied and in the arms of another male—her brother. He'd been angry then, and he hadn't stopped being angry since. 

Shan was angry at the wolf who had mauled her. He still wanted him dead and had only spared him to avoid inadvertently killing Caim, who may have come to his defense. At the time, Shan's mind had made several quick calculations. Once he'd found out that Caim was her brother, he had known that he couldn't kill him. It had little to do with Harper's pleas. His mind had already worked ahead of the situation, determining that if he did kill her brother it would be nearly impossible to get Harper to accept him as her mate. 

Shan was angry at her for leaving. First, she had insulted him, implying that the life he had to offer her was somehow inferior to whatever bullshit she was doing back in the human world. Like he was some sort of fucking primitive, asking her to come live in his hovel and be his bedwarmer. Then, she'd disrespected him. She'd called him an asshole, yelled it loud enough for anyone to hear, and then stuck her middle finger up at him and stormed off. He'd wanted to stalk after her, but knew that in his mood, he would not be kind or gentle with her, and in her mood, she would only fan the flames of his rage.

In spite of that, Shan was still angry with himself for letting her leave. There had been a point, perhaps ten minutes after she'd left, that he'd calmed himself and had been able to think more clearly about the things that she'd said. She wanted to be his mate, she wanted to stay with him, and she had given him everything he needed to convince her to do so. All she needed was for him to do what he'd set out to do from the start—prove to her that a life with him would be better than a life without. She needed for him to be patient and allow her to get to know him and his world. 

The problem was, he was so attracted to her, so drawn to her in a way that was beyond his understanding, that he just couldn't help himself. He needed her to accept his bond, needed his mark on her, and needed his pup growing inside of her, and he didn't want to wait for any of it.

Shan ran a hand down her smooth, unblemished arm. Her skin was cool to the touch. When he reached her hand, he laced his fingers between hers and squeezed. She squeezed back, though with considerably less force. He looked at her face in time to see her eyelids flutter open. 

Her lips were dry, cracked, and only a shade darker than her pallid complexion. When they parted, it was only to take in a breath.

“There's water beside you,” Ginger said.

The young female kept her eyes on her stitching as she spoke. She had already sewn up the worst of Harper's wounds and was now finishing up her work on the more minor cuts. The scarring would be extensive and there was the possibility of permanent nerve damage. 

Twice now, under his watch, she'd been scarred. The first time, he'd been able to dismiss his fault. It had only been after the attack that he'd decided to court her and she'd become his direct responsibility to care for. This time, he'd not only been courting her, but he was also the reason she'd run off on her own. He'd let her go. He had told her to go and get herself killed. In that moment, he'd been every bit as juvenile as her, and he'd now have a constant reminder of his irresponsibility. 

Never again.

Shan held the cup to her lips. Harper accepted the water. As she drank, she watched Ginger stitch her from the corners of her eyes. She emptied the cup.

“Are we in The Steppes?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

Shan ran his fingers through her bangs. “This is Tower Hill. It's my southernmost province.”

“You have provinces? Fancy.” 

He was relieved to be talking to her again. After their discussion by the river, he hadn't been able to keep her awake. He'd carried her for several miles in his human form, both so that he could properly monitor her condition, and because he didn't trust his wolf to have his priorities straight. 

As he predicted, once he finally shifted, his wolf had begun backtracking at once, intent on finding the wolf who'd injured Harper and tearing him apart. Shan had expended a great deal of mental energy impressing upon the wolf how important it was that they get Harper to a healer. 

Some of what Shan had learned must have passed to the wolf. The wolf seldom held many thoughts in his head. As a matter of course, he would have an impulse and then act on it, or decide against it. His decisions were rarely colored by feelings, except for a handful of baser emotions that tended to fizzle out as quickly as they surged up.

During the entire trip to Tower Hill, his wolf's mind had been nearly unrecognizable and barely coherent. It had been a crowded mess of images and emotions that Shan could hardly make sense of. Most of the images had to do with Harper, or at least, what Shan assumed was Harper. In the wolf's mind, he now envisioned her in wolf form, slightly smaller than himself, with a blue-black pelt. He imagined himself mounting her and mating with her, and the accompanying emotions were more intense than anything Shan could remember feeling in his own mind.

In sharp contrast to the feelings of ecstasy and reverence that he felt towards Harper, there was deep acrimony. It was directed not only at the wolf who had hurt her, but also at Shan, whom the wolf felt was to blame for not keeping her safe. The wolf didn't care that she had insulted him, disrespected him, or lied to him. All that mattered was that she was protected, and in that, Shan had failed, utterly.

He was wearing clothes, his pelt folded and placed on a chair on the other side of the room. Shifting back into his human form had been difficult. Shan sensed that the wolf had only ceded because he needed him to communicate with the shifters of Tower Hill and ensure that Harper got the medical attention that she needed. Once she'd been settled into bed, his skin had immediately tried rebinding to his flesh, heedless of the fact that they were inside of a cavern that was too small to accommodate his wolf form.

In spite of what he'd told Harper, Shan still didn't know whether he was his wolf, or if his wolf was a separate entity. His parents had been of two minds on the issue. His mother had believed her wolf to be the manifestation of her true nature, while his father had been firm in his stance that the wolf was a higher being inhabiting his body. He tended towards his mother's interpretation, but in this case, that would mean that at his core, he loathed himself.

“I don't remember coming here,” Harper said, her blue eyes flitting around the room.

“You were asleep,” he told her.

Passed out, feverish, and unresponsive.

To Ginger, he said, “When you're finished, bring her something to eat.”

Ginger had already tied off and clipped the last of the stitches, and was wrapping Harper's arm in treated gauze. Shan was glad to see the wounds disappear beneath the filmy fabric. 

“Not hungry,” Harper said, her eyes drifting shut again. “I just want to sleep. I'll take some of that tea, though, if you have it.”

It took him a second to realize she was talking about the tea he'd given her to help her sleep peacefully. He hadn't known then that the dreams she'd been trying to block out were of her wolf. The possibility had seemed so remote as to barely cross his mind. He had toyed with the idea, but it had seemed more fantasy than possibility. What were the odds that when he'd finally given up hope for a mate of his own kind, the first female he decided to court would end up being like him?

“Bring her something to sleep, as well,” Shan instructed.

Later, there would be time to coax her wolf out. Tonight, she needed proper rest in order to recover.

As soon as Ginger departed, Harper cracked her eyes open and frowned.

“Is she really my healer? She looks like she's ten.”

“Twelve, actually,” he said. “And you were seen by a proper healer earlier. Ginger was sent in to do your stitching. She's something of a savant.”

With what looked like great effort, Harper turned her head to look at her arm. It was wrapped from her shoulder, down to the joints of her wrist. She wiggled her slender fingers, and then winced.

“I guess so. I barely felt her stitching. Just promise that if I get real bad, you'll take me to a human doctor.”

“You're going to be fine.”

She closed her eyes, her body sagging with her exhalation. “It doesn't feel like anything is going to be fine ever again.”

Shan wasn't about to ask her what she meant by that, nor was he willing to make assumptions. They couldn't afford another fight, not now.

He stood and said something to the effect that he would return later. He grabbed his pelt on the way out, not waiting for a response. 

He had folded the pelt in such a way that his hands held only the outer fur. Had the skin-lined underside made contact with his flesh, he knew it would be trying to latch itself to him. His wolf didn't want to leave his mate, not even for a moment. Shan, however, was in dire need of some distance between the two of them. 

The Tower Hill den was old, belonging to what had formerly been known as the Nipawset pack. A century ago, the native pack had been almost entirely wiped out by warfare with a new, insurgent pack from the east. The fight had been not for land, but for the alpha's daughter. Their bloodline largely undiluted by humans, they'd still been capable of producing offspring. 

Such conflicts had been common at the turn of the former century, when infertility had begun ravaging their kind. Had the alpha of Nipawset been able to mate his daughter off to a male with a similarly pure bloodline, their daughters may have gone on to produce offspring as well. Instead, a young, upstart alpha had overthrown the Nipawset alpha and claimed the young female for himself, passing on his mother's human genes to their pups. It was just a small example of what was happening on a global scale, and another phase in the prolonged downfall of their kind.

He ran his hand along the flat walls of the hallway, his fingertips catching on the tribal engravings. He passed several rooms, all of them furnished, but presently empty. The alpha of the den, Tag, had ordered the upper layer to be cleared out upon Shan's arrival, perhaps to give him privacy, or perhaps because he'd been concerned for the safety of his pack mates. Shan had not been in the best mood when he'd arrived.

The air grew cooler as he descended the carved stairway and entered the lower quarters. The scent of cooked pheasant reminded him that he hadn't eaten in over a day, and hunger clawed at his stomach. He followed the sound of whispered voices until he arrived at a common area. Ginger was inside, bent over a cook pot, her sister crouched beside her. 

He listened to them gossip for a moment, feeling a strange sense that he was intruding, in spite of the fact that he was the topic of their conversation. Ginger was trying to convince her more skeptical twin that he and Harper were going to be mates. As Shan listened to them, it occurred to him that his core pack would also be rife with speculation about his relationship with Harper, and he wondered what he would tell them.

“She will be my mate,” Shan said, startling the girls as he stepped into the room. “So take good care of her.”

Blushing, Ginger sputtered several apologies and reassurances. As she scuttled from the room, Shan addressed her sister, asking her to bring him ink and paper. 

Once he was alone, he settled down in the fur-lined chair nearest to the fire. For a few minutes, he refused to think about anything. He let his mind go blank. Anytime a thought threatened to disturb his peace, he dismissed it before it could take root. 

The tumultuous emotions of the past few days fell away as he centered himself. Only once his mind was still and his body was perfectly at ease was he able to objectively consider what he'd learned about Harper.

She was like him.

It made sense, now. 

It had baffled him, how attracted he'd been to her, right from the start. Yes, she was beautiful and intelligent, but she was also more immature than the types of females he was typically drawn to. She also hadn't come seeking a mate, and under normal circumstances, he would have respected that.

But nothing about his attraction to her had been normal. Within three nights, he'd shrugged off all his reservations about taking a mate and had decided to court her. In spite of his conviction that he should take things slowly with her, they'd slept together the very next night. From the moment he'd first been inside of her, he'd known that he wouldn't settle for any other female. From then on, he'd stopped imagining a future that didn't have her in it.

Now that he knew what she was, he could discern the differences in her scent. He'd been so absorbed in the appeal of her scent that he'd failed to notice the subtle undertones that were distinctly inhuman. 

They were becoming more pronounced.

After they'd slept together, he'd noticed that her scent had changed, but he'd assumed it was just some trace of his own scent rubbing off on her. Now, he wondered if it was her wolf coming closer to the surface. It would make sense, as his own wolf had become more insistent since he'd met her. Was it possible that they were calling to one another?

Thirteen years.

Harper's nightmares had begun when she was thirteen, which meant that her wolf had been repressed for just as many years. Having spent so much time in darkness and isolation, what would she be like when she finally emerged?

Shan had no way of knowing. He had shifted within two months of having his first nightmare. Aside from the first tumultuous year and the past week, he and his wolf had always had a symbiotic relationship and a mutual respect. 

For his father, it had been the same. Hannes and his wolf lived in something close to harmony. In spite of his assertion that the wolf was separate from him, they had been so in tune with one another that Hannes seldom needed to shift. He'd let his wolf out at least once a month to stretch its legs. The rest of the time, his wolf was content to allow his human to guide them.

For his mother Shara, it was quite the opposite. She'd been twenty when she'd completed her first shift, and had promptly snapped, killing her pack and the male who had been her mate. In the years that followed, even after Hannes had helped to temper her violent nature, she'd still been quick to shift whenever she felt threatened. Shan could still remember his father preemptively hiding her pelt before arguments. For all her pride in what she was, his mother's wolf was just another force that sought to control her.

He wondered now if her lack of unity with her wolf form was due to the years spent repressing it, or if the instability was a result of the trauma she'd endured in her youth. Now more than ever, he wished he had a better understanding of his kind. 

As his thoughts on the matter grew unproductive, he redirected his focus back to Harper. 

Or was it Snow?

Just like her scent, now that he knew who she was, he felt foolish for not realizing it sooner. He was well acquainted with the Halcyon wolves. He saw them every year, towards the middle of the circuit. It had been just this past September that he'd last seen Alder, the male she claimed was her father. Shan still had a difficult time coming to terms with that, given that Alder was barely two years older than him. It was difficult to compare their scents without having Alder close by, but it was easy enough to pull up an image of the Halcyon alpha and there was a resemblance between he and Snow, particularly in the eyes.

She should have told him what she was. Wanting to hide her identity from her friends was no excuse. They'd had ample time alone together when she could have told him the truth. He'd known she'd had secrets, but these were the sort that could have affected his pack. While Halcyon were his allies, her brother's pack was anything but. Had he not gotten to her before they'd taken her, she could have easily disseminated sensitive information to one of his last remaining rivals. 

Under any other circumstances her deception would have been grounds for removal from his pack. Instead, she was now indispensable to him.

Shan was not one to indulge in superstition or a cosmic order to things, but he didn't know how else to explain Harper's appearance into his life. 

All he knew for certain was that he had to make her shift, and soon. 

* * *

Harper woke to find herself alone in bed, her arm throbbing and her head feeling as if it'd gain five pounds. With some effort she managed to sit up, the bed linens falling down onto her lap. Her torso was bare, and a peek under the blankets revealed that she'd been completely stripped. 

The room was lit by the light of a single candle. She vaguely remembered waking earlier with Shan at her side, but there had also been a kindergartener tending to her wounds, so she wasn't entirely sure she hadn't been dreaming. 

There was some sort of stew at her bedside. It sat on a tree stump that had been fashioned into a nightstand, beside a neatly folded outfit. She regarded the food and the clothes with equal indifference. 

Something about being back in a den had revived her aversion to clothes. Over the years spent among humans, she'd become rather fashion forward, in spite of spending her childhood primarily in the nude. Around the age of twelve, she'd developed something of a resentment for clothes as Sarah had begun insisting she wear them whenever she wasn't in her room. This rule seemed to apply only to her, and only because she was developing much more quickly than even her older cousins.

She played with the idea of walking around naked, but ultimately put the clothes on. In spite of her upbringing, she didn't think she'd be able to resist covering her nude breasts in front of strangers.

She noticed that her ankle had been bound and remembered injuring it when she fell from the tree, so she was careful not to put her full weight onto it when she stood. It was good that she hadn't, because even moving at a hobbling gait from the bed to the door was grueling. She hovered in the doorway for a moment, debating whether or not to return to bed. Hoping that the pain would lessen with some use, she pressed on, feeling her way down the corridor. 

Harper had been five when her pack had realized that she lacked a shifter's nocturnal vision. Up until then, they'd just assumed she was clumsy and overly attached to her adopted mother Sarah. While she had been very fond of Sarah, it had been the light she'd been drawn to. Although they changed dens frequently and often went without even the most basic necessities in those early years, her uncle had always made certain to keep light in his mate's life. 

As with all of her limitations, her cousins had instantly sought to exploit it. Lotus had waited until the night of the new moon, and then taken Harper out to play just before sunset. As soon as night had fallen, they were accosted by a rival wolf pack. Harper had spent an hour hiding in a hollowed tree trunk and listening to Lotus being slowly tortured and killed. Then, the wolf had turned its attention to Harper, chasing her from one side of the tree trunk to the other while she screamed and cried. The nightmare had come to an end when Caim had found them and revealed her “attacker” to be her other cousin, Sable.

Caim couldn't always be there for her, and so she'd had to learn tricks to compensate for her lack of sight, particularly in the dark and often perilous passageways of a cavernous den. She paid close attention to the air currents, knowing that if she walked against them she'd be led to an opening. When she wasn't running her hands along the wall, she could clap her hands or whistle to find the boundaries of the cavern. Most important, she always made sure one foot was on solid ground before lifting the next. 

With a combination of all of her tricks, she made her way down to the more illuminated lower level. She could tell that the den had been inhabited for a long time because the walls and floors were free of rough edges and someone had taken the time to craft stairs in between the levels of the den. By the time she reached the bottom, sweat had broken out over her skin, mostly from the pain of walking on her ankle. 

She found Shan almost immediately, and just as quickly wished that she hadn't. He was in a wide open room that looked to be some sort of hybrid lounge area and dining room. There were several long, unoccupied tables and a separate area with two large chairs beside a fireplace. It struck Harper how odd it was to see a den so thoroughly furnished, but the awareness was secondary to the sight of Shan leaning back in one of the chairs, a half-naked female on either side of him. 

A redheaded female sat near to Shan's feet, forcing a smile as she watched the other female, a dark haired twenty-something, engage Shan in conversation. Her breasts were at eye-level with Shan and her hand alternated between the armrest of the chair and the side of Shan's bicep as she spoke.

Harper came to a sickening realization.

Shan is...hot.

Of course, she knew he was sexy as fuck. It was quite literally the first thing she'd noticed about him. But, he was also scary. Between his staggering size, his tattoos, and the natural arch of his brows that made him look perpetually angry, Harper had kind of assumed that most women would find him intimidating to the point of unapproachability. After all, there had been no females fawning over him back when they were with his pack, at least not that she'd seen.

In the ten seconds before they noticed her, Harper saw the female touch Shan exactly four times. Her thoughts zipped around in a fucked up loop as she struggled to process a sudden influx of possessive fury.

Shan wasn't Harper's mate. But he wanted to be her mate. But she had told him that he wouldn't be her mate. But now this female was touching him, and she should know better, because Shan belonged to Harper. Except, he didn't. Shan wasn't her mate. But he wanted to be her mate. So why the fuck was he letting this bitch touch him?

Harper must have been throwing off some major heat, because at the sight of her the female's hand dropped and she took a full step back from Shan, their conversation abruptly halting. 

Shan must have known she was there from the start, but he took his time in shifting his attention. Once he did look at her, he appeared more annoyed than pleased by her arrival. He stood and walked to her, his eyes narrowed.

“You shouldn't be up walking, yet.” 

He placed a hand on the side of her face, and in spite of her upset, she leaned into his touch.

“I'm all right,” she said, though she doubted he'd be fooled. “Where are we at?”

“Tower Hill, remember?”

Harper did recall something like that. As she nodded, she put a hand on his arm, partly for balance and partly so that she was touching him. 

She made a show of looking around the room, her eyes drifting past the two females. “Where are Viper and the others?”

She remembered seeing them at the river, closing in on her and her brother, but after Caim's departure Shan had dismissed them. Everything that happened following them leaving the river was a blur and she didn't recall seeing Shan's pack mates again.

“We took a different route than them,” Shan said. “They're still on their way to The Steppes.”

He began to lead her towards the chair, but when he took note of her limp he grabbed her beneath her rear and lifted her into his arms, carrying her the rest of the way. When he sat her down, she saw that his pelt was draped over the back of the chair. She wasted no time in pulling it over herself, enjoying its preternatural warmth and the implication it sent to the other females in the room.

Shan introduced them, but Harper refused to give their names any space in her head. Then he mentioned that one of them, the redhead, was going to be taking her measurements. Apparently, he was going to have them sent ahead to The Steppes so that she'd have clothes waiting for her when they arrived.

“Aren't we only a couple of days away, though?” she asked. 

“Yes, but we won't be returning yet.”

Harper drew her legs up onto the chair and tucked them beneath the pelt. “Where are we going?”

Shan flicked his wrist, as though brushing off her question.

“Did you eat your breakfast?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she grudgingly replied.

He instructed one of the females to get her something to eat, and then said, “Eat and then have your measurements taken. We'll leave once you're ready.”

Shan settled down in the chair across from her, his gaze remote and fixed on the hearth. Insecurity pricked at Harper, like a thousand tiny needles. He had touched her face, carried her, and allowed her to cover herself with his pelt, but there was still a palpable distance between them.

She had breached his trust, and she had no idea how to fix things. In the past, whenever she'd fucked up this badly in a relationship, she'd just ended things and cut contact. With Shan, that wasn't going to be an option. She couldn't leave things as they were and she wasn't even sure she could leave Shan, period. She wasn't entirely sure what was happening between them, but it was something serious, something that couldn't be ended by a mere falling out.

Once her measurements had been taken and she'd forced down a passable amount of food, Harper saw the resident healer a final time. The bandages on her arm were changed and she was instructed to stay off her ankle for at least a week. Harper knew from experience that shifters tended to overestimate the amount of time it took humans to heal, so she mentally gave herself two days before she was back up and fully mobile.

Their departure was slow. As they were on their way out, the den's inhabitants were returning from a hunt and Shan stopped to talked to every single one of them. There were at least two dozen wolves and he seemed to know all of their names, as well as minor details about their lives. He introduced her to each of them, not as his mate-to-be, but simply as Harper. She told herself that this was a good thing, but each time she could feel the needles being driven deeper into her skin.

It was late morning when they arrived outside and Harper got her first look at the den. The entrance was situated at the base of a tall rock formation the shape of which reminded her of a lighthouse. Tall fir trees with drooping branches were clustered in the immediate vicinity, blocking her view of what lay beyond the small clearing.

Several of the wolves had followed them outside and had gathered by the entrance to watch Shan take his wolf form. He set Harper down near to the others and then unwrapped his pelt from around her. Once he'd moved some distance away, the pelt fused to his skin and his body began to expand. 

In the span of a minute, his body filled the clearing. The completion of his shift was met with applause and cheers from the onlooking crowd. Harper felt just as giddy, though not just from seeing a man take the form of a colossal wolf. As soon as he came fully into himself, the wolf's attention was fixed solely on Harper. He took a step towards her and lowered his head, at first sniffing her and then rubbing the side of his snout against her. Gentle though he was, he nearly knocked her over. After a moment of reacquainting himself with her, the wolf opened his mouth and closed it around her torso. 

Harper experienced a moment of panic that didn't quite subside when she realized that the wolf wasn't trying to eat her. With all the finesse and care of a mother alligator carrying her babies in her mouth, the wolf lifted Harper up and deposited her onto his back. She came down in his soft mane of fur and to the sound of more cheering. The wolf took another minute to make sure that she was secure and to lick her, and then they were departing.

As they traveled, the trees gave way to rolling fields for a time, and when they entered the forest again, the trees were mostly deciduous. The cold nights had turned the leaves to shades of red, orange, yellow, and gold, and Harper enjoyed taking it all in just as much as she enjoyed riding on Shan's back.

She had officially come to the conclusion that his wolf had a mind of its own, and it was a mind that seemed to hold Harper in pretty high regard. He made frequent stops to check on her and was prompt in helping her down when she told him she had to pee. At one point, he stopped just so that he could twist his big head around and nuzzle her. When he looked at her, there was no wall between them. It was the same raw affection Shan had held for her, before he'd found out she'd been deceiving him.

When they stopped, Harper half hoped that he would remain in his wolf form. It was late afternoon and she could easily picture herself cuddling up in the space between the wolf's legs and falling asleep swathed in his warmth and tenderness. 

As soon as she was placed on the ground, he began to shift. With her back to him, she listened to the sounds of joints and bones popping as they reconfigured themselves into Shan's human form.

While he shifted, she looked around at the area where they'd stopped. She could see the opening of a rock shelter in the craggy hill in front of her, and beyond the trees to her left, sunlight reflecting off a large body of water. 

She felt Shan behind her a moment before he lifted her up into his arms. The expression he regarded her with was neither affectionate nor hostile, but cool and bordering on indifference. She'd much rather he were angry.

“Are we staying here for the night?” she asked as he carried her towards the shelter.

It seemed a little strange that they were stopping so soon. It was getting late, but they'd only been traveling for a few hours and she doubted he was already tired enough to sleep.

“We're staying here for however long it takes you to shift.”

Harper looked around again, her face scrunching. “What? You can't be serious. We don't even know if I can shift, and you want to waste days out here, away from your pack?”

His lips curved into a humorless smile. “We are going to stay here all winter, if that's what it takes.”