Nika's first glimpse of her mate in seven months came as a shock when Elle escorted her into Ash's bedroom.

It looked like a hospital room, with a heart monitor, oxygen monitor, and IV stand set up around a king-sized bed that held an unconscious Ash.

Nika's breath caught at the sight of him. She froze, drinking in every detail—his shoulder-length hair, the strong dark brows, and the long sweep of lashes against the tanned skin of his face.

Her mate looked older now than the last time she'd seen him. There were lines of stress and pain chiseled around his mouth and eyes that hadn't been there before. He was on a ventilator, with an IV line inserted into his jugular vein and taped down.

Her shock was quickly drowned by a torrent of other feelings—guilt, pain, longing, and underneath it all, the overwhelming urge to touch him and reestablish contact after all the lonely months without him.

She knotted her fingers together to keep from reaching out and running her hands over every part of him. Elle, who was standing grim-faced next to Nika, glanced down at Nika's hands and shot her an unreadable glance.

"Hi, Mrs. Swanson." said the nurse, a young, handsome Chinese-American man who smelled like some kind of cat shifter.

He smiled warmly at Elle, who returned the smile with equal warmth. Then his curious dark brown gaze came to rest on Nika.

Elle said briskly, "This is Ash's mate, Nika. She's come from Seattle to see him."

"I'm Raymond Chang," said the nurse. "I usually work in the ER at Steele Memorial Medical Center over in Salmon, but I also do home care for shifter patients when there's a need. Ash is in a medically induced coma at the moment, but we should be waking him up soon."

On the brief walk over from Elle's Victorian to Ash's home, which was a large white single-story ranch house located just a few hundred yards away, Elle had explained that she had hired Raymond to care for Ash during his convalescence.

Nika nodded a polite greeting and shook hands with Raymond while her blood ran cold at the words medically induced coma.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Veronika Medved, but everyone calls me Nika." Her gaze was irresistibly drawn back to Ash, and the worrisome sight of the ventilator tubing. "Can you give me some information on Ash's condition?"

Raymond looked at Elle for permission before replying. At her nod, he said, "He suffered significant head trauma after he fell from a roof. Dr. Jacobsen decided to keep him in a medically induced coma for a few days so that he could heal up."

Nika already knew Ash had been badly injured a few days ago, but this piece of news was far worse than she had imagined. It meant that there was likely significant swelling in Ash's brain that needed to go down before he could be awakened.

Ash really should be in an intensive care unit right now, not hidden away on a ranch located so far from a hospital.

But any shifter confined to an Ordinary hospital ran the risk of inadvertently exposing their shifter status if they ended up being treated and tested by Ordinary medical staff.

It was common practice for shifter doctors, nurses, and medical technicians to do everything they could to help conceal their patients' true natures, but an extended hospital stay was difficult to manage.

Although the various shifter lineages didn't agree or cooperate on much, keeping their existence a secret from the majority of Ordinary humans was one area where all shifters were united. It was just common sense, after all, especially considering what used to happened to those unfortunate shifters who outed themselves to the wrong Ordinary or who were caught shifting.

Pitchforks and torches doesn't begin to cover it, thought Nika. These days, we'd probably end up in a government lab somewhere, being treated as experimental subjects.

Nika guessed that Ash's ER doctor had been a shifter—or a shifter's Ordinary mate—and that was why, even with his critical injuries, Ash had been released to go home with a nurse to tend to him.

In a town this small, his doctor probably even made house calls!

"…really glad you're here," Raymond was saying, with a cheerful grin. "It'll do Ash a world of good to have his mate here while he recuperates. And I can finally get a full night's sleep!"

Nika winced inside, and wondered how much Raymond had been told about her absence. Maybe he was just assuming that Nika had been away temporarily, to visit family or something.

"Nika is in her final year of medical school," Elle said. "I'm sure she can take over most of Ash's care from here on out."

Raymond looked startled at her words.

"Uh, are you sure about that?" he said uncertainly. "I mean, it'll be nice to head home, and my fiancée will be glad to see me, but I don't feel comfortable leaving a patient still under anesthesia unless Dr. Jacobsen clears it."

Raymond's eyes returned to Nika, and this time, his gaze was assessing.

He added, "Though he did mention this morning that he thought it might be time to wake Ash up."

"When will we know for sure?" Nika asked.

"He's coming by in a little while to check on our patient here and give his verdict," Raymond replied.

"Can you give me a list of his injuries?" Nika asked.

The head trauma was bad enough, but at least Ash wasn't swathed in bandages. She decided to take that as a hopeful sign.

"He came in with three broken ribs on his right side along with assorted bruises and a case of smoke inhalation, but those have all healed up well. Our biggest area of concern right now is his head injury."

Nika looked at Ash's unconscious body and gripped her hands together even more tightly.

"I don't know how much you've been told about the accident, Nika," Raymond continued, then paused.

"I was told that it was a firefighting accident. A burning roof collapsed." Nika found it hard to repeat the details she'd heard from Justin. The mental images were too distressing.

Raymond's next words didn't help. "Ash fell two stories into the interior of the building and landed hard."

Nika couldn't stifle her gasp of horror.

"Luckily for him, he's as hard-headed as his father was," Elle commented dryly, but Nika saw the pain in the other woman's eyes.

The handsome young nurse looked at Elle sympathetically and reached out to pat her arm.

"His helmet saved him from a skull fracture, but he still sustained considerable closed-head trauma to his brain from the impact," Raymond continued. "Dr. Jacobsen and one of the shifter ER physicians at Steele Memorial both thought that a few days in a medically induced coma might approximate a shifter's natural deep healing sleep and encourage his brain to repair itself."

"What Raymond is very diplomatically not telling us," Elle said, in that same dry tone, "is that Ash was ordered to stay in bed and rest both physically and mentally until he healed. He did not cooperate and he was showing signs of severe neurological impairment, so I authorized the alternative therapy before my son made things worse for himself."

Spoken like a ruthless bear clan matriarch, thought Nika. But at least Elle was trying to protect her son.

"To be honest, Mrs. Swanson, I'd rather not be around when he wakes up and remembers what you did," Raymond said. "He's gonna be one grumpy bear."

"But hopefully a healed one," Elle said, reaching down to brush a lock of her son's disheveled hair from his face.

Nika's fingers curled with envy. She clenched her hands, fighting the desperate need to touch her mate, and felt her short nails dig into her palms.

Elle straightened up. "I'll leave you for now," she said to Nika. "Raymond can tell you what needs to be done."

Nika took a deep breath. "Thank you, Mrs. Swanson," she said, keeping her tone low and humble. "I appreciate you letting me see him."

"I feel obliged to give you two the opportunity to work things out when Ash wakes up." Elle's mouth thinned into a determined line. "I hope you won't waste this chance."

"But my parents—" Nika began.

Elle shook her head. "I only wish you'd trusted Ash—and the rest of us—a little more," she said. "We take care of our own. You could have avoided hurting my son like you did."

"I'm sorry," Nika said.

But she noted that Elle still did not extend an explicit offer to aid her son's estranged mate. Not that Nika had been expecting any differently.

Once she heard Elle's steps recede and the front door close, Nika turned to Raymond. "I'd like to examine him and see for myself what we're dealing with here."

She had been making the rounds of patients in the UW Medical Center since last year, but always under the supervision of an attending physician. Still, she felt confident conducting a basic physical exam.

Her suitcase was standing in the hall just outside the bedroom. She opened it, withdrew her stethoscope, and then went to wash her hands in the hall bathroom before returning to Ash's room.

She gently pulled back the comforter covering Ash's broad chest and began her examination.

Underneath his hospital gown, she saw that her mate had definitely put on muscle since the last time she'd seen him naked. A lot of it. He'd always had an athletic build, but his shoulders looked just as wide as Dane's now. And he'd grown a beard, which made him look older.

Nika remembered her last date with Ash, when he'd come to Seattle to house-hunt with her. He'd been clean-shaven but with shaggy dark brown hair, dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized Captain America T-shirt that hid his gorgeous, sculpted bear-shifter body.

Her inner bear rose in anticipation of touching their mate as Nika pressed the stethoscope to Ash's chest and listened to his heart and lungs.

His scent rose to surround her like an embrace, and she smelled the faint reek of smoke and burned asphalt underlying the smells of soap, disinfectant, and sweat.

To her relief, his lungs sounded clear, with nothing to indicate fluid build-up from his bed rest.

The lines of unhappiness and pain smoothed out from Ash's face as soon as she pressed her fingertips against his pulse points. She felt an electric jolt at the contact, and her heart began to pound.

She tried to ignore the agitation of her inner bear and concentrate on taking his vitals, but it was difficult. The pulse in his wrists and ankles was strong and steady.

As Nika moved on to the checklist for examining a comatose patient, she realized that it was the perfect excuse for additional direct skin-to-skin contact with Ash.

This checklist involved testing the patient's deep tendon reflexes, testing the resistance of the patient's limbs to passive movements, and testing the strength of posturing and local withdrawal movements.

The easiest way to determine the last item on that list was to inflict discomfort by pressing something—usually a ballpoint pen—hard against the patient's fingernail and observing if the patient tried to withdraw his hand from the source of the stimulus.

Every instinct shied away from hurting her mate, but she needed to assess his condition.

I can do this. She drew a steadying breath, and took Ash's left hand in hers.

Then his hand twisted in her grasp and his fingers abruptly wrapped themselves around her hand.

That wasn't supposed to happen!

Nika's heart rate accelerated further as she stared down at the long, sinewy fingers imprisoning her hand.

It was impossible to resist her next impulse.

Nika reached down and caressed Ash's bearded cheek with her free hand. Her eyes stung, and her vision blurred.

She hadn't cried for months, and now twice in the same day?

The tears rolling down her cheeks seemed to wash away her own ever-present heartache. She tried to tell herself that she'd just made a huge mistake by letting her attachment to Ash rekindle, but all she felt was a deep relief.

Once bonded, only death could truly sever a mated pair. Nika had learned to live with the ever-present ache of loss and had managed to find a way to push it down while she concentrated on her medical studies.

But the pain had never gone away. It flared up every night, when she tried to go to sleep in her lonely bed.

I can't stay, she told herself, trying to extricate her hand from her mate's iron grip. I have to leave as soon as Ash is conscious again.

But the thought of leaving him again filled her with dread and bone-deep anguish.

If it had just involved her, she would have stayed here and resisted her parents until her dying breath.

But Ash couldn't protect her, and she had the baby to think about now. It was a wrenching choice.

If only Elle had offered me her protection, Nika thought with bitter regret. But in her place, I'd probably have done the same if the woman who mated and then rejected my son just turned up one day, with trouble hot on her tail.

Ash still wasn't letting go of her. Without thinking, she bent her head and brushed her lips against his roughened knuckles, inhaling the familiar, deeply missed scent of his skin.

"I'm here," she whispered. "And I won't leave until you wake up."

That was as much of a promise as she could truthfully make.

With all the drugs in his system, it seemed impossible that he could hear her. But his grip finally relaxed, and she was able to lower his hand back down to his side.

"I guess we can rate that response as a 5 on the Glasgow Coma Scale," Raymond commented. "Did you notice how his heartbeat sped up when you spoke to him?"

Nika hadn't. Her own heart had been beating so loudly that it had drowned out any hope of hearing his.

"He really should be in the hospital," she said. "No offense to you, Raymond. You've been doing a great job taking care of him, from what I can see."

"No offense taken, and I totally agree with you," he said. "With all the shifters in this county, it would be great if someone could open a shifter-centric medical center or even just a clinic, so that patients could get the care they needed without having to worry about being outed by some Ordinary taking a second look at a blood test or DNA sample."

"If there are so many shifters around here, why aren't there more shifter doctors?" Nika asked.

"Because they all move to cities like Seattle and San Francisco. It's hard enough just finding a doctor of any kind willing to move out here to the sticks. We're lucky to have Dr. Jacobsen around here, but he's just one wolf shifter, you know, and he's got more patients than he can really handle." Raymond blew out his breath in frustration. "Heck, when I finished nursing school, my parents urged me to move to Seattle because they thought I'd be more successful there. But I missed Salmon and wanted to come home to work."

"You can't be the only one who feels that way," Nika said. "If someone did build a shifter-focused medical center, do you think any of the shifter medical professionals could be convinced to return or relocate to here?"

"I don't know, but I think it would be worth a try," Raymond said.

They were interrupted by the deep growl of a large diesel engine and the sound of ice crunching under a set of wide tires.

"That must be the mobile imaging unit," Raymond said. "Dr. Jacobsen said he would try to get them to come out here so that he could get an MRI for Ash."

Nika followed him to the living room. She peered through the large picture window to find a big red SUV pulling up in front of Ash's house, closely followed by a huge semi pulling a full-sized trailer with the Steele Memorial Medical Center logo and the words "Mobile Imaging Center" painted on the side.

A man in his fifties emerged from the pickup and walked over to the truck to exchange a few words with the driver before knocking on a door built into the side of the trailer. The newcomer was wearing a thick winter coat, a knitted ski cap, and a multicolored knitted scarf, so Nika could only tell that he was a white male.

Raymond opened the front door. "Hey, Dr. Jacobsen, glad you're here!" He waved at the truck driver. "Would you guys like me to put on a pot of coffee?"

The answer was affirmative, so Raymond headed for the large, freshly renovated kitchen at the back of the house.

While Nika waited for whatever was about to happen next, she took the opportunity to look around Ash's home. She had never been here before—their brief courtship last summer had been conducted in Seattle because of her studies.

Ash's living room, dining room, and kitchen were designed around an open concept plan. His house looked like it had been furnished by a designer, with beautiful hardwood floors extending through the space and elegant modern furniture, but the effect was ruined by the motorcycle parked on a sheet of canvas at one end of the living room, and a tangle of game controllers tossed carelessly onto the coffee table.

A short hallway at the back of the house opened onto a home office cluttered with software reference books and printouts, a guest bedroom, a bathroom, and the large master suite, which had its own bathroom and a huge walk-in closet and which was currently equipped with an extra cot and a number of monitors.

When she finished her short tour, she returned to the kitchen area, which was now fragrant with the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

Dr. Derek Jacobsen was standing in the living room, peeling off the layers of winter protection. He turned out to be a lean, sandy-haired man in his fifties, with smile lines carved deeply around his mouth and crow's feet radiating from the corners of his bright blue eyes. He smelled of soap and wolf.

The truck driver was an Ordinary, a pleasant middle-aged woman named Pamela with curly brown hair and a warm smile. She still wore a parka, though she had unzipped the front, and her hands were wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.

She quickly retreated to the living room area and pulled out her phone and read while she drank her coffee.

"Raymond tells me you're a medical student," Dr. Jacobsen said to Nika after they had exchanged introductions and handshakes.

Nika nodded. "I'm in my final year at the University of Washington," she said. "Do you mind if I observe while you examine Ash?"

"Of course I don't mind." His glance rested on the curve of her belly beneath her knitted turtleneck. With his shifter senses, he could smell that she was pregnant, of course. "I must say that you've set yourself quite a challenge with a baby and medical school. Have you thought about how you're going to handle your residency next year?"

Nika shrugged self-consciously.

"I'm taking it one step at a time," she said, which was technically true, since she was now on the run from her parents and unsure if she'd ever get to return to her studies. She added, "I figured that the biggest hurdle was passing the USMLE Step 2 exam earlier this year. Since then, I've mostly just been doing my clinical rotations and applying for residencies."

Dr. Jacobsen smiled warmly. "Well, I'm hoping that you and Ash will choose to settle down here. I could use another doctor in my practice, and so could the people of Bearpaw Ridge." His expression turned to sympathy. "I know it must be very difficult for a newly mated pair to live apart while you finish your studies. Have you applied to anywhere local for your residency?"

"I thought that the closest option was the VA hospital in Boise," she said, wondering if everyone in Bearpaw Ridge outside of the immediate Swanson family thought that her studies were the reason she and Ash weren't together.

"Let's sit down another time and discuss your options," Dr. Jacobsen said. "Right now, we have a patient waiting on us."

"I was really worried when Mrs. Swanson told me that you'd put Ash in a medically induced coma," she said. "Do you think he's ready to wake up?"

"I hope so," Derek said gravely. "But that's what the MRI is going to tell us."

* * *

With a mixture of fascination and apprehension, Nika watched as Raymond and Dr. Jacobsen detached Ash from the many monitors connected to him, lifted him onto a stretcher, covered him with a warm blanket, and carried him out to the truck trailer-turned-imaging lab.

After the MRI was complete, Dr. Jacobsen uploaded the results to Dr. Almira Khan, who was a shifter neurologist working out of Salt Lake City. He consulted with Dr. Khan via Skype while Nika listened in.

This was definitely a different kind of medical rotation, away from the hospital environment!

To Nika's relief, Dr. Khan duly pronounced Ash's brain injury healed, which meant that Dr. Jacobsen could stop administering the drugs that kept Ash in a coma.

As Raymond removed the IV needle from Ash's throat, Dr. Jacobsen said to Nika, "I predict that Ash will sleep through the night and wake in the morning feeling mostly recovered if still a bit sore. We did a full-body scan and saw that his broken ribs are nearly healed up as well. So now we have to wait and see and hope fervently that Ash doesn't show signs of neurological deficit."

* * *

Later that night, Nika tossed and turned in Ash's guest bedroom. She was exhausted after her long day of travel and emotional turmoil, but somehow, she just couldn't seem to fall asleep.

She had been plagued by similar insomnia after breaking up with Ash. Now, with the hours of the night slowly rolling by, she stared up at the shadowy ceiling and wrestled with her dilemma.

Last summer, it had taken weeks until she could get any kind of unbroken sleep without Ash at her side. Now that they were in such close proximity, she realized that she wouldn't be able to rest unless her bear could sense his presence nearby.

Her heart began to pound again as she clenched the bed sheets into a wrinkled landscape of fabric.

I don't have a choice, she told herself, trying to deny the powerful wave of want that rolled through her.

Her bear stirred eagerly as she rolled over and got out of bed.

Raymond woke up the moment she crossed the threshold into Ash's bedroom.

He saved her the embarrassment of making her request when he whispered, "Can't fall asleep without your mate?"

"Yeah," she replied.

It's the truth, but why do I feel like such a liar?

"Okay, trade you." He rose from the cot.

She saw that he was dressed in leopard-print flannel pajamas, and the sight made her smile.

"They were a gift from my fiancée," he said, grinning. "She thought they were appropriate because we're snow leopard shifters."

Wow, a sabertooth and a snow leopard, both in the same day!

Both of those shifter lineages were uncommon, and she wondered why Bearpaw Ridge seemed to attract so many different kinds of shifters.

Raymond padded silently out of the room and retrieved clean sheets from a closet in the hall. In a few moments, the cot had been stripped of bedding and freshly made up.

"Nighty-night," he breathed and headed for the guest bedroom she had just abandoned, a second set of sheets tucked under his arm.

Nika curled under a thick quilt and listened to the soft, regular sound of Ash's breathing. The master suite was bathed in the dim light of the pulsing monitors that stood like glowing sentries on one side of the large bed, keeping vigil over their patient.

Outside, there were none of the usual noises of city living—no rush of traffic, no horns honking, no airplanes overhead. There was only a deep silence that seemed to press against her eardrums.

Nika closed her eyes and tried to summon sleep. But it still hovered frustratingly out of reach.

Instead, she found herself bombarded by memories of her brief, wonderful time with Ash last summer. She had initially protested Mama's insistence on registering with the ShiftMatch online matchmaking service, pleading lack of time due to her clinical rounds.

And she knew that she would have even less free time to date once she graduated from medical school and began working the crazy shifts required for her residency.

Then Mama had threatened to withhold the tuition and living allowance for the coming year. And Nika had reluctantly agreed but had silently vowed not to take more than the bare minimum of dates assigned to her by ShiftMatch.

Her resolution had been easy to keep on the first date. Baldwin had been exactly the type of bear shifter male she loathed—arrogant, condescending, and transparently eager to form a connection with the powerful and wealthy Medved clan. All throughout dinner, Nika had felt like Baldwin had been courting the invisible presence of her parents rather than her.

But on her second ShiftMatch date, she had met Ash. And knew the moment he took her hand that he was The One. Her fated mate.

That night, and the dates that followed, only confirmed her first impression of him. He was smart, confident, and refreshingly passionate about his work and his company. Without appearing to be brash or overbearing, he had an air of strength and competence that was paired with generosity and good humor. His observations of the world around him were usually peppered with funny commentary.

Maybe it was because he had grown up in the middle of nowhere, but she was also pleasantly surprised by his old-fashioned courtesy and respect.

And when he took her to bed…wow. Just, wow. He was amazing…and each time they got together after that, the sex just got better and hotter.

Less than a month after they met, he proposed to her. And she said yes, and that night, they’d sealed their mating bond.

And then her parents had delivered their ultimatum the next morning. And she knew that she had no choice except to obey if she wanted Ash to live.

And Ash had to live. He had such a bright future ahead of him. Maybe he couldn't shift, but with his brains and his drive to succeed, he could accomplish anything else he wanted.

What followed had been the longest and most painful time of her life, as she fought to keep both her mating and her pregnancy a secret from her family…without Ash.

Early on in their romance, she'd managed to get her hands on a copy of the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department's annual fundraising calendar. Ash's sister-in-law Steffi Tristan Swanson had put it together to raise money for a new paramedic van needed by the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department.

In her loneliest moments since then, Nika had frequently turned to that calendar to remind herself who and what she was trying to protect.

Most of the firefighters featured in the calendar were incredibly fit and handsome, and the Swanson brothers were no exception. Steffi had managed to corral Ash and three of his older brothers into posing shirtless, wearing just their bunker pants and boots.

Ash had chosen to pose with Thunder, a puppy he had recently adopted from the Salmon Animal Shelter. Nika adored the affectionate expression that the photographer had caught as Ash bent his head to look at the animal in his arms.

That photo captured everything she had loved about Ash.

And now here she was, in his bedroom, near enough to hear his slow, steady heartbeat…and separated from him by a frustrating gap.

Go to sleep, she told herself. You're here with your mate. You can smell him. You can hear him. Isn't that enough?

It wasn't.

Nika spent an eternity longer on the cot, her eyes closed, tormented by his proximity.

Finally, defeated, she opened her eyes again to the shadow-cloaked room. By the glow of the monitors, she saw the shape of him stretched out on the bed under the blanket, and the clean line of his profile.

She could either stay over here on the cot and spend the night wide-awake and miserable…or she could take her place at his side in the bed and know that she would awaken instantly if there were any changes to his condition.

Every part of her ached with the need to touch him again. To press herself against his warmth and let it surround her.

Do it, her bear urged. He needs this as much as you do. It will help him finish healing.

And that was the only reason she needed to yield to her own need.

Moving as silently as she could, she rose from the cot and crossed the chasm of carpet that separated them.

Ash didn't stir as she lifted the comforter. A wave of warm air, thick with his scent, greeted her as she slid carefully into the bed next to him.

Lying next to him, feeling his body warmth surround her and drive away the last of the chill from the frigid winter day, felt like heaven. Nika curled on her side, surrounding her swollen belly, and felt sleep lapping at the edge of her mind.

She was so tired. She'd been tired for days…weeks…months. And this long day, with all its ups and downs, had completely drained her.

As she sank slowly below the surface, she knew that there was something she needed to remember, some reason why she couldn't stay here forever.

Then she felt the mattress shift. A heavy arm slid around her waist, followed by the beloved, familiar sensation of a hard body spooning her, gentle breath caressing the back of her neck.

I've finally come home, she thought, letting the warm, dark waters of sleep claim her at last.