“No, get back,” I rasped, batting her hands away as she came over to me, her eyes wide, her face pale as bleached bone, “you’ll get blood all over you!”

My other hand held my balled-up black briefs in front of my crotch. I wasn’t exactly shy about being naked, but I wanted to preserve some sense of mystery with this woman.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” she cried, the shock written so boldly across her face that it might as well have been scrawled out in sharpie. “Oh, my God, Matthew, there was a wolf, I heard a wolf, and I came out to see if it was the same one at my house last night, and all that was here was you, but I didn’t know it was you, and it just happened! But I-I shot you and you’re naked, and oh, my God, you’re bleeding!”

I winced a little at her words. “Yeah,” I agreed as the pain began to spread out from my chest and through my body, “I am.”

“Oh, God, we need to get you to a hospital! How far is Yellow Rose? Do the phones work? We need to get you some help! We need to compress the wound and get you to a doctor! Oh, my God, Matthew, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe this happened!”

“No, it’s okay,” I said, trying to soothe her even as I gritted my teeth against the unimaginable pain in my body. From the warmth on my back, it felt like the bullet had gone through. That was good. Expelling them as I healed was always uncomfortable to watch, even for me. Shifters might not die from normal bullets, but bullets still fucking hurt like we were going to. “No, Rebecca, you need to calm down. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”

“You are not fine!” she nearly screamed. “You’re not Hercules! You need to get to a doctor!”

I shook my head, trying to think of a way I could get her to stop freaking out over this. I mean, it was bad, blood was getting everywhere—all down my front and onto the deck—but this wasn’t the end of the world, and she needed to understand that. Then, I thought of something.

“Rebecca,” I said, looking down into her eyes, “do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Look at my right arm. At my bicep.”

She glanced from my eyes to my arm and back again. “Why? What’s wrong with it? Did I shoot you there, too? I only fired one bullet, though!”

I swallowed hard, the pain getting a little worse. That’s how these things worked. The pain steadily became excruciating before it went away. Nothing a little Motrin wouldn’t fix, though.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” I said. “What’s missing?”

She looked back at my arm, recognition slowly dawning on her face. “You don’t have a bandage,” she whispered. She looked back up at me, her mouth open in shock. “Why don’t you have your gunshot wound there?”

“It’s complicated,” I started to say. I wanted to follow it up with that I’d explain everything, but she’d already dropped her hand away and was backing up to the door.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “You’re not fucking human, are you? You’re like a ghost or something! Or an alien, aren’t you?”

My stomach sank. This was exactly the opposite reaction I’d wanted. “What?” I asked, straightening up fast enough that my chest erupted in a flash of gut-churning pain. “If I was a ghost would I be fucking bleeding?”

“A government experiment!” she shouted. She glanced down at the gun, scrambled down and got it, and leveled it at me. “That’s why you were in the military!”

I couldn’t help but smile a little as I shook my head. She had spunk, I had to give her credit there. But I would hope that’d be true of any woman I was meant to fall in love with. “No,” I said, “I’m not a military experiment. I’m something else entirely. I don’t think the government even knows about us.”

“Us? You said us! There’s more like you?” she asked, backing away, gun still raised.

“Yes,” I said, nodding, wincing at the fire in my chest from the movement. “Look, can you just put the gun down? Please? I’ll explain everything.”

“Why? What’ll you do if I don’t?”

“Guess I’ll get shot again,” I said, reaching up to probe my fingers into the already scabbing and closing hole in my chest. Even my voice was sounding better, less fluid-filled, and I was able to breathe easier. “Look, it’s not going to kill me even if you do shoot. It’s just going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”

With the gun in one hand, she pulled the screen door open with the other and went to step inside. “Well, how about this? How about you just get the fuck out of here, then? Huh?”

“Oh, come on, Rebecca!” I called, stepping forward, my underwear still balled up in front of my groin, desperately trying to preserve some sense of modesty. “My keys are in my jeans! And I can’t leave you anyway, I’m your protection detail!”

She slipped inside the cabin and slammed the door shut behind her. And then, with a certain finality, she clicked the deadbolt into place.

I slumped down and my heart sank along with my whole body. I’d been right. She had rejected me. Everything I’d been worried about had come true. Rejection by the woman I cared for most, my true mate.

God, I should have told her. I should have told her the truth earlier tonight, when she wasn’t in shock from having just fucking shot me. Peter had been right; I just needed to tell her.

“Rebecca?” I called as a cool wind blew in from the north, whipping through the pines and stirring all the fallen needles on the ground before it whipped up behind my balled-up underwear and caressed my most sensitive of spots. I shivered, a tremor that went through my body and up and down my back. “Come on,” I whined a little, “it’s cold out here.”

Fuck. How the hell did I get into this situation? Naked, cold, and alone, in the dark with a very angry woman just beyond the door, wielding a gun.