I’d tossed my clothes off on the fly as I ran out, so they weren’t ripped. I quickly put them on and headed for the way I’d left Evan on foot. My speed wasn’t much slower than my wolf form so I figured it was fine. I arrived where I’d left him not long after I set out, and I went to the hiding place.

“Evan?” I called softly.

I was frowning, though, because I could already tell he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. The area was heavy with his scent, but I could tell it wasn’t fresh. He hadn't been there for a few minutes.

“Evan!” I called louder.

Shit. Shit! Did someone else come and find him? Was it a Beta?

I’d thought he would be safe all the way out here, but maybe there were some patrolling outside? And I’d just left him alone and gone back! Fuck! I should have taken the little guy with me. I could just imagine how scared he was…

Worry filled my chest and made me stupid for a minute. I kept cursing at myself inside my mind, but it was only for a few seconds, and then I remembered that cursing myself out wouldn’t help him. If he was in danger somewhere else, then I had to help. It wasn’t just my sense of duty to a fellow shifter, and an Omega, at that, but I didn’t look too closely at my confused emotions in that moment.

I put my nose in the air as I walked around the vicinity. The area he’d stayed the most in was practically saturated with his scent, and it distracted me so I couldn’t get a clear sense of direction. I hadn't caught it coming from the destroyed event room, which meant he must have gone deeper into the woods. I moved to where the air was fresher, and walked in a semi-circle around the spot I’d left him.

Finally, I managed to catch a scent. It was faint, but I could just barely pick it up, and how could I not recognize it? Relief washed through me, making my tensed body relax, before excitement started to grow. I was about to set off and look for him immediately, but then another smell caught my attention, and it made me feel cold. There was the scent of blood hanging in the air, not quite as thick as in the event room, but it was unmistakable. I’d left the Beta I killed a few feet away, and I wasn’t standing downwind of that position, so the blood came from a different source.

Evan.

There was no way for me to tell if the blood was his. He’d only just passed through this route, but he’d definitely had blood on him. I could have traced it back toward his hiding spot, and I wondered if I would find the remains of a fight. Before that, though, I had to find him. Already too many people had died that night. I didn’t want him to be one more.

I decided not to shift as I went after that faint scent. In case Evan was injured or he was frightened, a wolf barreling at him would scare him. I just had to be on higher alert. If there were more Betas around to dispatch, I would be ready to shift on a second’s notice.

The smell went deeper into the woods, and the further I tracked it, the more worried I grew. I doubted he would have gotten further away if there wasn’t someone on his tail, but I couldn’t catch any other scents. Was he just scared off? I didn’t think my nose could be mistaken…

After a long while, I thought I was getting somewhere. The scent led me to a hunting cabin in the woods. I stopped a distance away from it, surprised to even find it there. Did this place exist here before? I’d never been to this side of the woods, and never gone this far, so seeing it threw me off. But Evan’s scent went in there, so I only hesitated for a second.

I reached for the door handle, noting that not only was the door not locked, it hadn't been properly closed, which meant someone could have come by recently. Evan’s scent was a little thicker around here, and cautiously, I entered the cabin, unsure what to expect.

The inside of the cabin was dark and dusty. My nose wrinkled at the heavy scent that made me want to cover the lower half of my face. It looked like the place was only used seasonally. Now that I’d walked inside, I realized Evan’s scent was heavy in here, though I still couldn’t see him. The good news was that besides the stale scent, I couldn’t detect that anyone else was there.

“Evan?” I called out, looking around. It wasn’t that big a cabin and this was only the front room. Was he in the back? The kitchen, or one of the bedrooms, maybe, hiding out? “Evan, it’s Max. If you can hear me, can you come out? Or just make a sound and I’ll come to you.”

I didn’t have to wait for long, I heard a sound, and then Evan came out from some dark corner. Before I had a chance to be relieved, I saw he was holding on to one of his arms. He’d taken off the coat and tie he’d had on before, and one of the sleeves of his shirt was ripped and dyed red with his blood. His hair and the rest of him was pretty messed up, too, like he’d rolled around on the ground.

Feeling distressed, I crossed the space between us quickly, extending my arms but stopping just before I touched him.

“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice low so he wouldn’t catch the anger in it.

He looked up into my eyes, his own filled with relief. “I stayed hidden like you told me, but a Beta sniffed me out and attacked me. I fought him off as best as I could, but I’m not really much of a fighter. I just managed to get him off me long enough to run. He didn’t follow, so I guess he was injured pretty badly.”

He looked a little ashamed of himself, and I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to feel that way. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know how to protect himself. Most Omegas would fall under protection, so when the rest of the pack was learning how to fight and hunt, more often than not, Omegas wouldn’t be included. As for Evan, while I wasn’t sure who his parents were or what pack he came from, just being able to attend the gala meant his background wasn’t anything simple.

“It’s fine,” I said with a sigh. “There’s nothing wrong with running. Any time you’re in a situation you can't handle, it’s a lot safer to just run.”

Evan’s mouth tilted up in a smile, but it just looked pain. I looked around the room and saw a small couch. I led him over to it and had him sit down, and I sat next to him.

“Forget about everything else. For now we need to take care of the cut on your arm, okay?”

Evan bit down on his lip and nodded his head a little. My eyes hesitated on his lips for a second before lowering.

“Tell me if it hurts,” I instructed, then I reached for his arm, catching onto the sleeve and carefully ripping it around the cut so I could see just how bad it was. “Shit, this looks bad.”

The gash on his arm had obviously come from being bitten. I was worried about it, because his arm looked like a total mess, and he’d probably lost a lot of blood. It was still dripping even now, and I imagined the reason I hadn't caught much of it on the way, was because most of it had dripped at the place he was hurt. Shifters might have fast healing, but it wasn’t that much better than a human.

Even worse, he hadn't been in his shifted form when he got the injury. When injured in human form, shifting to wolf and back wouldn’t have that great an effect on an injury. Like before, if I’d fought that Beta in my human form, instead of as a wolf, and I got injured, I wouldn’t have gotten out of it lightly. It might still help, if he shifted to his wolf form and rested that way for a while, but we didn’t have that kind of luxury. He might be faster in his wolf form, but he would also have an injured forelimb and he wouldn’t be able to move quickly.

Staying where we were wasn’t exactly advisable, especially with only the two of us there. If we got attacked, we would be at a serious disadvantage.

“Should I shift?” Evan asked, looking at me nervously.

I shook my head. “Let me take care of this, you just sit down. If you shift now you know you can't shift again for a while, right?”

His face flushed as he looked down. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I guess you’re right. I’m not sure I have the energy for it right now, anyway.”

I frowned. “When was the last time you ate?”

He sighed. “I don’t know? We ate before coming to the gala, so some time before lunch.”

I wanted to curse, but refrained. Another reason why it wasn’t convenient to shift to wolf form with an injury. Shifting took energy, and it took a lot less to shift back into human than it would shifting into a wolf. Trying to shift on low energy could be slow, and it could also be painful. In his current shape, it really wasn’t worth it.

“Wait for me,” I instructed, then got up.

The cabin was on shifter grounds, so I had a few expectations on what I could find, and I got up to look around. I found a few cabinets and rummaged around for some medical supplies. It didn’t take long before I found some, and I hurried over to Evan. Sitting back down next to him, I set the supplies on my other side, and ripped his sleeve clean off his arm.

“This will hurt a little bit,” I warned.

Evan nodded his head quickly, looking nervous, his jaw tensed like he was gritting his teeth hard.

I reached for the supplies and looked through. There was a bottle of fluid and some gauze that I used to clean around the wound. Knowing he would be in pain, I was as gentle with him as I could be, dabbing around the wound to wipe away the blood so I could see the extent of the injury. I hesitated a bit, before letting some of the liquid wash over the wound as well, wiping away the excess fluid. Evan flinched, and I glanced at his face. He looked a little paler than before, but he didn’t make a sound, even as his body started to tremble a little.

“Almost done,” I said quickly.

The gash was long and deep. If he were a human, a doctor would have put in some stitches, but his healing would happen fast enough, so stitches would only be in the way. After thoroughly cleaning the wound, I wrapped it carefully. He’d flinch every now and then, and every time he did, I would make my motions even gentler.

“There,” I said with satisfaction, patting his shoulder lightly. “Try not to move this arm, or put too much pressure on it for a while. Remember to sleep on your left side only when lying down, okay? Not even on your back.

He nodded and cleared his throat, but when he spoke, his voice still came out thick. “Okay.”

I picked up the dirty cotton swabs and gauze, wrapped them in some tissues I found in the supplies, and tossed it to a corner of the room. I turned back to Evan, and when I looked closely, I noticed his body was still trembling.

“Are you cold?” I asked, ready to take off my coat for him.

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

I already had my jacket off, though, and I draped it over his shoulders. After a slight hesitation, he brought the jacket closer around him with the uninjured arm, huddling into it.

“Can you tell me who you came to the gala with?” I asked, partly to distract him, but mostly because I was curious about him.

“I came with my parents, and some members of the pack. It was a pretty long trip actually. I had to beg my parents for weeks so they would allow me to come. I’ve wanted to since I was a teenager. But usually they take either one of my brothers or my cousin.”

I would have been worried, because this kid wasn’t cautious at all. I asked a simple question and he gave a lot of information without any hesitation. It was only when he realized he was rambling that he stopped himself, ducking his head like he wanted to bury it in his chest. I was tempted to run my fingers through his soft-looking hair, and after deciding there wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with it, I did it anyway.

“Who are your parents?” I asked, keeping the conversation going.

He sneaked a peek at me out the corner of his eye. “One of my dad’s is a male Omega, and the other is the Alpha of my pack. He’s been coming to the gala for years, so you might have heard of him before. Whit Barrington.”

“What?” I muttered, surprised.

Of all Alphas, it had to be Whit Barrington?

Of course I knew who Evan was talking about. Even if I hadn't personally met him, he was very widely known.

While wolf-shifters were different from human and most packs lived separately from them, not mingling with them wasn’t exactly possible, so a lot of shifters knew to assimilate with them. After all, we were technically part human ourselves, and we were supposed to keep this in mind at all times. In a lot of ways, Whit adhered to this silent rule, but in a lot of ways he also did not. He could act human all he wanted, but there were plenty that argued there was nothing humane about him. For him, being human was truly an act, and for a long time I’d heard all about how ruthless he was to his own pack.

“Is there something wrong?” Evan asked, shooting me a frown.

“No,” I said quickly. “It’s just… I never heard that Whit Barrington had an Omega son.”

I had met and spoken with Whit and his sons and other relatives before. They were all pretty impressive in their own ways, so news about his family flew around as well. But I’d never caught wind of him having a son who was an Omega. Only a nephew, a particular Omega that always received praise when he showed up at large social gathering for shifters, and exactly the kind of Omega I didn’t like. Pretty and soft-spoken, but also arrogant. I didn’t interact with them much.

Evan showed a bitter look that made my heart twist in my chest, shrugging helplessly before wincing. I looked at his arm, hidden under my coat, but he shook his head.

“I’m not surprised to hear that, actually. I got the idea that a lot of people were surprised he showed up with two Omegas and I wasn’t my more prominent cousin. Besides, I’m the youngest in the family so it only makes sense that I’ve never attended any sort of function outside of the pack before. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

Even though he said so, he had this lost look on his face. But he clearly didn’t want to talk more about it, so I wasn’t going to pry.