Chapter Nine
Outside Seyville, Nebraska
Wyatt
“Stay where you are,” Nyria had told me before Cara had her wake-up-screaming nightmare. “William pissed off a cell of wizards trying to infiltrate them. A batch came for Talin but they’re six feet under now. We’ve tracking down and eliminated as many as we can, but if your mate can’t shift, it puts both of you in danger.”
“And her old job and apartment?”
“The bar’s fine. Her apartment was broken into, but her roommates managed to scare off whoever it was. Smelled like a human. We’re going to get her stuff out of there, set up her roommates in another place to keep them safe from crossfire.”
I hung up knowing she wasn’t going to be thrilled about me moving her out of her apartment, but there was no way in hell she’d be anywhere but at my side after this. I needed to keep her safe.
Dinner for tonight was mashed potatoes, pork chops, and some frozen vegetables I tried to sauté and spice some life into. I floated the idea of a delicious rabbit stew—I had all the ingredients handy—but Cara's initial enthusiasm vanished pretty fast when she realized that when I said I can get some rabbit, I meant more of the shift-and-hunt-down variety rather than the, it's-already-in-the-freezer variety.
“You do realize that if it were in the freezer, it got there because it was also killed,” I pointed out.
“There's a difference between it showing up neatly packaged in my hands, and seeing you prance back in here with some bloody pile of fur in between your teeth.”
“Does that sound the smallest bit hypocritical to you?”
“Absolutely,” she'd said solemnly. “And I don't give a shit.”
So. No rabbit stew for now.
Over the quick, hearty meal, I told her about Nyria's phone call. “She thinks that they'll be able to swing by with the ‘copter around midnight.” It was seven now. “If they're unable to reach us, there’s a chance we might need to head out on our own if it looks like we’re being targeted. The snow is going to be tough, but it’ll also slow everyone else down as well.” Except for, say, fireball-shooting wizards, but I didn’t want to worry her when it wasn’t necessary.
Her initial enthusiasm over dinner died pretty fast. “If I couldn't even do the initial trek when there was only six inches of snow on the ground, how am I supposed to do it with drifts up to six feet?”
“There'll be lots of patches where the wind has already created an easier path.” No, we were pretty trapped with her being unable to shift. Basement it was.
“I guess.” I had found a bottle of wine, and she chugged the rest of the glass before topping herself off. “Anything we need to do to prep for this?”
“I’ll pack us two bags. Stock them up on some food, medical supplies, spare clothing, and maybe another firearm for you. There's an entire arsenal downstairs.”
“How about you do that, and I'll clean up the kitchen?” She glanced over at the freshly washed pots and pans lined up on the counter. “I have to say, you’re one of the neatest cooks I've ever seen. I feel like I'm ducking all of the hard work.”
“If you want me to leave you more dirty dishes in the future, just let me know.” I had an image of her in my kitchen, wearing nothing but one of my shirts, making coffee while I scrambled some eggs. Of her sitting on the counter with a glass of red, watching me sear a steak. Of me ditching the steak to stand between her legs and show her just how much I loved having her there with me.
She snorted. “Nah, that's okay. I think I can make do with this mess.” She took the last few bites of food before standing up and stretching. The tee she was wearing rode up, and I got a glimpse of strong, lithe muscles.
“You should do that again,” I teased, half-serious.
Her face lit up with a startled, shy smile, and she quickly busied herself with cleaning off the table.
It wasn’t until I was testing out if I could fit another roll of gauze into a bag that I realized she’d stopped cleaning and was leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, a hurt look on her face. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
I straightened, wanting to make her distress go away. “What is?”
“That your pack is coming out here. That we might hide downstairs instead of leaving right now. It’s because I can’t shift. I’ve trapped us here.”
I strode over to her, cupping my hands over her shoulders. “No. No, it isn’t. You’re fine. We’re fine.”
She looked down, twisting the hem of her shirt in between her hands. “I’m really close but… it’s like there’s a block in my mind. Like I’m scared that if I do this, something bad could happen.”
Gently, giving her a chance to say no, I pulled her flush against my body. The breath left her body in a heavy sigh as she practically melted against me, cheek pressed to my chest. Her pulse was racing, but as I wrapped my arms around her and poured a sense of comfort into our connection, her heartrate slowed down to match mine. “What are you scared of?”
She responded slowly. “All I’ve ever wanted was to be on my own two feet. Be independent. Not get dragged down by my father’s schemes. But I don’t know the rules of your world. I don’t fully understand what a mate is. You make it sound like a soulmate thing, but what if it’s not? I don’t want to be controlled. I don’t want to have to play by rules that don’t benefit me. What if being a shifter is even more restrictive than what I had before?”
“Is that what you’ve experienced so far?”
“It’s all so complicated,” she said with a sort of plaintive desperation that broke my heart. “I can’t go back, though.”
“One step at a time,” I said gruffly.
“I want more, though.”
“Then—”
She went on tiptoes and pressed her lips against mine. She lingered, and then backed away, eyes bright and intense.
“Cara,” I breathed.
“Should I have not done that?”
I closed the distance between us, leaned forward to brunch my lips along the soft shell of her ear. She let out a little moan. “I want to touch you. Everywhere.”
“Me, too.”
I slowly slid my hands over her, tracing soft lines over her exposed skin, learning the curves and shapes and dips in her body. She returned the favor, seeming inordinately pleased by the muscles in my back and upper arms, and shuddered as I ran my hands from the nape of her neck down to cup her ass and pull her harder against me. “More.”
“What sort of more?”
“I want your lips on me.”
I threaded my hand through her hair, pulled, and sank my teeth into her exposed neck. She cried out at that, and I backed her up into the wall and pinned her there, hauling her up so that her legs were wrapped around my waist and her arms clung to my shoulders. “Like that?”
“More,” she moaned, back arching sensuously as she ground her core into my cock, and I started rocking against her, a slow preview of what was next. I caught the noises that started coming out of her mouth, our tongues tangling harder and harder. Her pleasure built on mine and mine on hers. My shirt went flying over my head. Hers followed. She yanked at my pants, and to slow her down, I grabbed her wrists and pinned them to either side of her head.
“You want more?”
“I want it all,” she whimpered. Her hips rolled and I could see by the look on her face that she was getting close. “Right now.”
“And here I thought we’d make it to a nice, strong bed for our first time,” I whispered in her ear. “Although you fantasize about me in a steam room. In the shower. You like the idea of me pinning you up like this.”
She yanked my pants down partway in response. “Condoms?”
“I…” What am I, a fucking teen? To be fair, saving her life was a bit of an overriding priority when I was getting ready to head over from Angel Falls. “We have a problem.”
“No,” she gasped out. “We’re in a luxurious getaway cabin. There have to be twenty packs scattered all over the place.”
I backed away from the wall, moving her wrists from against the wall to behind her back so I could hold her in place as I quickly strode into the bedroom. In what wasn’t my smoothest move ever, I left her bounce onto the mattress as I yanked open the drawers of the nightstand. Boom. I checked the expiration date. “We have to use all of them up in the next six months.”
She let out a breathless laugh and tried to pull me down by my forearms, but I resisted easily, nearly pulling her straight up into the air before she gave up. “Soo, Cara. Let me just… let me just look at you a moment.” She was beautiful, lying on sheets that didn’t do justice to her eyes, and for a moment I was almost brought to my fucking knees that the woman who bore my mark, the woman whose mark I bore, was with me right now.
Cara was mine, and I couldn’t imagine ever letting her go.
I tore the wrapper open and slid on the condom. When she pulled at my shoulders, I retaliated by sliding my arms under her knees and spreading her out, spreading her open so that when I dragged my tongue through her folds, she couldn’t close her legs, couldn’t do anything but cry out and grab onto the sheets. She tasted of heat and woman, spice and sex. She stiffened when I drew her clit into my mouth, begged for more as I steadily drove her closer and closer to the edge.
I stopped and she dug her nails into my shoulders. “You’re teasing m—”
I slid up and into her body as deep as I could go before she could finish the sentence, her face blurring as pure pleasure, unlike anything I’ve ever felt, tore through me. I framed her face and her hands came up to cover mine, neither of us moving as we stared into each other’s eyes. Hers were wide and shocked, her mouth open on a silent gasp. “Do you feel that?”
“I’ve never…”
“This is what it’s like to be with your mate.” I thrust into her, slowly at first, then harder and harder. She arched into each thrust as my fingers tangled hard in her hair. “I’ve been looking for you my whole life. You’re mine now, Cara.” She let out a cry that was half defiance, half pleading. Her legs started shaking around my hips, and her eyes lost focus.
I slipped one arm under her hips and tilted them up, while sinking my teeth into the soft underside of her breast. She screamed, tightening around me as her wet heat nearly drove me out of my own damn mind. I kept moving as she slowly floated back down, the dreamiest look on her face. “What about you?” she murmured.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment far too long to make it end anytime soon,” I promised her, and when I grabbed condoms and picked her up, carried everything into the steam room she’d invited me to join her in what felt like a lifetime ago, all she said was, “And after that, the shower.”
***
Cara
I was woken up by the harsh jangle of Wyatt's phone. I pushed myself up on one elbow and watched blearily as he sat up and picked up the phone call. “Hello?”
We’d dozed off for a bit. By the time he came, every single muscle thrown in stark relief as he shuddered in my arms, he’d wrung more orgasms from me than I thought possible. He’d flipped me over to face away from him once he had the strength to move, hooked an arm around my stomach, and pulled me up into him where I lay, dazed, in a cocoon of heat and sex and a sense of belonging that just felt too perfect to be true.
I could’ve stayed there forever.
Both of us had been all tangled up in rumpled, sweaty blankets, and I felt the loss of his body heat instantly. The look on his face quickly lost the lazy, satisfied look he'd been just sporting, replace with a cold and unforgiving one.
“What happened?” I whispered urgently.
“Hold on one second,” he said into the phone, then made eye contact with me. “Someone tipped off that wizard cell that there’s a chance we’re hiding out here. Get dressed, grab your bag, and head downstairs. Backup will be here in thirty minutes but it might not be enough.”
“What about you?” I asked, leaping out of bed and hurriedly pulling on whatever clothing strewn around I can reach.
He didn't answer, was barking orders into the phone. How many shifters are there in the helicopter? Are there shifters protecting Talin’s pack in case there are other attempts to retaliate against them? Were the shifters done moving Cara’s stuff out of the apartment and into my house? Any other shifters coming our way on foot?
Wait, what? “What do you mean, is my stuff out of my apartment and at your house?” I demanded.
He shot me a look clearly designed to get me to shut up and follow directions. “You can’t go back there. It isn’t safe,” he barked at me, then strode out of the bedroom to check on the security system.
I dragged myself out of bed and tugged on my discarded shorts and tee in a daze. When had he ordered his pack to empty out my apartment? It had to have been while I was still sleeping that first night. He’d gone behind my back and uprooted every last thing I’d made for myself without asking me for my input…and then never told me.
What had happened to us being a partnership?
He said you were his partner as long as your life wasn’t at risk.
Clearly, he considered this to be non-negotiable. But… there had been time to talk with me, and he didn’t do it. We were on day two of knowing each other—barely—and he was already justifying unnecessary actions while painting it as it being for my own good, moving the goalpost as it suited him without giving a shit about what it meant to me. I felt nauseated.
Damn it, this was just like my father.
Boom.
The entire house shook and I screamed. Wyatt tore into the room, cursing under his breath. With about as much effort as it would take to pick up a brick, he tossed me over his shoulder with one arm and grabbed onto the emergency bags waiting in the corner with his other hand.
The cabin shuddered again, and this time, I could see smoke filling the air. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the flicker of flames. “Wyatt, the cabin is on fire!”
“Basement is hopefully fireproofed enough to withstand an attack until we get help.” He ran into the walk-in closet and stabbed the secret code into the pad designed to look like a thermostat. He pressed on the wall and the secret doorway opened up, the light from behind us showing a set narrow stairs going down into darkness. “Take this stuff down there.”
“But what about you?”
“Not more than ten wizards here. I can clear them out, hold them off until we get reinforcements.”
“Or, you can wake down here with me, and we won't leave until we have people to help you fight,” I snapped, trying to push past him to get out of the small room. He didn’t budge. “You can't fight them all by yourself.”
“Yes, I can,” he said calmly. “This is what I've been trained to do my entire life.”
“I can help.”
“I have no doubt that you can help, but the risk of you getting killed is too damn high. Do not leave until you hear shifters on the other side. Luke will be here, along with Nyria. If you need some sort of code word, ask them about our matching mark. The phone is in there. Call right now and let them know what's going on.”
“You can't leave me in here,” I cried out, trying to push past him again, but a second later I heard a triumphant shout and what sounded like a door getting broken down. A moment later, Wyatt pushed me against the wall, hard enough to disorient me, gently enough that I wasn’t injured or pushed down the stairs, and slammed the door shut between us. Outside, I heard a scream of pain, and then silence. My hand scrabbled along the door, trying to find the handle or the buttons that would allow me to leave. I could find nothing.
The phone. I had to call his pack. Luke, Nyria, the last call he’d received, any of them.
Nyria picked up immediately. “Wyatt.”
“No,” I cried out, almost hysterical. “It's Cara, the cabin is on fire and Wyatt just locked me up in the basement and he needs help. How the hell do I get out of here?”
“As much as I'd like to tell you to go out there and kick ass, you have no idea what you're dealing with. Stay there, stay safe, and we will be there to help in about fourteen minutes.”
“That's too long.”
“Hang in there. We’ve all been doing this for decades. I'm going to stay on the line so that you can update me if anything happens.”
My fingers found a switch, and I flipped it on. The entire basement was flooded with light. I sprinted down the narrow stairs and found myself into what had to be one of the most luxurious bunker I could have possibly imagined. I ran around the circumference of the room, throwing open every single shelf and content. I found food, electronics, medication, all sorts of things, but not the one that I needed.
“Do you know where the guns are in the basement?” I asked Nyria.
Her voice grew alarmed. “Cara, trust me, you do not want to become a liability in this battle.”
I was torn. On one hand, I saw her point. If I were captured, I could be used against the shifters. On the other hand, if I stayed down here and everyone died without me doing anything to help, I would never be able to live with myself. Damn. Was I about to become the dead sidekick in an action movie, or was I missing my chance to save Wyatt?
Or should I use this opportunity to escape them all? Fuck. I couldn’t walk away now, knowing he was in danger. He and I needed to have a serious talk about boundaries. And if he didn’t step up, then I’d leave him.
The mere thought of losing him, of him dying tonight, made my chest tighten. In just a few days, he’d managed to entwine himself in every corner of my life. I’d never felt more liberated, but it was also too much, too fast.
First things first, though. I was going to kick some evil ass.
I swung open a drawer to find exactly what I was looking for. Weapons and ammo. Bingo. Clearly, it was meant to be.
“If this goes horribly wrong, do not save me at the expense of others,” I told Nyria. I could hear her yelling something over the phone, telling me to wait and that they would be there in eleven minutes. I shoved the phone into the waistband of my shorts and sprinted back upstairs. The enemy expected me to run. Hopefully they wouldn’t expect me to have excellent aim.
When I figured out where to press on the wall to swing the door back open, it was like walking into an alternate dimension. The entire bedroom wall on one side had been blown out, the edges blackened and the floor covered in puddles of melted snow. There were three bodies strewn on the ground, and I tried not to puke the sight of them. They hadn't gone easily, but Wyatt had clearly made sure I would be safe.
There were huge patches of melted snowbanks and collapsed tunnels outside the destroyed wall, but most of the noise and the smoke seem to be pouring out from the kitchen or the living room. I crept to the doorway, and saw three wizards poking around the fireplace like they thought it was a secret door. Huge, blackened patches covered the floor in a failed attempt to use fire to drill down. They knew I was hiding somewhere in the house.
But, let’s just make sure…
I pulled the phone out of the waistband of my pants, ducked back out of sight. “Nyria.”
Her voice is frantic. “Yes, I can hear you. Are you safe?”
“Sorta. I'm upstairs and I've got two guns on me. I know exactly how to use them. There are three men trying to find entranceways to the secret bunker downstairs around the living room fireplace, so they’re way off. How do I know if they’re wizards or not? I don’t want to shoot shifters trying to help Wyatt.”
“They’re wizards. The shifters on foot aren’t going to be at the cabin for another twenty minutes given the snow and we’re nine minutes away. Do they smell metallic?”
“This place is on fire. I can't smell shit. Anyway, if I die, tell Wyatt he shouldn’t have moved stuff out of my apartment without telling me.”
“I think I agree enough with you that you should survive and tell him to his arrogant alpha face.”
She had a point.
I raised the gun the way I had been trained, spread my legs in a more balanced stance. I lined up the first shot to hit one of the wizards’ heads. I had never shot anyone before my life, and I knew that it wouldn't be nearly as see as I would be, but right now, it was easy to compartmentalize everything by remembering that it was them or me.
“I hope we find the bitch fast before that big yellow wolf comes back,” the one I had my sights trained on said with an ugly laugh.
Well, then. I pulled the trigger with the most surreal sense of calm I’d ever felt. He dropped like a log. The other two spun around, but before they do anything, I shot the second one in the chest. He staggered back against the wall, blood pouring, and slowly slid to the ground. The third one let out a yell of anger and pointed his palm to me. I remembered what Wyatt said about wizards and their fireballs and ducked out of the way. Just in time. A flaming sphere, one that looked like it should come out of a baby dragon's mouth in a fantasy movie, hit the spot I had just been standing in. I leaped back out and took aim. The first bullet missed, and the second one hit his arm. He howled and fell down.
I thought briefly about running off to find Wyatt, but the only way to stop these guys from coming after me again, even when injured, was to finish the job. I stepped closer, feeling my stomach quiver. It was one thing to scream at the television that the protagonist was an idiot for not killing an enemy, another to look down at an injured person and shoot them in cold blood.
“We’ll kill all of you,” the one I shot in the arm said. “I’ll fucking kill your boyfriend right in front of you. Or maybe the other way—”
I pulled the trigger.
After taking a second to regain composure, I darted around the apartment, looking for any sign of life. All I found were more bodies. Where the hell was Wyatt? My teeth were chattering with a mix of cold and adrenaline. I went out into the backyard area. All I found was a huge mess of melted, disturbed snow that led in a clear path out to the woods.
I tried to “reach” through our connection, but felt nothing.
The phone was still at my waist, still on the call. “I killed three of them.” My voice shook.
“Nice! I’m jealous.” Nyria was far more cavalier about it than I was.
“There are no more wizards in the cabin, counted nine bodies. I can’t believe Wyatt killed them all. I think he’s with whoever is left out in the woods.”
“Don't go after them,” Nyria said in a voice that told me that she wasn’t going to hold her breath about me listening.
“If this were your mate, what would you do?”
“I’m trained in combat,” she pointed out. “Besides, Wyatt will probably circle back to the cabin in order to make sure you’re okay. If you go off into the woods, could be a trap, or you could mess with his plan. Can you feel him over your connection?”
I tried again. “Nothing. He’s completely sealed me off.” I picture him somewhere out there in the woods, hit by a fireball, dying with no one there to help him. Tears rose. Angry ones. It made me want to set the world on fire if that’s what it took to save him.
Perhaps there’s some serious truth to this whole mate thing after all…
I was pissed as hell at him, but the last thing I wanted was for him to die. I cared about Wyatt. More than I ever thought I would care about another person. And if someone out there was trying to kill him, I wanted to kill them first.
There was that rippling feeling again. That twisting of muscles that I felt a hundred times before. This time, it didn't go away after a few seconds. Five seconds. Ten. A pain I’d only ever felt secondhand tore through me. With a surge of elation, I tossed the gun I was carrying to the side and started to tear at my clothes.
Before I could finish doing so, I felt my entire world flip inside out, and the next thing I knew, I had four paws, shittier color perception, a human shirt tangled around my torso, and Wyatt’s scent so clear the snow that it blew my mind that as a human, I’d never picked up on how much nuance it had.
I heard Nyria's voice on the phone, asking if I was okay, and I tried to make some sort of noise. A bark came out. There was a pause, and then I heard her say a tone of wonder, “Did you just shift for the first time?”
I made the weird barking noise again, picked up the gun between my jaws, and set off after Wyatt's tracks, leaving the phone behind in the bloody snow.
***
My plans to lure the last wizards out into the woods and hunt them down had worked fantastically until I heard the roar of the last thing I wanted to hear–snowmobiles. I let go of what had once been a screaming wizard and started to sprint back to the cabin. I could hide in the basement with my mate and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Any minute now.
But my ears picked up two, three different sounds heading toward me, and I realized that they not only were they all now faster than me, but were in the perfect position to corral me off from Cara. I picked out the closest-sounding machine and sprinted through the snow toward it, my regular speeds hampered by snow sometimes piled taller than I was. I thought about shifting back to human form and hiding, but I couldn’t leave Cara defenseless. The wizards knew damn well she was hiding somewhere in the cabin, and while the basement was well-fortified, that place was supposed to be a hideout, not a nuclear bunker.
What I could do was…
I quickly shifted to human form, climbed a nice, sturdy tree nearby, and shifted back to wolf form while perfectly balanced on a low-hanging, wide branch. Gold star to me. I waited until the first wizard tried to zoom past me, eyes focused on the ground level. I dropped down on him and took him out almost instantly.
Another soon followed, and I could smell that he wasn’t a wizard, but a human male. He raised his gun when he saw me standing over the dead body of his buddy, and I dodged out of the way just in time. In his terror, he kept pulling the trigger, and it wasn’t long before the telltale hollow clicking noise was all that happened. I made my move, leaping at him.
He pulled a knife, but didn’t angle it toward me in time.
Dead.
One left…
A fireball shot past me, and momentarily, I thought the third enemy had missed. Then a huge wall of heat hit me. Fucker. He'd been aiming for the abandoned snowmobile. My side burned, and I rolled in the snow, smelling scorched flesh. Not good.
The last wizard stood knee-deep in snow, hands up toward me. “There's no way you'll be able to run fast enough to avoid getting hit,” he sneered.
My hackles rose and I growled, showing my teeth. He wasn't wrong. Chances of my being able to avoid getting hit were low, especially as the pain started to build as the shock wore off.
“I'll let you go if you tell us where the necklace is.”
I didn't move. On the bright side, that meant that these guys didn't have it. So… who did? Was it connected to the statues?
The wizard shrugged. “If you won't tell us, we’ll get that dark-haired girl to crack.” Another fireball came my way, and I threw myself to the side, body screaming in pain. The wizard chuckled. “I can do this all day. Can you?” He shot several more fireballs, the last one hitting my back leg.
Was this how I would die? I should have hidden in the basement with her. My foolishness, my underestimating the enemy, just destroyed the one thing on this whole planet I’d wanted more than anything else.
You don't know that. If you had done that, they would have just burned the entire place down, found a way in, and killed both of you instead of just you.
It was a cold comfort as I painfully twisted in place as the wizard slowly circled around me, clearly anticipating the killer shot. Shouldn’t my pack’s fighters be landing soon? In another minute, it wouldn’t matter to me.
I’d never see Cara again. That hurt more than any fireball. I opened up the connection between us and poured every single ounce of the way I felt about her into it. In response, I got the sense of something intense and determined.
And nearby.
What the hell was she up to?
I let out a long, loud howl that would reach the cabin and anyone who might have reached it already, and the wizard paused, clearly confused and wary about the odd noise. There was a movement just beyond the wizard’s shoulder, and I tried to not shift my attention to it. It looks like a dark, slinky form. It had to be West. Nyria had told me that he left to go after his mate hours before everyone found out I was in trouble. Had he come back?
The wizard clearly decided that time wasn’t going to be at his side much longer and stepped forward, every line in his body promising me death. I backed up sluggishly in the snow, dragging my injured leg behind me. “You shifters might be able to defeat us in all-out war, but we know better now. We have the time and numbers to pick you off, one at a time.” A fireball shot out and I threw myself to the side, knowing that even though this one would miss, the next probably wouldn't.
But there was no second fireball. A sleek, dark wolf with huge gray eyes had tackled the wizard, teeth deep in his shoulder, front paws scratching hard at anything she could reach.
That wasn't West. It was Cara.
Pain forgotten, I lunged forward as the wizard swung his arm out and punched her solidly in the head, knocking her off of him for a precious second. She whimpered, a sound that sliced my heart in half, but lunged back in with her teeth stained red with blood. This time she got his neck. A fireball ricocheted harmlessly to the side as Cara bit harder and deeper, sheer desperation making up for her lack of experience. When I reached them, I helped her finish the job with one hard crunch.
Cara had just saved me, and I’d never seen anything sexier in my life.
A moment later she was all over me, anxiously studying my burned side as much as she could with her limited canine vision, horror clear in the connection between us. Concern and fear came off of her in waves. I poured gratitude and reassurance into hers in return. With her pressed hard against my good side, we staggered back the way we came, just in time to see the helicopter hover a few feet above the snow as over half a dozen shifters in human form poured out of the side, armed to the teeth and ready to do battle.
Nyria hurried over to us. “Medic!” she shouted, then fell to her knees next to me. “Don’t shift back or it’s gonna hurt like a bastard,” she warned me. Cara nudged her. “He’ll be fine,” Nyria told her as our pack’s doctor joined her at my side. “For fuck’s sake, Wyatt, isn’t this the same side that was singled by a fireball three days ago?”
I grunted.
Cara made another whining noise, and I felt her panic pour in. It wasn’t directed at me, and it took me a moment to sort through the impressions I was receiving. With a growl of pain, I shifted back, and the medic scrambled to pull out one of the blankets he had on him. “She can’t shift back,” I said hoarsely, and then reached out and pulled the trembling wolf into my arms. “Don’t panic,” I told her. “I promise you, this happens the first few times for everyone. If you can’t shift back now, you’ll do it later. I know you feel trapped, but you’re safe.”
She curled up into a tiny ball against my untouched side, and I could feel her mentally retreating. “She might not want to be naked in front of all these strangers,” Nyria muttered under her breath, digging into the bag she had for some spare clothing that she lay down at Cara’s paws.
Right. I’d momentarily forgotten that Cara’s perspective on nudity was a bit different than ours. “Everyone, please handle the cabin and leave us alone for a moment. If youneed to stay here, turn your back.”
Sure enough, the distressed vibes went away, and a moment later a naked, shivering Cara was yanking on Nyria’s spare clothing. “It’s so c-c-cold,” she chattered.
“You were supposed to stay in the basement.”
“You were supposed to stay alive.”
I laughed, and then groaned. My entire side was in intense pain, and I’d lost all sensation in my foot. “Shifters heal fast, but this might take me a day or two,” I gasped out as our medic came back with a stretcher and help. “Maybe three. Or a week.”
“Take all the time you need,” Cara said, and while she held my hand while we were loaded in the helicopter, something had changed between us, and it wasn’t good.