“Your boobs are on my arm.”
“Nudity is natural,” Leah whispered, still nuzzling her. “We’re shifters. It’s the best part of all this.”
Trina wiped her eyes and sighed. “You’re really weird.”
“Thank you,” Leah said in a mushy voice.
“Come on, weirdo. I want to be in that room.”
“You do?”
Trina nodded as she un-suctioned herself from Leah’s rain-soaked embrace. “This isn’t the first time.”
“You’ve been in rooms with injured shifters before?”
“Lots and lots,” she said sadly. “My first Clan made a lot of bad decisions, and they died for them. They declared wars in waves. Sometimes when they came home hurt, I’d hold vigil, hoping they pulled through. The Clan didn’t learn their lesson. They kept picking and picking, just like the Wulfe Clan does. And then me and my dad sat in the room trying to save Kurt when he was sick.”
“You mean succeeding.”
“Hmm?” she asked numbly as she padded through the muddy yard behind the crowd filing into Leah and Ethan’s house.
“You didn’t just try, Trina. You succeeded in saving Kurt.” Beside her, Leah’s eyes blazed the same silver as Kade’s when he got real determined about something. “You got good magic, Trina. Go save Kade, too.”
Trina tried to smile at her, but she didn’t really have control of her emotions right now. It might have been a grimace for all she knew. In a daze, she walked up the porch stairs where the crowd of big shifters parted for her. Hands touched her back, her hair, her hands, her shoulders. They were comforting her in their own way, in the way their animals demanded. The edges of her vision were dark and blurry, and her focus was on putting one foot in front of the other, pushing herself closer to her mate. If he stopped fighting, today would be the worst day of her life.
She walked through the kitchen to the hallway that led to the east wing where Kade had claimed a room. A few shifters posted up beside the door, nodded to her and made room for her to pass. The handle was cold under her palm as she turned it and opened the door.
Inside was a scene she would never forget as long as she lived. Kade’s wolf was lying on the bed. The pillows had been thrown to the ground, and Ethan and Hairpin Trigger blocked most of his body as they worked. On the bed, Rike and Kurt were holding down the wolf. When Ethan wiped his hair out of his way, there was blood on his hands. Kade’s blood. A low snarl rattled her throat before she could stop it.
“Trina, we won’t be able to work with you at our backs if you can’t control the lion,” Ethan said without turning around.
“I’m fine.”
Ethan cast a quick, fiery look at her over his shoulder before tossing a piece of mangled, bloody metal to the ground. Tink, tink, tink. The bullet landed inches from her toes, and slowly, she knelt and picked it up. It had left a red scuff on the wood floor.
“Come on, man,” Rike muttered, his body jerking with whatever he was doing to Kade. “Show a damn sign of life. Mom’s gonna kill us if you die.”
Trina didn’t want to know what they were doing. Not even a little part of her wanted to peek over their shoulders. From the bottom drawer, she pulled out a pair of black cutoff shorts and grabbed one of Kade’s Harley T-shirts from the top one. She pulled it on and sniffed the collar. Smelled like him—the human half, who was stuck and hurting in the wolf’s body right now. She put the bullet in her pocket because that would be her fuel when she faced the Wulfe Clan.
Kade was going to be avenged.
Following an explosive yelp, Kade turned into a hurricane on the bed, thrashing, eyes white and empty. The boys were yelling, especially Ethan, who kept ordering him to stay still. It was an Alpha command, but Kade wasn’t listening. He was out of his mind.
“Shhhhh,” she said, rushing to him. All she could reach was his head, and there was every chance in the world she was about to get shredded by his teeth, but she couldn’t stay away if she tried. “Shhhh, Kade. I’m here. I’m here.”
His eyes rolled in his head as he struggled. She glanced at his body, gasped, and then closed her eyes tight. Nothing could survive that…right? Stop it. Gritting her teeth, she knelt down beside him and forced her hand onto the side of his face. “Kade. You’re mine, do you hear me? You’re mine, and I’m telling you it’s not time yet. You can’t leave. You won’t. You’re a beast, and beasts don’t quit fighting. You owe me. You owe me!” When she gripped the scruff of fur at the side of his face, he snarled and twitched to the side as if he would bite her, but then his eyes locked onto hers and he froze.
“It’s me,” she whispered. “You aren’t alone. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll be a team, okay? You fight, and I’ll fight, and when you wake up, I’ll be here. I’ll always be here when you wake up. Okay?”
Kade’s panting sounded so pained, but he held her gaze, and he didn’t bite her. Chest heaving, eyes rimmed with tears, Trina leaned forward and dared a kiss to the side of his muzzle and then nuzzled against him. “You’re mine and I’m yours.”
That’s when she felt it. The softest touch of his tongue against her cheek. He’d licked her. She eased back and brushed her fingertips over the cheek that tingled from the wolf-kiss, but Kade’s eyes were closed again.
“What the fuck was that?” Rike asked in the most shocked tone she’d ever heard from a man. “He didn’t even rip your face off.”
“He…he licked me,” she murmured, fingers still on her cheek.
“Holy fuckin’ shit, Trin,” Kurt said. “Did you tame the monster?”
Heat rushed up her neck and landed in her face. She was probably the color of a beet, and she couldn’t help her dumb smile. This shouldn’t be a happy moment, but Kade’s wolf had really licked her instead of killing her. Trina looked down at her body in shock. She wasn’t bleeding. “I thought that was going to go way different,” she admitted as Ethan started stitching up the holes in Kade’s shoulder.
“Uh, we all did,” Rike muttered. “This wolf is a psycho. Or…he was.” Rike’s dark eyebrows drew down with confusion. “Trina, I think you might be a witch.”
She huffed an exhausted laugh and sat down hard right by the bed, resting her hand on Kade’s face, leaning her cheek on the side of the mattress. “I wish. I would make a magic potion to take his pain and put it in me.”
The boys got quiet, and when she looked up, they were staring down at her with unreadable expressions. “What?” she asked.
It was Ethan who answered. “You really found him, Trina.”
“Who?”
Ethan went back to work with the smallest smile on his lips, barely even visible through his beard. “You found the one.”
Chapter Sixteen
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, everything hurt.
“And so when I went in to sign the paperwork, it was this bittersweet moment…” Someone was talking in a soft murmur he could barely make out. He tried to bring his hand up to rub his forehead, but he couldn’t make his arms work.
“The Darby Clan used to be in that bar almost every day…”
His head was pounding and it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his body.
“I bought it with my dad, I felt really brave because I knew I would have to be in that place every day where my friends used to hang out…”
Wait, what? What was that? A TV playing? Something brushed his face, but he was too groggy to move.