Much like the bullet that punctured Ellis’s chest.
He rode the shift, drawing strength from every aching bone in his body and the ripping sensation of his pelt falling from his skin. The stretch and tug of his muscles, more intense and nerve-racking than he ever remembered, began to shape his body back to the one he was born with. His paws lengthened, thinning out, and the pads absorbed back into palms, the sensitivity of his fingers returning with a lightning-strike awareness as they formed. Caught in the moment between wolf and human, Gibson could feel and see everything with such clarity it was nearly overwhelming, too much stimulus for his divided brain to take.
But in all of that, he had a single focus: to protect his brother from slaughter and defend Zach from a madman.
Gibson stood.
Being human was first nature for him. He’d always placed the wolf second, never depending upon the creature lying in wait in his bloodline for anything other than an escape from the world when it got too busy, too tight. He’d forced the change, knowing that if he didn’t, his teeth would feel the softness of the sheriff’s skin beneath them and his throat would be filled with the man’s blood.
Brown trembled before him, his nerveless fingers dropping the gun to the forest floor, and he staggered back when Gibson turned to face him. His fleshy face went pale, nearly as ashen as the bleached sky covering the mountains, and his legs buckled, unable to hold him up as he attempted to flee.
“Zach, can you call Martha? She’ll be able to help. If she can’t get up here—God, it’s going to have to be a doctor, but I can’t guarantee he won’t shift again. He’s not going to make it if we don’t get him help.” Gibson choked out the words he didn’t want to say, but the truth of his brother’s condition couldn’t be ignored. The scrabble of limbs against loose rocks jerked Gibson’s attention back to the man who’d tried to take his brother from him. It was all Gibson could do not to close his hands around Brown’s throat and strangle him until his eyes turned red and his tongue blackened to a deep purple. “Do you understand what you’ve done, Pat? Do you know who it is that you shot?
“That is my brother. That is Ellis.” He didn’t care that he was naked. He didn’t feel the cold in the air or the chill rising from the ground. None of that could match the glacial fear moving through his body, advancing with each drop of blood leaving Ellis’s lupine form. “You came up here to hunt monsters you think killed your father. Instead, you killed a man—or you tried to murder a man—who gave everything to defend his country, including his sanity. There was a reason your father left our campsite upset and angry. Because he was one of us, one of our bloodline, but changing into what you see before you never came to him. And God knows, he tried.”
“You’re wrong,” the man gasped, shaking his head. The arrogant confidence fled his expression, replace by an uncertainty Gibson couldn’t imagine feeling. “I’m not like you. I’m not like whatever hell-thing you are. And neither was my father. He was a man. A good man. We are nothing like you. My family is nothing like you.”
“Maybe not now, but maybe soon, perhaps even your children or your grandchildren will one day, after they learn how to walk, learn how to wear the wolf like we do.” Gibson strode closer, kicking the sheriff’s gun out of his reach. “I don’t know what killed your father. What I do know is that his death haunted mine. We were hundreds of miles away when it happened, and by the time my father and uncles returned, there was nothing left for them to do. What happened was tragic, but that doesn’t give you the right to take one of mine in return. Not when we are innocent of your father’s murder.”
He couldn’t bear to look at Ellis, not when he heard the echoes of his brother’s bones beginning to crack. He didn’t need to turn around to see Ellis shifting. Gibson heard the horror in Brown’s expletive-laden shock, then the unevenness of Ellis’s breathing change.
“Gibson, I need you,” Zach said above the sheriff’s panicked whimpering. “Ellis needs you. We have to get him to the hospital. It’s the only way he’s going to make it, and I can’t carry him by myself. I’m not strong enough.”
The shock of seeing Ellis human after such a long time broke apart the rage holding Gibson hostage. The ground was thick with their shed fur and the snow dappled with their footprints, both human and wolf. His brother was bigger than he remembered, sculpted hard and lean from endless days spent running and hunting on the mountain. There were scars on his skin, deeply embedded healed-over wounds from fighting a war he brought home with him. The glimpses he’d gotten of Ellis in the partial shifts in the past few months didn’t prepare him for the changes in his brother’s face. Ellis looked worn, tired, and now so close to death, nearly eager to slip into the darkness promising him relief from what hunted him.
“I’m not going to let you go, brother,” Gibson promised, crouching to lift Ellis off the ground. Zach pulled his jacket off, then tucked it around Ellis’s shivering body. Stealing a quick kiss from Zach’s cold mouth, he whispered, “I’m not going to let you go either.”
“I’ll go down ahead and get you some clothes,” Zach whispered, stealing a glance at the sprawled man on the edge of the clearing. “Don’t kill him. Even if you want to, don’t. Let’s get Ellis to safety first. Then we can deal with everything afterwards.”
“Agreed.” Stepping over the sheriff’s legs, Gibson held his brother tight to his chest, shooting Brown a look as he went by. “If you’re smart, you’ll be gone off our mountain before we’re on the road. I can’t promise that if I see you again, I won’t rip your throat out. We have never, ever been an eye for an eye, but I can tell you after what you’ve done today, I’m more than willing to change my mind.”
Seven
“HE’S GOING to be okay,” Zach said for what he felt like was the fiftieth time, but as they did the first forty-nine times, his words sat flat and wooden, stuck to the roof of his mouth and stagnant with worry. He’d worn a path into the rugs scattered over the living room floor, frozen stiff only when Ellis’s cries broke the weighted, tense silence growing with every minute. “Martha seemed like she knew what she was doing. I was kind of confused when you told me to call her on the way down.”