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.
Chapter Ten
Two weeks later
Angel Falls, Idaho
Cara
“Again?” I asked. “But it hasn’t been Christmas for two weeks, and I already celebrated my birthday in October.” By myself. With a double shift. While panicking about midterms.
Nyria scowled at me. “He’s going to leave Christmas trees on my doorstep every morning until you forgive him and the damn pine needles are getting everywhere.”
“They’re getting bigger each time, too.” Clutching my mug of coffee, I shuffled over to the open front door. Sure enough, there was a gorgeous pine tree sitting on Nyria’s front steps, and yes, it was bigger than the one that had been there yesterday. As always, a small, sloppily wrapped gift nearly equal parts shiny paper and tape was tied to the top of the tree with a gray ribbon. “Isn’t his foot still injured? He shouldn’t be dragging trees around.”
“So as much as I support you walking away when he was healed enough to take care of himself because he has some issues communicating boundaries and you shouldn’t let him get away with that at all, this is kind of disgustingly sweet.” Nyria had been an unbelievable ally since I’d told Wyatt I was glad he was on the way to full recovery, but that I needed time alone to process just what being mated to him would, and should, mean given my own needs.
The look on his face had nearly destroyed me as I walked out of his bedroom where I’d nursed him through the worst of it, and as much as I put a good face during the day, it was the nights that were the worst. If he had ever poured his own loneliness through our connection, I probably would have cracked, but he didn’t. He’d told me as I walked out, sobbing, that he would do what it took to earn my trust back. And so far, he’d stuck to his word.
Thankfully, Nyria had opened the door to her spare bedroom to me, and didn’t complain about the dozen boxes full of stuff piled up wherever there was room. I suspected other shifters had given her a lot of grief for it. When I asked her, though, all she said was that as long as her Alpha didn’t give her a direct order to cease harboring me, everyone else could go fuck themselves.
The fact that Wyatt didn’t take that easy route either meant a lot to me.
“How do I know he’ll respect my boundaries now?” I stared at the gift and wondered what was in it. Every day it was something new. Sometimes something horrifyingly extravagant, like a gorgeous wolf-shaped Christmas ornament made with some serious rocks, or sometimes something so ridiculous it made me laugh. Yesterday it was a rubber duck. Nyria and I had given it an honorary seat at the dining room table and named it Squishy.
“Look. He ain’t perfect. He won’t ever be perfect. But shifter packs tend to be obnoxiously patriarchal at times. Throw in that he’s biologically programmed to protect his mate and that he’s the freaking alpha of our pack and I truly, truly think he’s trying.”
“So I should walk over and fall in his arms?”
Nyria shook her head. “Well, I mean, if you want to. I saw the way the two of you looked at each other when you thought no one else was paying attention. The mating heat’s there. But why don’t you figure out a compromise that allows you to get what you want while not losing sight of what’s important to you?”
I stared at the gift box. It was small. Very small. “I’m not sure where my boundaries are anymore. You don’t have a mate, do you?”
Nyria scoffed. “Hell, no. I wouldn’t mind meeting one in a few decades, but I love my life right now. I love that I get to meet so many men who underestimate me constantly, and I love proving them wrong.”
“Wyatt treats you fairly, right?”
“He’s a bit more obsessed with keeping me out of harm’s way than he is with the males, but after seeing that burn on his side… guess I can’t complain too loudly.” Nyria shuddered. “Fucking hate fire. Always have. None of that romantic fireplace bullshit for me. As long as I don’t get some super controlling asshole of a shifter, I’m good.”
“And if you do?”
“I will run him into the ground,” she said loftily. “Are you going to open the box or what?”
I flipped it over and slid my finger under the taped edges. The wrapping was always a bit of a mess. Was it because he was a better cook than a gift wrapper? Or was his hand still burned? For the millionth time, the memory of him wrapped in bandages, eyes shadowed, lying on the bed with his arm stretched out to me as I backed away went through my mind. For the millionth time, I fought back tears.
This time I succeeded. Didn’t always.
There was a small envelope inside with a card. I opened the envelope first. Two keys. “Oh, boy…” Nyria said, delighted. “I think I know what that is.”
“What is it?”
“Not telling in case I’m wrong. Read the card.”
I did. Then read it again. “What the hell?”
Nyria was practically bouncing up and down. “What is it? Tell me!”
“It’s… a house. The keys to a house in the area.”