A scream welled up into my throat. I fought with my own injuries and quivering muscles to get the window back down.
They couldn’t get to me, not with the window in place. There was easier prey in the forest.
The window shifted an inch down and halted, shifted and halted, and I watched its slow progress as if I were really a wolf myself. Then, through their eyes, a shadow moved behind me. Slinking out the bedroom door.
I whirled, putting the wolves at my back behind the not-quite-closed window, which was a mistake, but someone had been in herewith me. Someone bald. Not Archer. Not Grady. Now, all I saw was the back of my own head.
A ferocious growl came behind me outside, followed closely by a squeal and a snap. I spun, and through one of the wolf's eyes, I stared at a dying wolf, its broken neck listing its head to one side. The other wolf I’d caught with my arrow lay in the periphery, dead.
My stomach nearly revolted, and I backed away, not wanting to see death that up close and personal, not while it happened. Not wanting to see any of this, period.
A gunshot cracked through the air outside. Was that Archer? What had taken him so long? Or was it the bald manwho’d been in here with me?
Trembling, I inhaled deeply, trying to catch his scent even though he’d gone—tangy and rich like too-sweet honey.
"Aika!" Grady crashed through the front door, his walking stick thudding hard on the wooden floor.
I made a desperate sound at the back of my throat and stumbled out into the hallway, using the end of my bow to guide me when I turned the corner. The wolves’ vision vanished from my eyes with my next blink, and I’d never been so happy to be blind again as right then.
"Who was that man?" Grady shouted.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak as a surge of bile splashed onto my tongue. The man had been in the roomwith me, and I'd been too focused on the wolves outside my window to even notice.
"Sasha!" Grady passed by me, his unbalanced footsteps echoing loudly down the hallway.
“That gunshot?” I croaked out.
“It was him getting away, but he didn’t shoot me. I was too fast.”
Grady with his limp was too fast for a bullet?
Struggling to make sense of yet one more thing, I followed after him and sucked in a breath, just as sharp as my realization.
The package.
I dove back into my room and toward the bed on the other side. "No. No.No."
The front door crashed open again, and a muttered breath drifted down the hallway, pained and hollow-sounding.
“Sasha’s fine, if not pissed off,” Grady announced from the hall. "Shit.Archer."
I threw the pillow aside, felt my hands over the top of the thin mattress, underneath it, under the bed, my body groaning, my mind spinning out of control with panic.
"Aika, get in here!” Grady shouted. “Archer is bleeding out!"
The package was gone.
Chapter 7
"Put pressure on it while I get the medkit," Grady demanded and rushed out of the living room, his walking stick banging loudly against the floor.
I stood over Archer's prone form, the smell of his blood thickening the air, and bent to feel for the wound. My fingertips touched his bare chest, the heat on his skin shocking.
“What happened?” I traced along his skin, searching.
His breaths were shallow and quick, and he answered me with a pained, "Bitten."
He took my hand and guided it to the half-circle on his side that seeped with blood without a word, but I could feel him studying me hard. He knew. He had to know I was blind if I couldn’t even find a bite wound that felt ugly and vicious underneath my hands.
