“May I?” His voice was so low I didn’t know if I heard it or just felt it vibrating in my chest.
I nodded. I couldn’t have said no even if I’d wanted to.
He placed his palm over the wound. I expected fireworks, or light, or some movie-bullshit about grace and salvation. There was none of that. There was only the slow, steady pressure of hishand, and the way the blood seemed to flow backwards, rising from the sand and knitting into the torn skin.
He whispered something in a language I didn’t know. The syllables wrapped around my brain, slippery and untranslatable, but I understood them anyway: hunger is not the same as evil, mercy is not the same as weakness, all debts are paid in flesh.
The wound closed. Menace shuddered, once, then again. The coldness in his body drained away, replaced by the animal heat I had always felt burning under his skin. His chest rose. He coughed, spat blood, then sucked in air like he’d never tasted it before.
The bond flared back to life, and I gasped from the feel of it. Other than that, I didn’t move. I just stared.
The white-haired man sat back on his heels, wiped a streak of blood from his wrist, and looked at me with eyes that were the color of winter sunlight on new snow. “This one’s important,” he said. “Try not to lose him again.”
He got up, flicked the blood onto the sand, and left. Just like that. No applause, no explanation. I knew the angels didn’t interact with the Council more than necessary and was shocked he’d taken the time for us. Something profound had just occurred.
Menace’s eyes opened. They found mine. He smiled, small and weak, but real. “Did you miss me?” he croaked.
I was too spent to cry, too empty to laugh, but I held his face between my hands and said, “Never do that to me again.”
He nodded. “Not if I can help it.”
I kissed him. I didn’t care that it was bloody and awful and the whole world was watching. He was alive. We were alive. Sometimes that was the only miracle that mattered.
The Councilwoman banged her gavel, but I didn’t hear the verdict. The only thing I heard was the thrum of the bond between us, alive and electric, the thread rewoven, unbreakable.
After what seemed like forever, Bronc and Juliet helped us to our feet. Menace was stronger than he had a right to be. I guesswhen an angel breathes on you; you bounce back quicker than not.
He had entered the arena Bridger “Menace” Hardin, VP of Iron Valor MC. He was walking out Bridger “Menace” Hardin, King of the Midwestern Wolf Territories. And I remained his one true fated mate.
Chapter 29
Menace
They’d thought to whisk us away from the arena like a pair of war criminals awaiting execution. After what I’d just been through, though, I was not in whisking shape. The guards in Council blue flanked us, rifles slung but unnecessary. My people followed us here, so no one in this castle was going to start a riot, not with the mutt who’d just killed their king, bleeding a river down the front of his own chest. Every corridor stank of ozone and disinfectant the deeper we went. The stone walls and ancient radiators stuttered to keep up with the late fall chill.
Savannah never let go of my arm. Even as we were funneled through the marble halls of the Midwest King’s estate—once Dominic’s, now mine by right of blood—she clung with the tenacity of a bulldog with a bone. I wanted to hold her close, to carry her on my back, but the wound in my side made every breath a warning shot, so we walked together, two ghosts leaving a trail for the living to follow.
At the medical ward, Savannah put her foot down. She braced herself in the threshold, green eyes flicking to the nurse on duty—a severe type with black lipstick and a stethoscope like a noose. She moved too slowly as far as Savannah was concerned. With too much ambivalence. “This. Is. Your. New. King. Thatmakes me your queen. He’ll be tended to. Now get him a bed and get the healer.” The nurse suddenly understood the meaning of respect. Her eyes finally took one look at the mess of me and set to work, barking orders for bandages and saline and to fetch their healer. They stripped my robe and laid me on a clean table.
The healer’s hands on me were professional as she went about healing various injuries from the fight with Dominic. But I felt a slight tremor in her fingers as she finally unwrapped the wound left by Declan. She peeled the crusted bandage from my skin. There should have been a hole, a tunnel bored straight through my ribs. I closed my eyes as I remembered Declan’s blade singing with each inhale. But when she cleaned away the gore and blood, all she found was smooth skin as pink as a newborn’s. No gash. No scar. Nothing but the faintest ring where the angel’s hand had snuffed out death.
The healer paled, the color draining from her face. Something that I’d seen only a few times before—usually after a bombing, when the living realized they were the only ones left breathing. “Impossible,” she muttered. “You were stabbed. I saw—everyone saw—” Her voice dropped to a whisper, equal parts awe and fear. “The angel’s touch. As a healer, I have the ability to knit wounds together, but there is always evidence that the wound was there. This—this looks as though you were never touched by the knife. It’s extraordinary.”
Savannah had watched it all, arms folded tight around her ribs. I caught her gaze, saw the aftershock of it there. She’d loved me, lost me, and gotten me back in less than five minutes. No wolf should have to survive that much loss especially not in one lifetime.
I reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of my hand. “I’m fine,” I said, and for the first time in years, it was true. The healer cleaned the area, more for her own comfort than mine, then shuffled away, muttering prayers to herself.
We were alone in the exam room for a heartbeat.
Savannah blinked hard, then set her jaw. “You died, Bridger.” The words vibrated with the sweet music of her voice , something I would never tire of hearing. “I felt it. Your soul left your body. Mine was fighting to go with it.”
I shrugged, or tried to. The movement pulled at the phantom wound, and I made a face. “Didn’t take.”
She let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You idiot,” she said, but softer than before. “You absolute idiot.”
“I had to be sure you’d remember me if I came backwrong.” I was only half-joking. I saw the shadow flicker behind her eyes, a memory of every man who’d tried to own her and failed. She was mine now, but only because she chose it. The thought was humbling.
She bent low, pressed her lips to my forehead—gentler than a nurse, rougher than a saint. “Go. Clean up. You’re due in the conference room in an hour.”
