“It was an accident…” she murmurs, blushing from embarrassment.
“Did the Blood Claw pack members do this to you?”
She nods briskly, then sighs, and I remove my hand, not wanting to come on too strongly.
“I was doing the laundry outside the pack center in Seward. They were renovating. Tools were lying around. Some of them came by and were”—she recounts the nightmare, her eyes full of the memory as she pauses to gulp—“they were being nasty, and then started pushing me around. I fell on a chainsaw.”
As she lifts her hand absentmindedly, anger brews inside my chest, escaping as a chorus of curse words under my breath.
She giggles nervously. “At least it wasn't turned on.”
“I'm sorry,” I say as I lift my hand and cradle her cheek this time.
“It's not your fault,” she murmurs, pointedly avoiding my eyes.
“It is my fault, Willow. I wasn't there to protect you. I sent you to the lion's den when I rejected you. Ultimately, it was my fault. You didn't deserve any of it.”
Willow finally meets my eyes, her soft blue orbs glossed over with tears, twinkling as she feebly smiles. “Werewolves are more dangerous than lions,” she giggles nervously, prompting me to laugh through my anger.
“You really are something else, you know?” I say in awe, my voice dropping a bit lower as I stare into her eyes.
“Thane….” She says my name in that same tone she used on the night my house burned down and I chased her into the woods.
“Willow…” I whisper, and feel the shift a second before we both begin to lean in. For a fleeting moment, all the inhibitions in her eyes are gone, and they're clearer than ever, full of the ferocious passion I'd been searching for long before I knew it was Willow I was searching for.
The moment her eyelids flutter closed, I move in, forgetting all about the promise I made to remain friends when her scent, like jasmine, fills the air I breathe. It's intoxicating, addicting, and I no longer care to be the gentleman I've been around her.
Just as I'm about to touch her lips with mine, the air shifts. One second, all I can hear is her breath mingling with mine, soft and uneven; the next, the forest exhales in a way that feels wrong, the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickling with sharp alertness.
I still for a heartbeat, my instincts snapping to attention. My wolf prickles beneath my skin, ready to be unleashed.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper without moving, only my eyes flicking to the sides.
Willow blinks, startled out of the moment. “What?” she breathes, the sound of her voice tapering into the rustling of bushes close by.
Before I can answer, a treacherous hiss slices through the air, and I'm stung in the neck, a sudden fire ripping through the sting. The shock robs me of breath before searing pain replaces it, my fingers flying to the wound, finding the slick shaft of a dart embedded in my flesh.
“Thane!” Willow exclaims, her voice high and trembling.
“Stay b-back,” I rasp, already tasting metal on my tongue. My body is reacting too fast to what I suspect is poison, not just a tranquilizer. My pulse slows down, then surges all over again, my wolf's natural heat rising to fight the venom threading through my veins. My vision fractures at the edges, the trees melting like blurred shadows, and pain blazes through me.
I crawl toward Willow, drawing my knife free from its sheath when my wolf can't come to the fore, impaired by the poison. “Run, Willow.”
“I’m not leaving you!” she yelps, grabbing my shoulders.
“Run!” I roar this time, but it’s too late.
Figures emerge from the dark behind her head—four, maybe five, I can't tell when their shadowy figures morph into dots in my blurred vision.
Wolves.
Not ours.
I can tell by the putrid scent that hits me like a curse.
Blood Claw.
My grip tightens on the wooden handle, but my fingers won’t obey.
