Jesse eased back from the rogue. He watched the remains of the other wolf for a moment, then lowered his head.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I lay on my side in the bloody snow, unable to tear my eyes off the grisly scene in front of me. Jesse remained still, his head down and his sides heaving. Then he lifted pale golden eyes to mine.
His power struck like a hammer, bowing my head before I even realized what was happening. Emotion blasted across our bond.
FURIOUS.
His rage punched into me and stole my breath. I curled into a ball, instinct driving me to escape it. But there was no escape.
Jesse was furious with me, the beats of his anger pounding like a drum between my ribs. It was worse than the silver. Worse than the power he’d displayed when he took the knife from me in his kitchen. In some dim corner of my mind, an angry little voice hissed at me to get up. My humanity rebelled against the idea of groveling at Jesse’s feet. But another, larger part of me sought to make myself as small as possible. Instinct whispered through my veins, urging me to shrink from the force of a more dominant wolf’s wrath. I tucked my chin to my chest and waited, my heartbeat loud in my ears.
Eventually, other noises intruded. Scuffling sounds. Thepopof bone I recognized as Jesse’s shift. More scuffling. A momentlater, strong hands pulled me into a sitting position, and a nude and fully human Jesse crouched before me.
“Are you all right?” he demanded hoarsely. Blood covered his chest. Traces smeared his jaw, but his face was mostly clean, and I realized he must have scrubbed snow over the worst of it. His eyes were the eerie gold of his wolf, and his expression was stark. Tendrils of his anger brushed me, but now there was a stronger, more insistent emotion.
Fear.
He didn’t wait for an answer, just ran shaking hands down my body, turning me this way and that as if checking for injuries.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not hurt.” When he didn’t stop, I grabbed his shoulders, halting his frantic inspection. “Jesse, I’m fine. I promise.”
He closed his eyes, and his lips parted as he released a shaky breath. “One day, when I’m not angry anymore, I’m going to put you over my knee and wear your assout, Caleb.”
Heat coiled low in my stomach, the familiar combination of lust and humiliation like my own personal blend of cigar.Do you promise?The question was so loud in my head that I might as well have spoken it.
On the other hand, why the hell didIdeserve a spanking?
“I saved your life,” I said, shoving away my inappropriate horniness. “The rogue was beating you.”
Jesse opened his eyes—then widened them in obvious surprise. “No, he wasn’t.”
“I saw it.” I slid my hand down his arm and leaned forward, craning to see his flank. “Your side was torn open. You’re covered in blood.”
“Most of it’s not mine. Here.” He grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it down his side. Where the blood cleared, his skin was pink but whole.
“What…?” I shook my head as I tried to make sense of what should have been impossible.
He grasped my jaw in cold fingers and forced my attention back to his face. “You’ve never seen werewolves fight. It’s fast and brutal. It’s definitely not pretty. I took a few hits, and it was a bitch fighting on this ice, but I was never in danger of losing.”
I touched tentative fingers to his ribs. “But that wound was so deep.”
“Shifting is excellent for speeding up healing. I’ll be sore for a day, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” He flashed a rueful smile. “Easier than handling you.”
Embarrassment flashed through me, and I pulled from his grip. “Sorry I got in the way.” I sounded bitchy, and the knots in my gut weren’t the good kind. Yeah,thisbrand of humiliation sucked. I opened my mouth to take it back, but my throat tightened. With rising horror, I realized I was seconds from crying. I scooted backward on my butt, prepared to shoot to my feet and get as far away from him as possible because what the fuck was wrong with me?
“Hey,” he said, seizing my arm before I could bolt. The anger flowing from him vanished as he went to his knees and put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s okay. Everything is okay. You thought I was in danger, and you acted on your instincts.”
I swallowed against a burning throat. “Yeah, well, it’s stupid to cry about it.” I’d taken some brain-scrambling hits as a tight end. My sophomore year, one of the lineman had blown out his knee and snapped his fibula in half. Bone had stuck out from the skin like something out of a Halloween display. Blood and pain weren’t new to me. So why was I whining like a baby?
Jesse’s eyes softened. “You just saw me decapitate a rogue werewolf.” He moved one of his hands to my neck and feathered his thumb over my thundering pulse. “You’re new to this life. I wanted to shield you from its violence for as long as I could.”
I looked toward the rogue. Its head faced us, the eyes open but sightless. The sheen of madness was gone, but so was the spark of life. “Why did you do it?” I asked, turning back to Jesse. “Why…keep biting?”
“I had to.” His expression turned grim. “We are very hard to kill, especially as we age. An ancient werewolf might regenerate with just a single vein or strip of skin connecting their head to their body.”
“Gross.”
He gave a startled-sounding laugh. “Yeah.” A beat passed, and then his expression sobered. “I took his head because I needed to make sure he was really gone. But I also did it because he tried to hurt you. Seeing you go down under his claws…” Jesse’s mouth tightened, and he closed his eyes like he was trying to contain a surge of strong emotion.
