I nodded and pointed, too scared to move.
He found it, dialed with hands slick with red. I heard him mutter into the receiver, voice clipped and efficient. “It’s Shivs.Cleanup. Three minutes. You got that? Bring Dementor from the Atlanta Chapter. He’s got a bunk in the club.” A pause. “No, don’t patch it in. Just come.” He gave them the address.
He hung up and let the phone clatter to the floor. He looked at me, eyes softer now, almost embarrassed by his own nakedness. He wrapped the pillow around his waist, winced as he did.
“Sorry about your house,” he said.
I almost laughed. I almost cried.
He came and sat on the other end of the ruined rug, careful to keep the blood off the remaining furniture. “I’ll keep you safe, Ms. Stillwater. That’s a promise.”
We sat together, surrounded by the dead and the dying and the stink of spent adrenaline. For the first time in years, I felt a weight begin to lift—like I might survive the night, after all.
Outside, the sirens grew louder, then faded, like the world was spinning on without us.
I looked at the man—my wolf, my monster, my guardian—and let myself wonder, just for a second, what kind of animal I was turning into.
Then I realized the house smelled like copper and cordite and wolf sweat. The silence was a living thing, thick as wet plaster. I sat where I was, clutching a fireplace poker with both hands, until the tremors in my forearms made the metal hum like a tuning fork. I’d have stayed that way until dawn if the naked man hadn’t started moving.
“I know how it looks,” he said.
“You mean fucked up?”
That got a hint of a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I need to find out who the fuck these guys are.”
He was efficient. No drama, no show. He went from body to body, stripping gloves, yanking up sleeves, checking for tattoos, scars, anything that told a story. He found a wallet on one, thumbed through it, and tossed it into the empty space where acoffee table used to be. Another corpse gave up a dog tag; he read it, grunted, and slipped it into a Ziploc he found in the cargo pant pocket of a guy from the first wave of invaders.
“You know who would send professionals after you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “What the fuck are you?”
“We’ll get to that.”
“Good.”
He knelt over the worst of the dead, the one with a neck like a ring of red ice, and pressed his thumb to the man’s eye, holding it open to check pupil response. Even in death, he worked by some code. After each inspection, he rolled the body off to one side, as if clearing a lane on a busy highway.
I watched all of this, unblinking. The world had shrunk to a narrow, vivid tunnel: the sweep of his blood-slick muscles, the swirl of black ink across his shoulder blades, the way his skin knotted over old bullet wounds and knife cuts. Every time he turned my direction, I flinched, expecting fangs or claws, but he never looked at me. Not directly.
When he finished, he wiped his hands on a curtain and dialed the phone again. His voice was quieter this time, almost a murmur, but the words sliced through the hush.
“Canon, it’s Shivs. Job’s done. No survivors.”
Pause.
“Yeah. Triple confirm.”
Another pause. He met my eyes, just once, and in that split-second I understood: this was not his first living-room massacre. He’d done this before, would do it again, because it was his nature. I wondered if he hated it, or if hating it made it easier to keep going.
“I’ll make sure she’s somewhere safe,” he said into the phone. “Carrie Stillwater.” He smiled at whoever was on the other end.
He hung up, then kicked a stray shell casing across the floor. “Help’s coming. You want a drink?”
“Several.” The absurdity of the question nearly made me smile. “There’s bourbon in the kitchen. Unless you prefer—” I gestured at his wounds, “—something stronger.”
He shook his head, grabbed a rocks glass, and poured himself three fingers, neat. He raised it in a half-salute, then drank, eyes never leaving mine. “You did good. Not a lot of people could’ve sat through that.”
“I didn’t have a choice.” I eyed him hard and steady. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
