I hung up before he could say anything else.
The wolf lolled its head, eyes narrowing to slits. I swore it was listening.
I took a step closer, hands up like I was negotiating a hostage exchange. “Easy, big guy,” I whispered, voice gone soft around the edges. “We’re getting you patched up, but you gotta meet me halfway.”
The wolf’s ears flicked, rain droplets beading and rolling off. I inched forward, stripped off my ruined blazer, and rolled it into a pad. The animal’s body tensed, but it didn’t snap or shy away as I pressed the cloth to the bleeding wound. Warm, sticky blood seeped instantly through the wool and into my hands.
I took a breath, waited for the lunge, but it never came.
I balled up the ruined jacket, then went to the rear hatch of the Escalade and yanked a tarp from the trunk—a habit left over from Daddy, who believed in always having a way to move something large and inconvenient. I spread the tarp beside the wolf, careful not to block the animal’s sightline, and then tried to figure out how the hell to get two hundred pounds of muscle and teeth onto it without losing a limb.
The answer was patience and a willingness to get very, very dirty. I knelt at the wolf’s back, hands trembling, and slid my arms under its ribcage. The fur was dense, wet, and filthy, butthe animal stayed perfectly still, eyes locked forward, as if it understood the deal.
I heaved. The weight nearly toppled me, and I felt something sharp graze my biceps—a warning, not a bite. I grunted, braced my heels in the mud, and inched the animal onto the tarp, centimeters at a time. The wolf’s breath hitched, then steadied, each exhale a gust of copper and pain.
Once I had it centered, I gathered the corners of the tarp around its body, swaddling it tight, and began the slow, humiliating drag toward the open hatch of the Escalade. My knees turned to jelly before I’d moved three feet, and by the time I reached the bumper, I was shaking so hard I thought I’d puke. The animal, for its part, didn’t resist—just watched me with those feral, savage eyes, as if waiting to see what I’d do next.
The process of getting the wolf into the backseat was straight-up wrestling, but I managed it with a combination of bad leverage and pure, stubborn rage. The moment the animal hit the seat, it slumped, head lolling against the armrest. I half-expected it to thrash or tear the leather, but instead it just panted, tongue flicking out to catch rainwater that dripped from my hair.
My hands were painted in blood and mud. My dress, once black and somber, now looked like I’d been working a slaughterhouse. I caught sight of myself in the car window and nearly laughed—the Bourbon Princess, savior of lost causes, now playing ambulance for a half-dead predator.
I slammed the hatch shut and leaned against the side of the car, letting the rain wash some of the filth off. My pulse pounded in my ears, echoing the memory of the gunshots, and I wondered who was out there, waiting for me to slip.
I slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and stole a glance at the backseat. The wolf’s eyes met mine in the rearview—unblinking, glassy, yet so alive it made my skin crawl. It didn’t look afraid. If anything, it looked amused.
I punched the gas, tires spitting mud and blood as I peeled out, headlights slicing through the fog. The only sound was the ragged breath of the animal and the steady thump of my own heart.
We drove in silence, two survivors in a world that had no interest in letting either of us off easy.
As the miles unspooled beneath us, I realized I was talking to the wolf, my voice low and steady, more for me than for it. I told it about my father, about Marcus Ellery, about the sharks circling the distillery. I confessed the things I couldn’t say in daylight—the fear, the loneliness, the hunger for revenge. The wolf listened, eyes never leaving mine, and I got the sense that it understood every word.
When we hit the gravel drive up to Stillwater Mansion, the wolf’s head lifted, nostrils flaring. I wondered if it could smell the ghosts in the walls, the old money in the floorboards, the weight of a thousand secrets hanging in the air. Maybe it could. Maybe that was why it’d found me in the first place.
I parked in the roundabout and killed the engine. For a second, I sat with my hands in my lap, gathering whatever strength was left. Then I opened the rear door.
The wolf hadn’t moved. Blood crusted its side, gluing fur to skin, but the rise and fall of its chest was steadier now. I reached out—slow, deliberate—and laid my hand on its head. The fur was coarse, but warm. The animal closed its eyes and, for the first time, didn’t flinch.
I stroked its head once, then twice, feeling the life in it, the raw, wild defiance. I envied it.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s go inside. Time to show you what bourbon hospitality really means.”
The wolf’s lips curled, just a hint, as if it recognized the joke. Then it let me haul it out, limp but alive, into the waiting night.
The foyer was marble, cold under my knees, every step a smudge of blood and rainwater and wolf hair. Family portraits watched from the walls—judges, generals, debutantes with pearls—each one rendered in the palette of old money and steely pride. I muttered an apology to the ancestors as I heaved the wolf over the entryway, sure I was breaking a dozen traditions at once.
The animal was heavy, almost dead weight now, but when I eased the tarp down on the living room rug, he let out a low rumble. Not a warning. More like a sigh. I left him there, motionless in front of the cold fireplace, and went to hunt down supplies.
The house, for all its grandeur, was a tomb. Since Daddy died, even the lightbulbs seemed to dim out of respect. The kitchen was exactly as I’d left it the day before, a half-drunk mug of coffee and a row of prescription bottles on the counter. I ignored them all, grabbing the first aid kit from the pantry and a bottle of Stillwater 12-year from the liquor cabinet. One for the wolf, one for me.
Back in the living room, the wolf hadn’t moved. His breathing was shallow, his tongue black and lolling, but his eyes never left me as I knelt beside him and tore open the kit. The scissors were tiny, meant for slicing gauze, not fur, but I used them anyway, sawing through the bloody pelt to expose the wound. The bullet had passed clean through, exit wound ragged but not catastrophic. I doused the gash in hydrogen peroxide, bracing for a snap, but the wolf only growled—soft, resigned.
“Yeah,” I said, “I know it stings. Sorry, buddy.”
I worked in silence, patching what I could, stuffing gauze in the deepest part of the hole, and wrapping it tight with an ace bandage. The process was messy and amateurish, but when Iwas done, the bleeding had slowed. I wiped my hands on a towel and looked the animal over, amazed it hadn’t bled out by now.
“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. “You get the couch. I’ll take the floor.”
I made up a bed of old quilts by the hearth, rolled the wolf onto them as gently as I could. He let me, his body limp except for the occasional twitch of muscle. When he was settled, I poured myself two fingers of bourbon, tossed half back in a single gulp, and poured a capful for the wolf. He eyed it, then me, then lapped it up, tongue flicking out with surprising delicacy.
