Percy was bleeding.
“I’m sorry, Percy.”
My hands pressed against Percy’s shoulder, slick with blood that wouldn’t stop coming, and every time I tried to hold the cloth tighter, the red soaked through and found my fingers again.
“Hey.” Percy’s voice was strained but warm. Even now. Even bleeding on a forest floor with a dart in his shoulder and gold burning through his eyes. “I’m fine. Barely a scratch.”
“You were hurt because you came to save me.”
“That’s my job.” He grinned up at me, and the grin was so absurdly, infuriatingly Percy that I wanted to slap him and hug him at the same time. “Besides, Solomon owes me one now. I plan to collect.”
“Shut up. Shut up and stop talking and let me...”
I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know what I was trying to do. I wasn’t a doctor and I wasn’t even a lycan. I was a woman in a ruined blue dress with blood on her hands and a dead man somewhere behind her in the woods, and the only useful thing I’d managed was to keep pressure on a wound I couldn’t heal.
Lucian appeared beside me as a wolf. His muzzle is still dark with Hudson’s blood. He lowered his head and nudged my arm with his nose, a gesture so gentle from a creature that had just ripped a heart from a man’s chest that my brain couldn’t reconcile the two realities.
He dropped to his front legs. An invitation.
Solomon lifted Percy with one arm, keeping the cloth pressed against the wound, and helped him onto Lucian’s back. I climbed on after, wrapping my arms around Percy from behind, holding him upright against the wolf’s broad frame.
We moved through the woods in silence. Far from the streets and the town. Lucian carried us through the trees using paths no human would find, moving with a speed that blurred the forest into streaks of black and silver. Solomon ran alongside us, his footsteps inhumanly quiet, scanning the darkness for threats that might follow.
The cabin materialized through the trees.
Solomon held the door while Lucian padded inside and lowered himself so Percy could slide off. I helped guide him to the couch, my hands refusing to leave his arm, his shoulder, any part of him I could reach.
“I’ll tend to him first, then clean up the body before morning.” Solomon was already pulling supplies from a cabinet I hadn’t known existed. Bandages, bottles of liquid that smelled of herbs and metal, cloths, a pair of surgical-looking pliers. “The dart needs to come out.”
There was a rustle of movement behind me. I turned and found Lucian in the hallway, human again, buttoning his shirt messily. He must have shifted back while I was focused on Percy. His clothes were wrinkled, half-buttoned, his hair falling across his forehead in a dark mess.
He crossed the room and crouched beside the couch, his eyes scanning Percy’s face.
“How are you feeling?” His voice was low. But I caught the tension beneath it.
“Like I got shot.” Percy’s grin was strained. “So, you know. Tuesday.”
Lucian didn’t smile. His jaw tightened, and he gave a single nod before rising and stepping back to give Solomon room to work. He didn’t leave, though. He stood against the wall, arms crossed, watching.
Our eyes met. He held my gaze for a beat, his expression unreadable, then shifted his attention back to Percy.
Solomon worked with the quiet efficiency of a man who’d patched battlefield wounds for centuries. He gripped the dart with the pliers and pulled. Percy hissed through his teeth, his fingers digging into the couch cushions, gold flashing through his irises. The dart came free with a wet sound that turned my stomach.
“Burns. Whatever’s on it burns,” Percy managed.
Solomon examined the tip. His jaw tightened and he set it aside without comment and began cleaning the wound.
“Is he going to be okay?” The words came out harsh. “What was on that dart? Why did it burn?”
Solomon didn’t answer. His focus stayed on the wound.
“I’m a lycan, Mira.” Percy turned his head toward me. His face was pale but his voice held steady. “We heal. Faster than you’d believe. This will be closed in a bit.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No but it means you have nothing to worry about.”
I looked at the wound. The bleeding had slowed already. In the time it had taken Solomon to remove the dart, the edges of the puncture had begun knitting together, new tissue forming over raw muscle.
