Lisa hasn't stopped touching me, not that I’m complaining.
She's got one arm around my waist and the other pressed flat against my chest as she steers me through the motel room door, every few seconds, her hand sliding across to a different spot, checking and pressing, searching for wounds that aren't there.
With curious eyes, she helped me strip off the blood-soaked shirt in the parking lot, her gaze constantly tracking across my bare torso, landing on smooth skin and small raised bumps where ragged holes should be. For now, the bullets can stay where they are. I'll get my sister-in-law, the doctor, to dig them out when we're home.
"Sit down." She guides me to the edge of the bed, and I drop onto it, more tired than hurt at this point.
The healing burns through energy faster than the injuries themselves, and now my bear is running on fumes. If I shifted, I could heal faster, but with Amber close by and plenty of witnesses, that would have been even more of a disaster.
"Stop fussing. Let me see your head." I can still hear the sickening crack of her skull hitting the pavement. She doesn't have enhanced healing like I do. That had to have hurt like hell.
Reaching for her, trying to pull her into my lap so I can get a look at the back of her head, she waves my hands away.
My bear rumbles, worried she might be really hurt. "You could have a concussion. Is it bleeding? Maybe you need an X-ray."
Pulling away from me, she stands, hands on hips, and faces me. "You got shot three times, Beau. I'll fuss if I want to."
"But…"
She presses a finger to my lips. "I'm fine. A bit of a lump, and it's tender, but nothing that an icepack and some painkillers won't fix."
Her hands are on my shoulders now, running down my arms and turning my wrists, confirming again and again, that the damage is gone, even though her face says she can't accept what that means. She must have questions, lots of them, but that's for later when we have some privacy. Amber is traumatised enough. Let's not add the existence of shifters to her plate.
Catching Lisa's wrists, I pull her forward to stand between my knees and press my forehead against her stomach.
My mate.
I suspected it before, but right now, needing her presence to ground me and her touch to ease my pain, I know for certain.
Her fingers slide into my hair, and for a few seconds, neither of us speaks. My arms wrap around her waist, and I breathe her in.
Lisa's alive. Amber is alive. We did it.
I press my mouth against her stomach through her shirt, and she lets out a long, ragged breath.
"Don't ever do that again."
"Get shot?" I ask. “Wasn’t that much fun. I’ll avoid it in future if I can.”
She doesn’t laugh. Her hands cup my face, and she forces me to look at her when she speaks again, softly. "Get shot for me."
I shake my head.
"Can't promise that, Red. How about you don’t get shot at, and that’ll fix the problem."
She pulls back and studies my face for a long moment, chewing the inside of her cheek as she goes to the bathroom, strips off her top and replaces it with a clean one, before scrubbing her hands.
I guess we can argue about all that another time.
"Your brother. Was he messing with you back there? The cub thing." She stands in the doorway of the bathroom, stiff as a board. “Some private joke I’m not in on? Cos it’s not funny.”
Despite knowing she’d want an explanation, I have no idea what to say.
"No, he wasn’t joking."
She runs a hand over her perfectly flat stomach before moving to my bag and tugging out a fresh shirt and pants for me. "But why does he think that? Because I’m not."
She is.
