My heart skipped a beat even as his scent made my brain overload for the hot second it took me to process it.Chocolate and strawberries dipped in salted caramel.I crossed the distance that remained and stopped right next to his unmoving form lying on the ground.
I looked around.There was a two-foot drop it seemed he had missed—not too bad, but bad when you were human and didn’t see it coming in the dark.There was a lot of blood, and going by the slick rock right next to his head, I could guess why.
I shifted back to my human form, his scent in my nose and panic bright in my belly.
“Hey,” I said as I bent to check him over for broken bones and cuts.
I got a pulse, and he was breathing, although he was very cold.Relief made my entire body tingle.Idiot didn’t look like a hiker, didn’t even have proper shoes for it.And he had a shoulder bag rather than a backpack.You didn’t go hiking with a damn shoulder bag.
“Hey, wake up.”I gave him a careful shake.
When I got a hoarse groan back and just the barest flash of blue eyes beneath fluttering lids, I let myself relax long enough to realize what was going on here.
Yes, there was a hiker with an injury who needed medical care, but that wasn’t it.
This man, his black hair matted with blood and dew, his scent strange yet somehow familiar, he wasn’t just a random guy crossing my path.He was my mate.
Mymate.
And he’d damn near smashed his skull open.I wanted to howl and growl and break things.I wanted to lick him and hug him and rub my scent all over him.I wanted to give him my mating bite, and?—
No.None of that.I needed to take care of him.Everything else would have to wait.
In the distance, I heard Ellis and Dom howling for me.That was good.My mate needed Ellis right now, not me.I didn’t want to leave him here on the ground, but I was too afraid to move him and do some irreparable damage, and Ellis was the one with the medical degree.
“It’ll be fine.You’re going to be okay,” I said before shifting back so I could call them here.This wasn’t what any of us had ever expected.Possibly least of all my very human mate, still bleeding on the forest floor.
3
Something really was in the air today.First Linc and his pacing.The guy was a cucumber; he didn’t do anxiety, short temper, or any of the regular shit alphas liked to excuse with a shrug and the smug proclamation that, hey, it was just an alpha thing.
Linc had gotten me all the way to distracted, or maybe I’d been distracted even before I’d ripped out those old boards.Bless Linc for insisting we buy a nice fixer-upper out in the middle of nowhere, but it was a lot of work, and with me being the only one who knew how to handle any kind of tool without posing a threat to myself or the people around me, I did most of it.I didn’t mind.This way I got to make things the way I liked them without Ell or Linc getting so much as a halfhearted veto in the matter.
I still hadn’t gotten the damn deck done when Ell got home from the clinic, and that really wasn’t Linc’s fault, even if he had been off all afternoon and all kinds of distracting.
Ell walked in about two minutes after I heard his car approach over the gravel drive.I focused on the board I was hammering and listened to his footfalls.They were a little heavier than normal, so he’d gone grocery shopping.
“Linc’s out?”Ell asked from the kitchen, raising his voice ever so slightly to be heard through the closed patio door and over my hammering.
“Went for a run,” I said before I brought the hammer down on the final nail.“Felt sorta out of it.”
Ell pushed the door open, and his scent, overshadowed by disinfectant and the powdery smell of children, washed over me.
I looked up at him, and damn.Sometimes you just had to stop and wonder how those broad shoulders fit into his white doctor coat.
“Wouldn’t mind a run myself.”Ell looked at the deck.“I don’t think we’re in danger of the boards giving out from under us anymore.”He pointedly let his eyes come to rest on the part I hadn’t gotten to yet.
“Don’t say anything.It’s been a slow kinda day.I’ll finish this up tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t going to criticize you.I’m going for a run.Do you want to join?”
I sighed and sat back on my heels.“Yup.”
Ten minutes later, Ell’s gray fur flashed through the foliage on my right as we both dashed forward, paws digging into the soft forest floor.I jumped on a boulder and broke into a howl to let Linc know we were joining him even as Ell dashed past.He stopped ahead of me, braiding his howl with my own.
Linc’s answering howl came from a lot farther off than expected.Definitely the borders of our territory, possibly even somewhere in the true wolves’ hunting grounds.
Ell wouldn’t like that.He was big on conservation, and the things he said to me when I forgot to sort the trash would make his small patients look terrified.
