“You’re bleeding.”
“I know, baby. It’s not bad. Look at me, I’m talking, I’m sitting up, I’m right here. Your dad’s gone to find the bad person, and we are going to be just fine, the both of us.”
He lifts his face. It’s wrecked, his small chest heaving, his fists knotted in my shirt and refusing to let go.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise him, and I rock him against me, my functioning hand stroking his hair while my own pulse roars so loudly I can barely hear myself. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
My shoulder is burning, but I’ve lived through worse pain. I breathe through it, all my focus on the child in my arms.
Linda crawls over to us, her hands shaking, her voice somehow steady. “I should call a healer.”
“No. The bullet went clean through; we can handle it ourselves.” I keep my arm tight around Ethan and reel off instructions because giving them is the only thing keeping me from coming apart. “My kit’s in the upstairs bathroom, the blue case. Bring that, then towels, then a pair of pants from Grayson’s closet. Leave them by the back door. He’s going to come through it half shifted.”
She stares at me for one second. Then she’s up and moving, gone toward the stairs.
Ethan burrows deeper. I keep talking him down, low and constant, while fear pushes up behind my teeth. When Linda returns with the kit, I walk her through it one step at a time, my uninjured hand never leaving Ethan’s back. I talk her through the gauze, the pressure, the saline that flushes the entry wound. The exit’s messier than the entry but cleaner than I feared.
“Press harder. Now lay the gauze down. Wrap it tighter, Linda. It has to be tight, that’s it. Tape it down.”
“Miranda, you’re bleeding through it already.”
“That’s normal. The pressure will hold.”
The back door opens. I don’t lift my head because Ethan’s finally gone quiet against my chest, but I hear Grayson’s bare feet on the floorboards, then the rasp of a zipper, denim dragged up over damp skin. He’s at my side before I look up, shirtless, jeans low on his hips, his chest heaving and his hair wild. The gold hasn’t drained back out of his eyes yet. His hand cups the back of my head and Ethan’s both at once, gathering the three of us into one knot.
“Nothing,” he rasps. “Lost him at the second ridge. Scent’s all jumbled up again, same as last time we tried to track him.”
“Scent neutralizer.”
“Yes.”
His fingers find the edge of my bandage, his thumb tracing just outside it, his jaw locked tight. “How bad?”
“It’s fine. I moved just in time, or he would have gotten my heart.”
He stands and pulls his phone from his back pocket. I watch him scroll, tap, lift it to his ear.
“Derek.” His voice has gone colder than I’ve ever heard it. “I need you at the house. Now.”
Whatever Derek answers, it doesn’t slow him down. “No. Someone took a shot at her.”
I shift Ethan in my lap and look up at him once he ends the call. “Grayson?”
He crouches back down in front of me, brushing the hair off my face. The wolf is still right at the surface of him, and his voice is low. “Derek and Linda will stay here with you. I’m going to go have a word with Vanessa.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Grayson
The coffee shop closed two hours ago. The parking lot’s empty except for my car and the wet shine of the streetlight off the asphalt. I picked the spot because it’s neutral ground, public enough that Vanessa won’t feel cornered, deserted enough that no one will see what I do.
I’ve been out here fifteen minutes, leaning against the driver’s door with my arms crossed. My hands keep closing into fists I have to remind myself to open. The night air does nothing for the heat sitting behind my eyes.
Headlights swing into the lot. Her Mercedes coupe pulls in three spaces over, the engine cutting off, the door opening on the soft thunk of expensive engineering. She steps out in a long camel coat and heels that shouldn’t be possible to walk in on asphalt, her pale hair pulled back into a low knot at her nape. Wherever she came from had chandeliers, and the polish of it still clings to her.
Vanessa crosses the lot to me, boot heels clicking against the pavement.
“Why did you call me out here?” Her voice is light, almost amused. “I was at dinner.”
