"Are you hurt?" Afon asks me, holding me out at arm's length, his swollen eyes scanning me head to foot. "Did anyone touch you? Did you get hit?"
"I'm fine. I'm fine." I grab his face in both my hands, careful of the bruise. "Look at you. Look at what they did to you."
"It's nothing."
"It is notnothing, Afon!"
He almost laughs. Then he winces because laughing hurts. "It's nothing I haven't had before."
A truck pulls up the drive then, and Cass spills out of it before it's even stopped. She runs across the mud and snow, toward where Matvei is climbing down out of another vehicle behind her, beaten but walking, and the two of them crash together in the middle of all that wreckage.
She's crying. He's holding her like he'll never let go.
Afon watches them, his hard eyes glistening.
"He's okay," I remind him. "You did it. You got him out."
"I did," Afon agrees. "That was the whole point."
Matvei looks over Cass's shoulder and finds his uncle. Then Matvei untangles himself and limps over, and he and Afon stand there looking at each other, two stubborn men who don't know how to say the thing.
"You're a goddamn idiot," Matvei finally declares.
"Runs in the family."
Matvei grabs him then in a bear hug and Afon grabs him back. They hold on. I look away, because some things aren't mine to watch.
We don't go back to Lukas's house that night. We go to a hospital, where Lukas has people who don't ask questions. Afon has two cracked ribs, a hairline fracture in his cheekbone, a kidney that's bruised but not bleeding, and the graze on his hipthat's reopened for the third or maybe thirtieth time. They tape him, stitch him, and order him to rest, which is a command he's never once obeyed.
I don't leave his side. They try to make me sit in a waiting room, so I snap at them that I'm his wife. It isn't true yet, but it's about to be, and nobody argues with a crazy woman in a bloody wedding dress.
In the morning, the first thing Afon asks about is Wolf. "He's good," I tell him. "I called. He ate a whole bowl of food and tried to chew off his bandage. The vet says he's a menace. Takes after his dad, I guess."
Afon closes his eyes. A long breath leaves him. "Good," he says. "Good dog."
"The best dog," I agree.
Three days later, we go back to Lukas's house.
Wolf is waiting for us in the front hall, shoulder shaved and bandaged, walking with a limp that matches Afon's, and when he sees Afon, he loses his entire mind. He can't run yet, but he tries anyway, his back end skidding on the marble, his whole body wagging. Afon gets down on the floor with him, ignoring all my protests that he's going to re-injure himself. Wolf climbs into his lap, licks his face, and makes a sound I've never heard a dog make, a high, broken whine of pure relief.
"I know," Afon murmurs into his fur. "I know, boy. I know. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
I have to leave the room. I'm crying again. I cry a lot these days.
The Bratva Wives, as I've come to think of them, descend on me that afternoon.
Cass and Rae and Jillian, plus Matvei trailing behind Cass like a man who's decided he's never going to be more than four feet from his wife ever again. They look so much better than the last time I saw them, when we were all in half-armor in a war room.
Now, they're just people again. Tired people. People who got everyone home.
"Wolf's a hero," Jillian announces, settling onto the couch beside me. "I've decided. He's getting a medal."
"He's getting a steak," Rae says. "Lukas already ordered it. A real one. Japanese A1 Wagyu, bone-in."
"He took a bullet for Afon," I say. "He earned a hundred steaks."
"They're idiots, both of them," Cass says with all the fondness in the world. "The manandthe dog. Stupid, brave idiots."
