by Rose, Callie
I freeze, panic turning me to stone.
The car bearing down on me is nothing but two bright circles of light as its headlights blind me. My mind screams at me to run, to leap off the road, to get out of the way. What if it’s Uncle Clint?
But fear has rendered me incapable of even lifting a finger or turning away so I don’t have to see my death coming.
An ungodly screech emits from beneath the car, and it slings sideways. Not an accidental save this time thanks to a light rear end, as it was for Uncle Clint. A defense maneuver. I have a brief moment to think, Oh, thank God, it’s not a truck, before I realize the car is still coming toward me, skidding sideways as momentum drags it across the pavement.
As if I could somehow stop a moving vehicle, I throw my hands out. The car screeches a moment longer and then halts. My palms slap uselessly against the door, and pain shoots up my injured wrist.
But I’m alive.
My heart is somewhere beneath the car, still fluttering like a terrified bird. I lock gazes with the driver, struck dumb by the fact I almost just died—that I finally made a break for my freedom and nearly lost my life before I could even complete my escape.
The man is… beautiful. Almost inhumanly so. Sharp features, strong jaw, messy black hair, and a five o’clock shadow that’s seen the darker side of midnight.
He looks like some kind of ancient god who rose up out of the darkness and will return there as soon as I blink.
We’re frozen, both of us, gaping at each other for several long seconds as if time has stopped.
I’m not sure who moves first, but in the same instant that he reaches for his seatbelt, I take off toward the other side of the road and the shelter of the woods. My ankle throbs as I crash through the undergrowth and dart around trees.
But I don’t stop.
I run and run, until all hint of civilization is far behind me, until I’m crossing shallow streams instead of roads, until I’m climbing steeply pitched slopes into the foothills. I lose all sense of time and direction. I could be racing headlong into the pits of hell, and I wouldn’t care—I’ll keep going until Clint can’t find me, even if the devil can.
The moon is high, a sliver of light barely breaking through the canopy overhead when I pause and lean against a thick tree trunk to catch my breath. My chest burns as if my lungs are on fire, and my muscles are shaky and weak. I lean over, pressing my hands into my knees, and focus on taking deep breaths. As the adrenaline wears off and the sharp pain of each breath begins to fade, heat rises in my injured ankle. I’ve probably turned the “twist” into a sprain.
Great, I think, straightening and laying my head back against the cool bark. A sprained ankle to match my sprained wrist. I’m stylish as fuck.
I almost laugh again into the darkness, and I have a fleeting worry that I’m losing my mind. I don’t feel like… myself.
My life has been an unending monotony of boredom, fear, and pain for so long that the number of new things that’ve happened tonight leaves me reeling. My mind can’t quite comprehend all of it, and when I try to comprehend the enormity of what I’ve done, something powerful and overwhelming rises up in my chest.
If I let that thing grow too big, I know it will crush me. It will dwarf me, leaving me curled up in a ball on the ground.
So I push thoughts of any future beyond the next few minutes away. That’s all I can handle right now. A minute at a time.
Pressing a hand to the lingering stitch in my side, I scan the dark forest around me.
I’m not sure what my plan is from here, but I don’t want to stay still for too long. I know chances are slim Uncle Clint will find me this deep in the wilderness, but why tempt fate? I can find somewhere to shelter overnight—a cave, or a tree, maybe, so I don’t get eaten by bears.
As I shove away from the tree to get moving, a wave of dizziness crashes over me. I stumble, catching myself against the trunk before I can keel over into the undergrowth. The run took a lot out of me. More than I realized, which is stupid really, considering I’m fresh off a hospital visit.
I lift my head, focusing on the tree as I try to blink away the fog that clouds my vision. There are strange dark lines etched into the bark beneath my palm, and I lift my hand, swaying as I let all my weight settle back on my legs. The trunk is marked with some kind of odd pattern.
Bears, I think, scraping my fingertips down the claw marks. It’s just bears. Not that the idea of bears being nearby gave me any kind of comfort. And what kind of bears make marks that look so stylized?
My feet are infinitely heavy as I turn and stumble away from the marked-up tree. I couldn’t run now if I tried, but I keep my pace as quick as I can. I trip over my own feet several times, barely able to stay upright, but I manage to move several more yards through the trees. Those strange marks are on a bunch of these trunks, but I’m too tired and strung out to wonder what they are anymore.
The farther I walk, the more my vision tunnels and the woozier I feel. When the ground ahead of me dips downward sharply, I’m not prepared for it. My steps falter, and I stumble, falling forward. I flail, arms thrashing out to my sides for anything I can grab to keep me from hitting the ground.
But the trees have grown farther apart, and I have nothing to hold on to.
I tumble down the side of a ravine, a pained grunt forcing its way out of my lungs as my body rolls over the rough rocks and dirt.
When I come to a stop at the bottom of the ravine, darkness overtakes me.
* * *
It’s still dark when my eyes open again.
My mind is only half-alert, and I have no idea how much time has passed since I blacked out. It could have been minutes or maybe hours.
I can’t seem to move my limbs. I’m on my stomach, my cheek pressed into the dry dirt and my arms tangled beneath me. It’s colder here, and my extremities ache from the chill. My blonde hair is draped over my face, partially obscuring my vision.
But I can see enough to know that I’m not alone.
A shadow prowls toward me on four paws, a glistening snout sniffing at the air. Not a bear, as I expected, but a wolf. It takes a few tentative steps toward me, its giant paws silent on the ground.
Fear prickles at the edges of my consciousness. I’m too hurt, too exhausted to move. I can’t even seem to get an open line of communication between my brain and my arms, even with the fight-or-flight response currently pumping through my body.
So I just close my eyes and hope death comes quickly.
* * *
I must have passed out again.
In my next brief moment of consciousness, which is barely more than a flicker of awareness, I feel strong, warm arms slide around my broken body.
Then I’m lifted, and we’re moving, my head resting against a broad chest and a stranger’s heartbeat.
3
Ridge
When I left the cabin and shifted into wolf form to patrol the borders of my pack’s land, I had no idea my trip back home would include carrying a beautiful, unconscious woman against my naked body.
Granted, most men wouldn’t hate this particular situation. The girl is stunning, even with all the cuts and bruises. Golden hair that falls in a thick curtain around her shoulders. Petite, but with perfect curves beneath her tight blue jeans and gray sweatshirt. The kind of heart-shaped face poets dedicate entire stanzas to in the throes of their passion.
But this sure as shit wasn’t how I expected to spend my night. Not to mention, I feel like a fucking perv holding her while my cock dangles freely beneath her ass. Shifting into a wolf is great as long as you don’t need clothes when you shift back.
Still barely conscious, the girl moves restlessly in my arms, wincing as she draws her injured wrist to her chest. The limb is wrapped in a hard brace, which I take to mean it was hurt before she took a tumble down Devil’s Ditch and landed at my pack’s doorstep.
Something that tastes a lot like pity wells up inside me as I glance down at her sleeping fa
ce. She looks like a princess in the moonlight, small and fragile and beat all to hell. She deserves a white knight to carry her off into the sunrise on his noble steed.
Instead, she got the fucking big bad wolf.
What the fuck was she doing all the way out here? Devil’s Ditch isn’t even accessible by road. It’s miles from any civilization that doesn’t belong to my pack. Humans can’t just stumble onto our land like they’re out for a hike in the national park or some shit. We’ve made sure of that.
Jesus, she’s lucky I even found her.
I almost took a different route tonight. The protected boundary stretches atop the cliff, and I came out this way prepared to climb up and check on our sigils to make sure they were still firmly intact. Some vague instinct kept me from climbing to the top of the cliff—wolf’s intuition or some shit—and coaxed me into the ravine instead. If not for that, the girl might have laid out there and died as the temperature dropped overnight, then became vulture food tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately, her presence means my patrol got cut off early. Not a good night for a distraction.
We've heard rumors of dark witch activity scented in the area, which is exactly why I wanted to check out the boundaries to begin with. Typically, where we smell a witch, there’s a witch to be found, and having to lug this injured lamb back to my cabin is gonna keep me from doing my duties as alpha. My pack’s protection comes first and foremost.
It’s supposed to, anyway.
So why the actual fuck am I carrying this chick back to my cabin? Why do I even care that she looks like she’s been torn to pieces and tossed out like trash? She’s not a shifter, and she’s not my responsibility. I should drop her in a soft spot away from anywhere she could be exposed to danger and leave her there. Not my problem.
And yet… I won’t.
For one thing, I’m not that fucking heartless. She’s young and fragile-looking, and I guarantee she wouldn’t know how to survive out here even in broad daylight. I’m not a monster, even on days when I feel like I am.
So I readjust her weight in my arms and press on.
I keep my steps light as I stride into the quiet village my pack has built for itself. Most of us are night owls, but it’s late even for wolves, so the majority of the pack is sleeping. We’re sometime in the darkness before dawn is my best guess. I was on foot for a couple hours before I came across the girl, and I started my patrol pretty late.
Moving quickly and silently, I make my way through the small village. My gaze roams the shadows surrounding my pack members’ homes, searching for any sign of life. Nobody here would be happy that I’ve brought an outsider in. Sure, I could growl and grunt and pull rank, but the path of least resistance seems best in the current moment.
And that path is stealth.
I’ll get her cleaned up, wait for her to wake up and figure out her story, then decide what happens from there. Maybe she just needs a ride somewhere. Maybe she was taking a hike and lost her way. Wouldn’t be the first time some idiot hiker nearly died in the wilderness for biting off more than they could chew.
I shift her weight into one arm so I can open the door to my cabin. My hand is dangerously close to the girl’s nicely rounded ass, and a tingle of warmth shoots through me. I rein in the beast with a stern, for fuck’s sake, man, she’s unconscious and beaten, and shove the door open with my bare foot.
The house still smells like the dinner I cooked earlier, a medley of lamb and rosemary. I add the scent of her body to the mix—the thick, cloying smell of dirt, the tang of a mountain stream, and something a little more feminine underneath it all. Flowery.
This cabin isn’t acquainted with flowery.
I carry her to my bedroom and gently lay her on top of the covers. She’s soaked through, which is the source of the mountain stream smell, I’m sure. I peel off her torn, filthy sweatshirt and discard it on the floor, then reach for the button on her jeans. I’m trying desperately not to notice the perfect mounds of flesh cupped by a delicate pink bra, but it’s hard not to.
Studiously avoiding her tits, I tug on the waistband of her jeans, struggling to get them over her ass. When they finally begin to peel away, they expose a pair of soft cotton panties. They’re not anything special, not fancy lingerie made of lace, but my heart skips a damn beat at the way they hug the curves of her hip bones.
Jesus fucking Christ. Gritting my teeth, I avert my eyes and head for the closet. I need to cover her, and even more than that, I need to cover me.
How did I end up in this situation?
I yank on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, then find an old, worn pair of pajama pants that might not fall off her gorgeous ass. They’ll have to be rolled eighty times to keep from tripping her up, but they’ll do.
I toss the pants over her hips, hiding those infernal panties so that I can take stock of the situation without distraction, and lean over her, running my gaze over her wounds. Whatever she did, she got torn up anywhere she had bare skin—the kinds of small scratches that might come from sharp tree limbs and a full speed chase.
But the scratches aren’t the only thing I notice, and my eyes narrow as my gaze moves over her small form.
The girl’s covered in scars.
They’re everywhere. On her smooth, pale abdomen. Above her round breasts, across her clavicle. Down her arms, her legs, even her fucking feet. Small scars, round scars, cuts so thin they look like they were carved intentionally. Some old, some new, and some nearly as fresh as the wrist brace on her arm. The worst of them appear to be situated on parts of her body easily hidden by clothes.
As if they were put on her intentionally.
Pure rage envelops me, and I grip the t-shirt I’m holding so hard I feel my nails dig into my palms through the fabric. She’s so fucking beautiful. So fragile, breakable, soft… Who would hurt this woman? How could they live with themselves?
I’m surprised by the intensity of my anger. Uncurling my fingers from the t-shirt, I breathe through the fury as I gently tug the shirt over her head.
With the most intimate of her injuries covered, I feel a little more level-headed. I move on to the pants, pulling them up over her hips and keeping my eyes firmly on her sleeping face instead of the panties.
Then I roll her gently beneath the covers, pulling them up over her shoulders. She turns over in her sleep, curling into a fetal position beneath my quilt, her good hand resting beneath her cheek. I tuck the blankets around her, marveling again at how lovely she is. Despite the fact that my cock has a mind of its own and she’s got a body like a goddess, this isn’t the kind of girl you fuck and run. I can smell the innocence on her; smell the goodness in her.
Moving to the door, I extinguish the bedroom light and leave her to her rest.
As far as I’m concerned, no one will hurt this girl again.
I’ll make damn fucking sure of it.
4
Sable
I wake up slowly, as if my body and mind are resisting consciousness. My dreams were surprisingly calm and comforting, and my eyes don’t seem to want to open. I don’t want to leave this calm, peaceful space between sleep and waking.
And why would I? So much of my life has been pain and trauma that it’s only fair I linger in the good moments as long as I can.
I’m beneath soft, warm blankets in a quiet room, and for a moment, I think I’m back in my bed in Uncle Clint’s house. But then a comforting scent wafts over me. Not the usual smell of Tide and my lavender body lotion.
Something more masculine.
Woodsy and spicy.
Unfamiliar yet achingly intoxicating.
I nestle farther into the pillow, breathing the soothing scent in deeply. I slide beneath the covers, ignoring the pained protests of my body as I roll into the sheets and take another deep breath. I spread out on my belly, blankets covering me from head to toe, and smile as I’m completely surrounded by this woodsy smell. Even still, I want more of it.
I’m rubbing against the she
ets like a cat, like I can imprint myself with the smell, when the events of last night suddenly rush back into my memories with a vengeance.
My heart seizes in my chest as I freeze, my breath catching.
The hospital visit.
The drive home.
I… I ran.
I remember shoving open the truck door and racing off into the woods to the sound of Uncle Clint spitting mad and making chase. There was a deer leading me, and I was almost hit by a car. Were there… bear claw marks on trees? I fell down a ravine…
And then there was a wolf.
Everything after that is a dark, unformed blur. But what I do remember is enough to send panic spiking through my veins.
Shoving back the covers, I sit up in bed and glance frantically around the room. Four unfamiliar walls surround me, constructed of wooden logs like some kind of rustic cabin. There’s nothing in the room but a bed and a dresser, and two doors, both closed. A small window is set into an exterior wall, covered by gauzy white curtains that let in golden sunlight—afternoon sunlight, maybe.
Shit. How long was I asleep?
Then my gaze lands on a pile of dirty laundry resting in a basket in one corner. Men’s blue jeans, white t-shirts…
I slide from the bed, staring at the pile as I move across the room toward it.
Right on top of the laundry is a blue flannel shirt.
No.
I stumble backward, arms wheeling as I put too much weight on my sore ankle and lose my balance. My hip crash-lands on the bed, and the frame scrapes across the floor. I cringe at how loud the sound is, gripping the mattress in total silence as I brace myself for someone to come running.
Somewhere out in the house, a floorboard creaks, and my heart leaps into a gallop.
Shit. Shitshitshit.
My uncle must have found me before the wolf could eat me. And now Clint has dragged me to some cabin in the woods, somewhere nobody will hear me scream. He’s been waiting for me to wake up so he can punish me.
