At last he finished with what was left of Parker. Parker, who could never, ever touch me again.
I was safe from him. I let out a long breath. I hadn’t realized how heavy that weight was until it was gone.
Now that it was quiet in our little corner of the woods, I could hear that the howls had died down. Distant shouts still carried, but it sounded like they weren’t fighting. Arguing, maybe. I reached out with my magical senses, but I couldn’t feel the salt circle. I’d broken my connection to it when I broke my connection to Nate.
Nate. Fuck, Nate. Guilt hit me hard. I’d forgotten about him in the terror of the last few minutes, but I had to get back to him — I was the only one who could heal him.
“Matthew,” I said, or tried to. It came out as a hoarse, reedy whisper.
But he heard me. He stood, rubbed the gore off his hands onto his jeans, and then turned to look at me.
What I saw in his face, in his eyes, made my breath catch. He limped over to me and dropped down on one knee, leaning in close and examining me. Matthew reached up as if to touch me, then grimaced and dropped his hand again. It was still liberally smeared with blood.
He looked me up and down, his expression hardening. “How badly hurt are you?”
“I’ll heal.” I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me. The longing for him to just pull me into his arms and hold me felt like magnetism. “You — you’re still bleeding.”
He was, from wounds on his legs and shoulder and stomach.
“I’m healing too. I’ll be fine. But you —”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I need to get back to Nate. Parker — Parker attacked him. He was bleeding, badly. I need to get back to him.”
“Fuck,” Matthew said, with feeling. “If he dies, Ian — come on, I’ll help you.”
He got a hand around my waist and I leaned on his shoulder, and somehow we both got to our feet, leaning on each other like drunks. Matthew smelled like blood and sweat and redwoods and dirt, and I wanted to bury my face in his chest and inhale him like incense. The touch of his hand burned through my shirt and burrowed into my skin.
We moved as quickly as we could, gaining speed and strength as we went. Thank the gods for alpha healing; he’d be fine within half an hour, probably. I’d take a little longer, but the wounds on my side had already started to itch and burn, signaling that they were closing.
Flashes of movement through the trees resolved into a small group in the spell-circle clearing, all of them clustered around someone on the ground.
I let go of Matthew and broke into an ungraceful stumbling run, with him right on my heels.
Several heads turned as we lurched into the clearing: two of Matthew’s councilors, including Jennifer, and to my shock, Colin Kimball. What the hell had happened here?
Nate lay on the ground on his side, in Ian’s arms, with his face pressed to Ian’s stomach. He wasn’t moving. Ian’s face was gray with shock and grief. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…but on Nate’s other side was someone from the Kimball pack, and it looked like she was trying to work on Nate’s wound, which she wouldn’t have been doing if he was dead already. Maybe her name was Alicia? But I knew she was the pack medic, and she was putting pressure on Nate’s back and speaking urgently to Ian, something about severed nerves and surgery and a small chance of recovery and I’m sorry, Armitage.
My stomach clenched into a tiny, agonizing ball. Parker was dead, but it didn’t matter if Nate died too. Or if he spent the rest of his life paralyzed, broken, in misery.
I pushed through the small group and dropped down next to maybe-Alicia.
Ian looked up at me, and every trace of the threatening, arrogant alpha was gone. “Please,” he said. “Please, can you — please. He’s everything to me.”
An answer wasn’t possible, not without breaking down. And I had to focus, I had to be at my best, even though my best was somewhere back there in the woods whimpering under a tree.
I squeezed in next to Alicia and tore Nate’s shirt the rest of the way off of his back. I needed bare skin. My hands settled on either side of his spine, and I gathered what little reserves I had left and went in.
This wasn’t like healing Matthew from his fight with Tyler. That had been a simple matter of chasing out the poison and letting Matthew’s body do the rest — simple in theory, at any rate.
But Nate wasn’t a shifter, let alone an alpha. His body wasn’t repairing itself. And the damage was severe. Alicia hadn’t been exaggerating. His spinal column was nearly severed right at the base of his neck. Shock and blood loss were spiraling him down quickly, and on top of that, one of his lungs was punctured.
Nate living long enough to get to a surgery that wouldn’t do much in the first place sounded way, way too fucking optimistic.
And I didn’t have enough left in me to heal him. I was sure of it. I was running on fumes.
But there was no choice but to try anyway. I focused on his lung first, closing the wound as much as I could and stopping the flow of blood, pushing some of my own dwindling strength into him to try to keep his body from giving up. I moved on to his spine. His nerves were so delicate, so fragile, and they wouldn’t knit back together. Sweat was pouring down my own back and my forehead, my hair was falling in my face and sticking to it, and I wasn’t going to be able to do it. Nate wasn’t going to make it.
I’d failed again, and this time — this time, as much as I kept my conscience clear by simply not giving a shit, it was my fault. Parker had been after me. Nate was just collateral damage, and he was going to die in his mate’s arms only weeks after thinking he could actually be happy.
A whisper at the edge of my consciousness pulled me halfway out of my semi-trance. Not now, not now…but it didn’t go away, only grew stronger, poking and prodding me, demanding entrance to the space I occupied between my magic and Nate’s dwindling life.
It had a presence like…well, like the forest. Green. Quiet. Ancient and abiding and deep.
And it wanted to help me.
I opened to it, and heavy, slow-flowing power oozed into me, sliding along my own nerves and sprouting tendrils through my magic and into Nate.
One of the tendrils wrapped itself around his damaged nerves. They lit up like tiny fireflies, the severed ends connecting as if they’d never been separated. Another tendril teased at Nate’s still-damaged lung, whipping back and forth like a sewing needle.
I channeled what was left of my own strength directly into Nate’s flickering life-force, a delicate little blue-gold flame. It kindled and rose up, growing and growing until I had to look away from the brightness of it.
As the forest’s magic withdrew, the tendrils petted Nate’s skin, closing over the wounds in his back. They pulled out of me, leaving me empty and dark and drained. It didn’t matter. Nate was safe. Nate was healed.
And then they were gone, whispering away into the redwoods. The trees around us rustled and sighed, and then were still again.
My head spun and I started to topple, sliding sideways toward the ground.
Strong arms wrapped around my body. Matthew’s arms. I sighed, gave in to it, and let him catch me.
Chapter 16
Disenchanted
What was left of the night passed in a hazy blur. I heard Colin say, “Matthew, you look like shit, let me carry him,” and then I felt Matthew let out a low, warning growl. After that I was in motion — kind of lurching motion at first, as Matthew was still healing. But his arms around me were bliss. Warm and strong and careful. I dozed. I was safe, and as weak as I was, I followed my instinct and trusted that implicitly.
Trusted Matthew implicitly.
Then the arms were gone, and for a moment I was cold. Then there was some kind of blanket.
And then I slept.
I woke, blinking slowly, to shafts of early-morning sunlight filtering rosy-gold through a set of dusty blinds. I was on a couch, not a bed, but it was a pretty comfortable couch, and I stretched just like the cat
I was, arms over my head and toes pointed.
Fuck, that felt good, working out all the kinks from being clawed and kidnapped and flung into a tree and then healing it all.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around.
Under the window with the blinds was a bed, and in that bed was Nate, curled up with only the top of his head and part of his face peeking out, with a mound of quilts on top of him. I only had the one blanket, but fair enough; shifters ran warmer than humans. And I was guessing it was overprotective Ian who’d tucked him in.
Speaking of Ian. A shower was running in the background. It was probably Ian getting into it that had woken me. There was a closed door near the foot of the couch, and the sound was coming from there.
This must be Ian’s little house, then, where he lived separate from the rest of the pack. The place was shabby but homey, and it was fucking quiet. I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t mind living in a place like this.
But it wasn’t my place, and I needed to get going. Find Matthew, find Colin, find out what the fuck had happened the night before. Someone had taken off my boots and set them by the couch, so all I really had to do was pull them on.
The shower shut off while I was rolling my way off the couch.
A moment later Ian stepped out in a pair of old plaid boxers and a white t-shirt. I hated to admit that the look totally fucking worked for him — although I’d have gone another few rounds with claws and a tree-trunk before I admitted it out loud.
More than anything, I was nearly drooling with envy. His red hair was sticking up in damp clumps, droplets of fresh, clean water trickled down his neck and legs, and there wasn’t a trace of blood or dirt on him. I felt like I had half the forest floor stuck to me, not to mention the dried blood gluing the remains of my clothes to my skin.
“How’s Nate?” I asked him.
For the first time, Ian smiled at me. Actually smiled, and not a mocking or nasty smile. It was…friendly. Fucking weird. I hardly recognized him.
“I think he’s fine. I got him to wake up and wiggle his toes and everything.” The sheer, overwhelming relief in his tone explained the smile, I guessed.
And I found myself smiling back. “Good. I’ll check him out again before I leave, just in case, okay? And in the meantime — I’d kill for a shower. If I can borrow another set of Nate’s clothes.”
“You can have anything in this house,” Ian said earnestly. “Up to and including one of my kidneys.”
“Any good spell really requires both of them,” I said without thinking.
Ian laughed. He fucking laughed. And then, as I stared at him slack-jawed, he strolled over to the scratched, unvarnished dresser against the wall and pulled out a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of jeans, tossing them over his shoulder onto the couch.
After a second of rummaging, he turned around, holding a pair of socks. “These,” Ian said seriously, waving them at me, “are the best fucking socks you will ever wear in your life. Nate’s made a couple of pairs for me.” He blushed. “Um, long story. They’re waterproof, bulletproof, and kick harder than steel-toed boots. Also, they’re warm as hell.”
He brought them over and set them down on the coffee table with a flourish, like he was presenting me with a gold watch for my years of service.
Socks. Well, I’d been given stranger things, and these were obviously important to Ian.
I picked them up carefully and took a look. They were full of magic; I could tell that at a touch, and I’d have been able to see it if I’d bothered. I was still magically worn out from the night before, though.
“Thanks. I’m — uh, I’m really — honored.” Was that the right response to being given a pair of enchanted black cotton socks?
Apparently it was close enough, because Ian nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the bathroom.”
I escaped in there with Nate’s clothes, including the socks, and took him at his word. He had surprisingly nice shampoo. My long hair used up a lot of it. I used the time I spent working it through all the tangles to brood over Matthew dumping me off here with Ian and Nate and not even bothering to check on me in the morning.
I stuffed my filthy clothes into the bathroom trash and stepped out clean, refreshed, and in an incredibly foul mood.
Ian was puttering around making coffee, and Nate was still dead to the world. But not dead, and that lifted my spirits a little.
“If you want to fill me in on what happened last night I can just take off from here,” I told Ian. “My car’s still where I left it, right?”
I sat down on the couch and started to lace up my boots.
Ian paused his coffee-making to frown at me. “Long story short, Colin Kimball took over his pack and ousted his father. And you need to take that spell off of Matt before you go anywhere,” he said. “I mean, come on, he killed that asshole who was after you. We’re not holding you prisoner. After you saved Nate’s life, I owe you mine, and I’d defend you to the death no matter what water’s under the bridge. We’re your allies, even if you’re not ours. So take off the damn spell, okay? You’re not gaining anything by leaving it on him. You don’t need an insurance policy.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake… “It’s already —” I cut off with a sigh. Why fucking bother? I’d end up having to see Matthew anyway. And…maybe I had to for my own sake, so I could see his indifference to me and let it really sink in. “I’ll go over to the pack house before I leave.”
I finished with my boots and crossed to the bed, glancing warily at Ian as I did. He just quietly poured hot water into the coffee filter setup, like a recently enemy shaman standing over his unconscious mate wasn’t anything to get worked up about.
Like he trusted me.
I swallowed down the little lump in my throat. We’re your allies, even if you’re not ours. I’d never had allies. Never had someone I could count on since my brother’s past had caught up with him, forcing him to leave me. If another Parker attacked me, I could call Ian — and he’d take my call. Show up and fight for me. It was the difference between standing on the edge of a precipice in a high wind, every moment of balance a struggle, and having a brick wall suddenly appear at your back to lean on.
Without disturbing Nate’s nest of blankets, I laid my hand gently on the side of his head. He let out a little murmur but didn’t stir. It only took a moment to double-check what I’d already known: he was tired, and his magic was depleted, but his body was perfectly whole and healthy.
“He’s fine,” I said, taking my hand away. I was almost reluctant. Nate’s hair was soft, and he was warm, and non-sexual, non-threatening human contact — and a lot of my human contact was both sexual and threatening — was something I missed. “Make sure you save some of that coffee for him, though. He’s going to need it.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “Believe me, that’s a lesson I learned the hard way.” He paused, fiddling with a couple of mugs on the counter, and staring down at them like he couldn’t quite look at me. “By the way, you want some?” I shook my head. I didn’t like coffee — it tasted like rancid mice. “Okay. But look. You know, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stick around. If you’re not sure where you’re going next, you know?”
Right. Because why let a perfectly good shaman go to waste? “I know where I’m going,” I said shortly. Not here. That was where I was going. It wasn’t really a lie.
Ian looked up, his eyes sharp, like he knew what I was thinking. He proved it when he said, “You don’t have to do any magic. Nate has that under control.” He sounded like he was challenging me to disagree, but I didn’t rise to the bait. “Anyway, you can stay if you want. Suit yourself.”
“Shouldn’t Matthew have a say in that?” That came out a lot crankier than I’d intended it to, and I bit my lip. My heart picked up a little, just from saying Matthew’s name. Fuck, I really needed to leave.
Ian looked…shifty at that. “Just go talk to Matt, okay? Take off the spell. And then talk to him.”
And I was sure that was all I was going to get out of Ian.
“Tell Nate I said thanks for the clothes, okay? And the socks.” My feet really did feel warmer than they had in weeks.
“Will do.” Ian went back to pouring coffee.
Well, all right then.
I stepped out of the house onto a small, sagging porch, streaked with moss and missing a board here and there. The view couldn’t be beat, though, as long as you didn’t look down. One path led off through the forest, presumably to the pack house, and otherwise there was no sign of humanity at all. Birds chirped. It was nesting season; they sounded cheerfully amorous.
Well, at least someone was getting laid without complications.
It looked like the rain had come and gone while I was passed out. Every twig and needle on the trees held a glimmer of moisture, and the ground exhaled the scent of growth and rot and damp, all the elements of life and death on Earth.
I set off down the path, taking long strides, breathing deeply, and letting myself settle into a moment of peace, just me and the forest.
I came around a small bend and stopped dead in my tracks. Me, the forest, and — Matthew, who was striding up the path toward me with all the grim determination of a man heading somewhere really fun, like a colonoscopy appointment.
He came to an abrupt halt too the second he saw me, about ten feet away. He wasn’t nearly far enough: I could see the deep-sea of his eyes, and the motion of his throat as he swallowed, and I could catch a faint hint of his clean, spicy scent.
He wasn’t nearly near enough, either. But that was my own fucking problem.
“You’re healed,” he said, after a long few moments of excruciating silence.
“So are you.”
Silence. Again. We’d both reached our personal limits on stating the obvious, apparently.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 16
