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I obeyed with a start, my eyes flicking open, then darting around the unfamiliar room.

Where the fuck am I? I thought, feeling my pulse pound and hearing a beeping machine keep pace with it.

I glanced at it, the cords that kept me connected to it, and the obvious hospital bed I was lying in, if the glaring white sheets and metal framed gurney was anything to go by.

Harsh artificial lights glared down on me, ones that made it clear I was not alone.

Curled up on my left side was Kade. He whimpered when I moved, but even when I lay still, the noises still came. He twitched in his sleep, his whine growing louder, more desperate. The snort of someone waking suddenly jerked my eyes beyond the bed.

The man from the car , I thought, seeing those brown eyes open blearily. My body coiled around Kade’s, covering his with mine, ready to strike.

He staggered over to the bed with the time old shuffle of a parent with an unsettled child, eyes three quarters closed, it taking for him to reach out, ready to put a hand on Kade’s shoulder, before he noticed me. His eyes flicked open, hand and body freezing.

I watched him and he watched me, my eyes inexorably dragged over to the pink, still healing bite on his neck. I tasted that weird acidic bile again, and said, “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Peter. I need to get the doc?—”

“No, where the hell are we? Why am I attached to all these machines?”

“This is Sanctuary.” He saw the confusion in my eyes, along with something else—fear. “It’s my hometown. This is the medical centre. You were hurt, really badly, Flick.”

I jerked back at that.

“How do you know my name?”

He swallowed, moving restively by the bed, an odd sight for a man so big.

“You told me. Your heart… When you…”

There was a moment then, one of quiet regard, where anyone watching us would have said we stared into each other’s eyes, but there was something different about this.

He struggled with something, I could see it in the move of his lips, like he was about to say something but stopped himself.

His fingers twitched, the tiny movements coming closer before a long sigh escaped his lungs.

He seemed to draw himself up, that massive chest swelling, but before he got to say a word, the green curtain hanging around us was swept aside.

“Hello,” said an older woman, who was quite short and with a soft face. She wore a white doctor’s coat over her clothes and had a stethoscope hanging around her neck. “I’m Doctor Hobbes.”

“How did I get here? Why am I hooked up to these machines? How long have I been here for?”

At the sound of my questions, my heart rate spiked, and the doctor’s eyes went to the rapidly beeping machine beside me. I shook with the effort of holding myself still, wanting to yank myself free and run the fuck out of here.

“The boys brought you in unconscious and unresponsive. You experienced considerable trauma, Felicity.”

“Flick,” I corrected her. That had been the name my friends and family had used. Felicity was his wife.

“Flick,” she said with a nod. “We’ve had you under observation for two days and given you some pain relief.”

“Two days! I need to get up,” I said, then my eyes dropped down to where Kade was starting to shift. “What about Kade?”

“Some heavy bruising, but we’ve had him on a diet of soft foods. His scars are more…”

“Psychological,” I finished for her, looking down at the boy curled at my side. His eyes fluttered open, and he just looked at me for a second before he realised what he was looking at.

“Mum!”

He threw his arms around my neck, something that had me wincing, Peter taking a step closer. I stared him down over my son’s shoulders, feeling a growl deep in my throat form.

A growl?

“I’m glad you’re awake,” the doctor said, eyes flicking from Peter to me. “It means you’re on the mend. I’ll get Ophelia to come and talk to you.”

“Who’s Ophelia?” I said.

“Sanctuary is her town. She’ll be able to help explain…things.”

Well, that wasn’t vague at all.

I forced my eyes away from the man, and he seemed to get I was uncomfortable and backed away.

But he didn’t want to. I saw it in the hang of his head, the line of his shoulders.

He wanted…to be a part of this? To be close to me and Kade?

What the actual fuck? He was a complete stranger. I’d learned his name minutes ago.

He is pack. He is your mate.

Oh, so we’re still on that are we?

This is Sanctuary. We are home. He is pack.

And I apparently need an industrial strength anti-psychotic.

As if to confirm this, the black beast I’d seen back at home appeared at the foot of my bed, her green eyes taking in the newcomers who pushed past the curtain and stopped at the foot of the bed. She nodded her head and then winked out.

One of the women was tall, with a ramrod straight spine and a long tail of grey hair pulled back, while the other a woman was about the same age as me with a mane of dark brown hair.

Brown hair smiled impishly at me, wiggling her fingers at Kade, but grey hair was apparently the spokesperson.

Her smile, when it came, was slow, measured, but it still warmed her eyes.

“Welcome to Sanctuary, Flick. I am Ophelia and this is Jules.”

“So nice to speak to you finally,” Jules said, moving forward and holding out a hand. I shook it awkwardly, Kade curling up tighter against me. “Your head must be spinning, but you’re safe now, I promise.”

“Jules.”

Ophelia said her name gently, and the other woman stepped back with a smile on her face, but when the older woman turned back to me there was a…what? Expression of sadness, pity, concern? It was difficult to say.

“Flick, if possible, I’d like to talk to you about what brought you to Sanctuary.

You don’t have to if you don’t want to…” She paused when she saw my mouth open, ready to tell that story right now.

That was strange, having someone wait for me to reply, enough that my mouth closed again.

She nodded in response. “But I believe it might help the both of us. Jules is one of our newer residents. When I told her we had someone come from the outside, she was keen to come and meet you. It’ll just be a quick chat, or a long one, depending on what you want.

The boys have set up an area just beyond the bed.

” Peter got up and twitched the curtain to one side so I could see that a TV had been set up in the adjoining room, complete with toys all over the floor.

“You’ll be able to see Kade the whole time. ”

I felt his arms tighten around my neck, making me rub my palm along his back.

“It’s OK, baby,” I said. “Have people here been looking after you?”

He nodded, about to say something, when I heard an imperious little voice.

“Kade? Are you here?”

A young girl with long black hair and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen strode in, the blond-haired man from the car at her heels.

“Kiralee! We’ve got to be…” he hissed, his voice falling away as he saw the two of us. He straightened, blinking a few times, as if unable to believe what he saw. “Oh, hi.”

“Kade, are we going to play with the action men again?” the little girl said, coming to the edge of the bed and completely ignoring me. “Kade?”

“Action figures,” came the muffled reply, his fingers slowly unwinding. “Hi, Kiralee.”

“Hello, Kade. Can we play now? Aidan made me wait until after I had breakfast, and my mother said it was OK.”

This earned her a snort from the man himself as he shook his head with a smile. The girl held out a hand to Kade, and I was shocked to see him take it. She pulled him down beside her, then drew him towards the room.

“My mother was treated badly as well, and she’s all better now. I told you she would be fine. Everyone gets better in Sanctuary.”

I shook my head, realising now I was sitting in front of four strangers in just a hospital gown.

My fingers plucked at the sheet and then drew it up higher.

This dislodged the blanket that had been draped across my legs, something that had the blond-haired man, Aidan, and Peter moving to pick it up.

Aidan’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile, and he backed off, but Peter scooped it up in those massive hands and then moved closer, forcing me to look up, up to catch all of him as he laid it over the railing.

Jules watched the whole thing somewhat misty eyed, which was just weird.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep things calm but probably failing, “I really appreciate you looking after a complete stranger and her child, but I need to get going. People will be worried sick?—”

“That’s what we’re worried about,” Ophelia said.

“Someone determined enough to harm a woman and child like this is often determined enough to try and track you down. We want to protect you. No woman should ever have to go through what the two of you have obviously endured” —this drew growls from the two men— “but especially not in my town. Sanctuary was founded by women who had suffered like you have. We built it as a haven for women and the men who love them. You must…” Her voice was imperious, even as it trailed away.

Her eyes dropped for a moment as she reconsidered what she was going to say.

“We would very much like to help you. Please, Flick.”

I just stared at them all. Jules was all bright eyed and bushy tailed, like the idea excited her or something.

Ophelia looked like she was running for president and the guys?

Aidan stood like a soldier, with a kind of coiled intensity just waiting to be called upon.

And Peter? His ham sized hands had balled into fists, the muscles in his forearms trembling with the effort of holding them back, something that curiously did not scare me.

He is pack , the voice inside me insisted . He will use those hands to strike our enemies, not us or the cub. He will fight to the last breath to protect our pack, pummel that useless excuse for an impregnator into a bloody smear on the ground.

And how, oh delusional thought construct, do you know that? He’s just as likely to snap my neck with those bloody great mitts of his.

No, he can’t. He is pack.

My little internal dialogue had created an embarrassing pause in the conversation, something I hoped I could pass off as trauma, but when I looked at the two women, their eyes had gone wide and staring, their eyes trailing over me, then to Peter, and stopped when they reached the bite on his neck, partially hidden by the collar of his shirt.

You could have heard a pin drop while they studied it.

“Well, this complicates things,” Jules said with a sigh.

“Doesn’t it?” Ophelia said. “Now, Flick, tell me, when did you start seeing the wolf?”