Page 5

Chapter three

I had never been trained to fight a human, and certainly not a vicious animal of any kind. Saliva dripped from the wolf’s bloody, decaying teeth and hung loosely off its sagging lips.

“Get back!” I shouted, threatening it with a garden hoe. Little time would pass before the wolf realized the tool was no match for its brute strength and insatiable appetite. “Get away from me!”

When I shifted to the left in a meek attempt to escape, it snarled and gained a few steps.

I jabbed at it with the hoe, which only angered it.

Too quickly for me to react, it locked its jaw around my right arm.

The sting and pressure of the bite dragged a sharp wail from my throat.

The wolf jerked my limp body across the floor of the barn until the sudden impact of my skull on an empty feed barrel left me immobile and unable to see in the dark.

My vision spun. Tears formed in my eyes, on my cheeks, but I had forgotten how to breathe, and if I could not breathe, I could not weep.

“Please!” I tried to gasp an appeal to my wild attacker. My unwounded left arm was my only defense. I held it up, flinching, waiting for the final strike .

But it never came. The wolf stopped snarling, and in the moments blurred by tears and fear, I could have sworn I heard a yelp.

The room whirled around me like I was the center of a spinning top.

I focused on my palm as it grasped the hay-covered floor of the barn to maintain the sliver of balance I was able to keep.

Though my vision was still blurred, I deciphered a large figure hovering above me.

A man. The early-morning light that snuck through the windows revealed him: massive, clad humbly but sturdily in dark, worn leather.

A clang pierced the taut silence: his blade, dropping to the floor.

He stumbled in shock before falling to his knees before me.

His hands went straight for my face. I froze, defenseless and afraid.

But his hands, though rough and calloused, were gentle on my skin.

Focusing on his face helped me stabilize and kept the room from spiraling around me.

He had brown eyes, like hickory, plagued by something like… sorrow.

On the right side of his face was a jagged scar beginning over his eyebrow and fading down his cheek, disappearing beneath a layer of his dark beard, the same dark color of his shoulder-length hair, tied back partially in a knot.

He seemed a fair bit older. Much younger than my father but at least ten years my senior.

“Who—who are you?” I stuttered out, trying to calm my shaking body. I shifted to pull away from him, startled at how he touched me like he knew me, but my balance was too faulty. I had no idea which way to go.

At the sound of my voice, he let out a sharp exhale, like the wind had just been knocked out of him.

He moved his hands from my face to my shoulders, where they carefully rubbed, warming me.

This man, whoever he was, could snap me in half with one squeeze of his powerful hands.

But he was gentle, the stroke of his fingers wildly at odds with his size and rough appearance.

Not to mention that he’d just killed a wolf like it was nothing.

And then… three simple words .

“I found you.”

My chest tightened. Wracked with tremors, I fought against the urge to relax.

The deep, soothing timbre of his voice begged me to surrender to a sense of safety that made little sense.

But I didn’t know this man. I reminded myself of this again and again, and sucked in a breath as he shifted closer, as one rough, careful hand returned to my cheek with a soft caress.

When he moved, the early-morning light streamed in through the cracks of the rickety barn and over his face, revealing brimming emotion in his earnest gaze. “You’re safe.”

I found the courage to look past him, where the wolf lay dead on the floor of the henhouse, neck contorted and bleeding, bones crushed.

“It’s dead,” I breathed.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Are you hurt?” His eyes shifted to the right of my face, where I could feel a slow, trickling warmth. “You hit your head?”

I nodded and lifted a wavering hand to the rapidly rounding bulge to the right of my temple. My hair was warm and damp with blood.

He tilted my head to both sides to assess the damage. “Is your vision blurred?”

“I… I don’t know.” Because I was still shaking.

He held up three fingers. “How many?”

“Th-three.”

He nodded and fastened his grip around my elbow. I flinched. Not because it hurt, but because it clearly would if he wanted it to. “Can you walk?”

I swayed when I tried to stand, even while using him for stability. His forearm was so hard and thick, my small hand couldn’t fit even halfway around it. “I… I…”

My feet were off the ground before a coherent thought could form.

In one swift movement, he lifted me into his arms, where he now cradled me, one arm beneath my knees, the other strong and firm against my back.

Instinctively—and I hadn’t the slightest clue where that instinct came from—I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my cheek rest against his chest. My impulse was reckless, but…

he smelled like whiskey, leather, cedar, and fire, and his movements, swift and solid, made me wonder if I could close my eyes and rest. Just for a second.

Under the light of dawn, I could see the veins pressing against the skin of his muscular neck, the tightness of his jaw. Holding something in.

As soon as we crossed the threshold of the cabin, he lowered me gently to the ground but kept a hand on the small of my back to ensure my steadiness. I was about to turn to get a better glimpse of him in the light when Gemma rushed into the room.

“Ary, there you are! These idiots just arrived while you were out, and—Shit!” She gasped when she saw my ravaged form and rushed over to me. “Are you alright? What the hell happened?”

Still resting against my back, the man’s hand flexed.

“There was a wolf in the barn.” I cleared my throat. “The chickens are gone.”

Gemma pulled me in for a tight hug. Behind her, three young men stood up from the kitchen table.

Two had black hair, one sandy blond, and all three held kindness in their eyes.

While none were as intimidating as my wolf slayer, these men—all here at once—made the furniture look comically small and crowded my family’s humble cabin.

When I shifted to remove my jacket, the pain in my arm smarted. The wolf’s bite was far more noticeable without the extra layer.

“Ugh,” I whispered, studying the ragged, bloody flesh while trying not to grow nauseous. It looked worse than it felt.

“May I?”

A startled noise—part squeak, part gasp—escaped my throat when a deep voice rumbled beside me.

Before I could answer, my rescuer’s long, rugged fingers locked around my unscathed arm and pulled me to the chair next to the fireplace.

I gulped down a ball of nerves when he knelt down on my right.

He made a motion for me to hand over my wounded arm.

I paused, eyeing him warily, if only because I should be wary of the massive, menacingly handsome older man touching me with hands that had effortlessly killed a wolf mere moments ago.

“That bite needs to be treated,” he commanded, his deep voice beguilingly soft but stern. “Let me help you.” His appeal cut deeper than the wound on my arm and warmed my chest and stomach. I sucked in a breath, startled at my body’s hasty reaction.

But I cautiously obliged and peeled back the sleeve of my shirt. Gemma gasped, horrified at the sight of the bite.

The wolf slayer wasted no time. Unfazed by the gore, he fastened an iron grip around my wrist and reached for a bottle of foul-smelling liquor from his bag.

He pulled the cork out with his teeth and held my arm still.

I flinched and sucked in a tattered breath at the stinging pain when he poured it over my wounded skin.

His eyes flashed to mine, and I gauged his every move.

It was clear this wasn’t his first time tending to a wound, and I found unexpected solace being at the mercy of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

“The bandage will need to be changed no later than this time tomorrow. Sooner, if it bleeds through.” When he finished, he gently fastened and closed the bandage.

I flinched at the pressure and friction of the cloth. Our eyes met briefly, my pulse climbed sharply, and sweat dampened my palms.

“Then you should change it daily, or more often if it gets wet, until healed.”

“Thank—” I cleared my throat, but my voice was still a mere whisper. “Thank you. ”

He gave me a single, stern nod and stood, towering over me. His deep-brown stare lingered on my face, so intense I could hardly stand it.

“You’re lucky it didn’t get your whole arm, aren’t you?” one of the men spoke up from the kitchen table, mercifully cutting the tension in the room. When I glanced back at my wolf slayer, he’d already retreated to stand against the wall beside the hearth.

“Don’t scare her!” Gemma had started to prepare drinks for each of my visitors. She used her foot to shove a pair of casually outstretched boots off the remaining empty seat at the table. “She’s not exactly used to four dirty men showing up in her cabin.”

The men appeared to range in age from mid to upper twenties—older than me but younger than my wolf slayer. He looked to be around thirty, maybe slightly older. But what did I know, with so little experience with men?