004

Chapter 4

I locked the living-room door behind me and climbed the stairs in a daze, each step heavier than the last.

Halfway up, a sharp pain stabbed through my skull. Memories of Kieran's cold rejection crashed over me all over again — his voice, his hatred, the way he'd looked at me like I was nothing. I cried out and nearly ran the rest of the way to my room, desperate to hide under the covers and disappear.

I slammed the door, kicked off my boots, and threw myself face-down onto the bed.

That was when I heard it. A low, ragged grunt just outside my window.

My head snapped up. The sun had already set. I was completely alone in the house.

"What the hell was that?"

Fear tried to freeze me in place, but curiosity won. I slid off the bed, crept to the window, and yanked the curtain aside.

My blood turned to ice.

A man clung to the iron bars outside, body trembling violently, breath coming in harsh, wet gasps that fogged the glass between us. A dark hoodie and long sleeves hid most of his face. Blood soaked him from head to toe, dripping steadily onto the ledge below.

I stood frozen, mouth open, every muscle locked tight. This couldn't be real. Not tonight. Not on top of everything else.

He gripped the bars so hard his gloved hands shook, knuckles white even through the leather. Deep, pain-filled sounds tore from his throat, guttural and raw.

The agony in those sounds hit me harder than I expected — hit somewhere I didn't have walls built up yet.

Down the street, another howl split the night, closer than the last. Whoever he was running from hadn't given up. Wasn't going to. My own pulse thundered in time with it, some traitorous instinct in me straining toward the sound instead of away from it.

It would have been so easy to pry his fingers loose and let him fall. The hunters were already tearing through the streets below, searching. One shove and it would be over. One shove, and I'd be a good daughter, a loyal packmate, exactly what everyone expected of me tonight.

The thought made my stomach twist violently.

Before I could decide anything, he lifted his head. In one blur of motion too fast to track, he launched himself through the window and crashed straight into my room.

We collided hard, both of us hitting the floor in a tangle. His blood smeared dark across my shirt and left a messy print on the window frame behind him. He landed in a heap, groaning, and with a sharp, sickening crack, snapped off the broken arrows still buried deep in his flesh.

I recognized them instantly. Poison-tipped. The same kind my parents used when hunting vampires.

Our pack witch's special blend. It paralyzed first, then killed within twenty-four hours if the antidote never came.

"Close the window," he rasped, chest heaving. "Please. Don't let them find me."

Blood had matted his once-white hair into dark, clumped strands. His clothes were completely soaked through. He looked wrecked. Helpless. And somehow, even like this, still dangerous — like a wounded predator was still a predator.

I shut the window without thinking twice, latching it with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling.

"You know you have less than a day to live, right?" I asked quietly, kneeling closer despite every instinct screaming at me to run.

His head tilted toward me. A deep, rough voice answered, "Is it true? Am I going to die?"

Something about that voice pulled at me, low and unexpected, like a hook catching under my ribs.

I shook myself hard, forcing my mind back to the present. He was bleeding out on my bedroom floor, and I was crouched there staring like an idiot.

"Is there any way to save me?" he asked between wet, bloody coughs. "You're a werewolf... there has to be something. Anything."

I barely heard the words over the roar in my own head.

All I could think was how unfairly beautiful he was — more striking than anyone I had ever seen in my life. Kieran would look ordinary standing next to him. Plain. Forgettable.

My heart hammered for reasons that had nothing to do with fear anymore.

I dropped fully to my knees beside him.

"Help me," he whispered, eyes locking onto mine with startling intensity. "Help me now and I'll owe you. Anything you want."

I swallowed hard, throat suddenly dry.

"Take off your shirt."

He groaned but obeyed, movements slow and shaking, blood-soaked fabric peeling away from torn skin.

Even covered in blood he was breathtaking. Strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, emerald-green eyes that seemed to glow faintly in the dark room. Full, dark-red lips pressed thin against the pain. The kind of face that made the rest of the world go quiet and small.

I had never believed in love at first sight. Kieran's good looks had never once made me feel like this — not once, in over a year together. Yet here I was, on my knees in front of a dying vampire, staring at him like he was the only thing left in the entire world worth looking at.

Every instinct I'd been raised on screamed that I should call the hunters, finish what the poison had already started, and hand him over to the Alpha like the good, obedient packmate I was supposed to be.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself do it.

He didn't look like the monsters from my parents' stories, the ones I'd grown up terrified of, the ones whispered about around every pack fire since I was old enough to understand the word enemy. He just looked broken. Human, almost, in the worst way. And when I told him he was dying, real fear had flashed across his face — raw and undisguised, nothing like the cold, arrogant cruelty I'd just survived downstairs.

He pushed the hood back fully so I could see all of him.

Our eyes met.

Something electric shot straight through me, sharp enough to steal the air from my lungs.

"Please," he begged, fingers weakly catching my wrist, cold despite the blood. "Save my life."

I tore my hand free and ran.

My heart was still hammering when I sprinted down the hall toward my father's room, half-tripping over my own feet. Dad had bought a vial of the antidote weeks ago, after Mom was accidentally hit by one of their own arrows during a training run. He never went anywhere without a backup stashed somewhere in the house.

I didn't understand why I was doing this. Didn't understand the reckless, desperate need clawing through my chest to save a creature I'd been taught since birth to fear and destroy.

I only knew one thing with absolute certainty as my hands closed around the small glass vial hidden in his nightstand drawer.

I couldn't let him die. Not tonight. Not when I'd already lost everything else.

I sprinted back down the hall with the vial clutched so tightly in my fist that the glass edges bit into my palm. Every second felt like it might be the one that mattered — the one where I burst through my bedroom door and found him already gone, eyes open and empty on my floor.

He hadn't moved. Still slumped against the wall beneath the window, chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven pulls, blood pooling darker on the carpet beneath him. His eyes found mine the instant I stepped inside, and something in his face loosened — not quite relief, not yet, but close enough to it that my chest ached looking at it.

"You came back," he rasped, like he hadn't actually believed I would.

"Don't talk. Just hold still." My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the vial twice before I got the stopper free.

"Why are you doing this?" His voice had gone even rougher, blood catching at the edges of every word. "I'm your enemy. You know what I am."

I didn't have an answer for him. I wasn't sure I had one for myself.

"Hold still," I said again, kneeling close enough to feel the cold radiating off his skin despite the blood still running hot down his ribs. "This is going to hurt."

His mouth curved, faint and disbelieving, even through the pain. "Worse than dying?"

"We're about to find out."

I pressed the vial to his lips and tipped it back before either of us could think better of it. He swallowed hard, throat working, eyes never leaving my face — like I was the only steady thing left in a world that had just tried to kill him.

Downstairs, the front door slammed. Boots on tile. My parents were home.

"Hide," I breathed, already hauling him upright by the arm, his blood slicking hot against my palm. "Now."

He didn't argue. Whatever strength the antidote had bought him, he used it to move — fast, silent, folding himself into the narrow gap behind my wardrobe just as fo

otsteps started climbing the stairs, closer with every second.