Chapter 2

POV: Vera

I hooked his arm over my shoulder and hauled him upright.

He was taller than me by at least a head, and heavier than he looked. My knees buckled, and I gritted my teeth. Leaving him here to die wasn't an option. My parents hadn't raised me to walk away from this. Dad used to say that the day you stepped over a body was the day you stopped being pack. He'd meant it as a warning about rogues. I didn't think he'd mind me applying it more broadly.

I dragged him inside through the back door and got him onto the couch. There was blood on my jacket, my jeans, the kitchen floor. I wiped my hands on a towel and went to work. Cleo's door stayed shut. Small mercies.

I boiled water, tore clean strips from an old sheet, and brought the tin of salve my mother kept in the bathroom cabinet. The gash on his collarbone needed cleaning first. I peeled back his ruined shirt, and my hands paused.

He was built like someone who'd been training his whole life. Broad shoulders, hard muscle beneath the skin. He looked even stronger than he smelled. This was dangerous, but I couldn’t just leave him outside.

Who knew what the pack would do to him, and wasn’t Alpha Crowe always saying we needed stronger wolves on the border?

I shook it off and pressed the warm cloth against the wound. He didn't flinch. Not even when I had to press hard to stop the bleeding. Unconscious or not, most people would've jerked away from that kind of pressure. I'd seen grown guardians whimper over less.

This man didn't move at all.

The cuts on his ribs were worse. Deep enough to see the white edge of bone in one of them. I cleaned each one carefully, dabbed the salve along the edges, and wrapped the bandages tight. My fingers were steady. I'd helped my father patch up patrol wounds since I was twelve. The salve smelled herbal and sharp and familiar. My throat tightened for a second. Mom had mixed this batch herself. Her handwriting was still on the lid, faded and slanting.

But by the third hour, my hands were shaking from exhaustion. I'd changed the water in the basin four times. The cloth had gone from white to rust-brown.

I pulled the last bandage into place and sat back on the floor beside the couch. The house was quiet. The clock on the wall read past two in the morning. Outside, an owl called once and went quiet. My hands smelled of salve and copper.

I leaned my head against the couch cushion and told myself I'd just close my eyes for a minute.

"He woke up!"

Cleo's voice yanked me out of sleep. Sunlight poured through the window. I'd slept the whole night with my cheek against the couch, my neck stiff and my back aching. My clothes were stiff with dried blood. I'd been dreaming about the market, about Derek's grin, and for a moment I couldn't work out why my hands smelled like herbs.

My sister was standing in the doorway in her yellow pajamas, eyes wide, pointing at the couch behind me.

"Cleo." I scrambled to my feet and stepped in front of her. "Go to your room."

"But he—"

"Now."

Cleo pouted but didn't argue. She padded down the hall, and I heard her bedroom door click shut.

The man was sitting upright on the couch. One arm braced against the armrest as if he'd tried to stand. His shirt was gone. I'd cut it off last night to get to his wounds. The bandages I'd wrapped around his ribs were spotted with fresh blood.

But what stopped me was his eyes.

Gold. Not brown, not amber. Gold, like coins catching the light. And cold. So cold that for a second I forgot he was the one covered in bandages. I'd never seen eyes that color on anyone. Not in this pack, not in any of the traders who passed through.

He looked at me like I didn't belong here.

"Who are you?"

His voice was low and flat. No panic. No confusion. As if bleeding out on a stranger's couch was just an inconvenience.

I kept my body between him and the hallway where Cleo had gone.

"My name is Vera. Vera Crane." I folded my arms across my chest. "That was my sister, Cleo. I found you in my backyard last night, bleeding out, so I brought you inside and patched you up." I paused. "You're welcome."

His gaze tracked from me to the bandages on his ribs, then to the basin of bloody water I hadn't cleaned up yet. He touched the edge of a bandage with two fingers and said nothing for a long moment. I'd expected questions. Where am I. How long. Who else knows. He asked none of them, and that told me more than the answers would have.

Then Cleo's voice floated down the hall.

"My sister stayed up all night taking care of you! She didn't even read me my bedtime story!"

I closed my eyes. So much for staying in her room.

His expression changed. Not warmth exactly, but his face softened, just barely.

"Thank you," he said. "My name is Caius." A pause, barely noticeable. "Black. Caius Black. I was attacked by rogues to the east. I'm from the Ashford Pack."

He was lying.

There had been no rogue scent on him, no pack scent, either. Most who were cut from packs were omegas like me, but his build was too solid for that. Maybe he had been pushed out for another reason. Either way, all werewolves were weaker without a pack. It meant no protection or authority and time without a pack had a way of wearing down a wolf’s strength.

How long had he been apart from his pack?

Did it matter?

Whatever he was hiding, I wasn’t going to press. If something went wrong, I could take him. He was hurt, and I was stronger than I looked. Much stronger.

Probably.

Those gold eyes, his jaw, the way he held himself like he owned the couch he was bleeding on. I'd patched up plenty of guardians over the years. None of them had looked at me like that. None of them had looked like that, period.

My stomach did something stupid.

I looked away.

"I can repay you," he said. "Whatever you need. Name it."

I shook my head. "I didn't save you so you'd owe me something."

"But—" He stopped, and his gaze shifted past me.

Cleo was standing in the hallway again, her stuffed bear dangling from one hand. She looked at Caius with the kind of intense focus only a four-year-old could manage. She had already decided something about him. I could see it in the set of her chin, the same stubborn tilt Mom used to get when she'd made up her mind about a person.

"Can you be Vera's mate?"