8. The Wounded Man

Elle

Dominic’s coat still smelled like him.

I noticed the moment I shut myself inside the car. Cedar, cold rain, and the darker scent of his wolf clung to the collar. My wolf pressed forward as if he might be close enough to follow.

“Stop it,” I whispered.

Neither she nor my body listened. My mouth remembered his. The place his teeth had grazed burned beneath the coat, sharpening my humiliation.

Minutes before Rosalie called, Dominic had offered me one night as though wanting me defied his control. Minutes after, he had opened the door and ordered me never to return.

I barely knew him. It still fucking hurt.

It was not heartbreak; an hour of hunger was not love. It was losing something I had not expected. For one reckless moment, Dominic saw more than Soren’s rejected mate or Mason Whitmore’s daughter. Then Rosalie spoke, and I became a liar.

“Fine.” I started the engine. “He can believe whatever he wants.”

The royal seal was on the suspension order. Dad’s pack was safe tonight. I had three months to expose Soren, protect my parents, and learn how he fooled two wolves into claiming him as their mate. I would not waste them bleeding over a king who chose his daughter’s word before hearing mine.

In my first life, Rosalie had celebrated while my parents burned. Dominic did not know what she could do. I did. Staying away from them was survival.

I pulled the coat tighter against the night air and drove away from the hotel.

Glass towers gave way to old stone and forest silvered by moonlight. Royal patrols passed on the Crown road, then faded beyond the city where darkness belonged to the packs.

I watched every headlight in my mirrors. The last time I took this road, I believed Soren waited at the end with love. I would never again mistake a man’s attention for safety.

The Moonlight turn appeared ahead. Miles before our boundary, something moved beside the road.

I thought an animal was dragging itself from the ditch. Then my headlights caught a pale hand clawing the gravel.

I hit the brakes.

The seat belt cut my chest as the car stopped. A man lay half in the weeds, trying to rise. One leg dragged behind him. His arms shook, gave out, and his face struck the ground.

I was out before sense caught up.

“Hey.” I crouched a few feet away. “Can you hear me?”

He turned slowly. Blood crusted his hair and one side of his face. His right eye was clouded; the left fixed on me with the fear of an animal expecting another blow.

My wolf rose beneath my skin, not in warning but in fury.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I’m Elle. I’m from the Moonlight Pack.”

He tried to crawl away.

His fingers slipped in the gravel, nails torn. Old bruises vanished beneath his filthy collar. When he dragged his leg, a broken sound escaped before he bit it back.

Someone had taught him that pain was safer when it stayed quiet.

I knew what it was to bleed beside a road while no one came: Mom in the car, Dad behind the wheel, my blood soaking the ground while Soren waited to hear I was dead.

Not this time.

I moved closer and held out my hand. “You need a doctor. Moonlight’s infirmary is less than twenty minutes away.”

He tried to answer, but a cough folded him. Fresh blood darkened his shirt beneath the ribs.

“Shit.”

I called the infirmary. The night nurse answered.

“This is Elle Whitmore. I’m bringing an injured man—barely conscious, coughing blood, possible broken ribs and leg trauma. Have a stretcher ready.”

“Is he pack?”

I looked at the man. There was no scent I could place beneath the blood, dirt, and cold sweat.

“I don’t know.”

Pack infirmaries served their own wolves. A rogue received emergency care, but staying overnight required the Alpha’s permission.

“My father will authorize it,” I said. “Be ready.”

I ended the call before she could argue and returned to the car for Dominic’s coat.

The stranger flinched when I raised it, shielding his head from a blow that never came.

Anger shook my hands—not at him, but whoever had made that instinctive.

“It’s only a coat,” I told him. “You’re freezing.”

I wrapped him in the black wool. Blood stained the lining. So much for returning it through James. Dominic’s coat now belonged to the first dying man I found on the road.

Getting him to the car took everything my wolf offered. He could not bear weight on the leg and fought when pain blurred his understanding. I told him each movement and touch until his arm settled across my shoulders.

“That’s it,” I said. “One step at a time.”

He was taller than me, but there was almost nothing left of him. Each rib shifted beneath my hand. When his bad leg caught against the gravel, his body went rigid and a cry ripped out of him.

“I know. I’m sorry.” I tightened my hold. “But I’m not leaving you here.”

By the time I lowered him across the back seat, blood covered my hands. I fastened the belt around him, tucked the coat close, and drove toward Moonlight with one eye on the road and the other on his reflection.

Pine, woodsmoke, and familiar wolves announced our territory before the boundary stones. My wolf relaxed. The man’s breathing quickened, and his good eye opened.

“You’re safe,” I said, although I had learned how dangerous that promise could be. “My father is the Alpha. No one here will touch you.”

He stared at me as if he wanted to believe it.

The infirmary stood between the packhouse and training grounds. Two nurses waited beneath the side lights with a stretcher. I had barely stopped when Soren came down the packhouse steps.

Valerie followed him, still dressed in the silver gown she had worn to my failed engagement party.

Of course she did.

Soren reached my door before I could open it. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Move.”

“I’ve called you twelve times. You humiliated me in front of the entire pack, disappeared, and now you think you can come back without explaining yourself?”

His concern was perfect. Anyone listening heard a worried mate. I heard the man who poisoned my father and arranged my death.

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” I pushed the door open, forcing him back. “There’s an injured man in my car.”

The nurses hurried toward us, but Soren looked through the rear window and went still.

Recognition flashed across his face.

It vanished so quickly I might have missed it in my first life. I did not miss anything about him now.

Valerie peered into the car and recoiled. “Goddess, Elle. Why would you bring that thing here?”

“He is a man, not a thing.”

“He reeks like a rogue.” She pressed a hand over her nose. “What if he’s dangerous?”

I opened the rear door. The stranger saw Soren and tried to shrink into the seat. Terror changed his whole face.

“Miss Whitmore?” one nurse asked. “Should we move him?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Soren said at the same time.

The nurses stopped.

Rage climbed my spine. Soren had lived among us long enough that people mistook his voice for an Alpha’s order. That was how he stole Moonlight the first time.

“My father is still your Alpha,” I said, looking at the nurses. “Take this man inside.”

Soren stepped between them and the car. “I found him near the eastern boundary earlier. He was trespassing, so I drove him off our land. He has no right to be here.”

I looked at the bruises covering the stranger’s face, then at Soren’s unmarked hands.

“You drove him off like this?”

“He fought me.”

The man could barely lift his head.

“Bullshit.”

Soren’s expression tightened. “You don’t know what happened.”

“Then explain why he looks more afraid of you than he does of dying.”

His eyes went cold. For one second, the gentle mask slipped, and I saw the man from the black car after my funeral.

“Get out of the way, Elle.”

“No.”

He reached into the car and seized the stranger by the forearm.

The man screamed.

Soren pulled hard enough to drag him sideways. His injured leg struck the door frame, and his scream collapsed into a wet gasp. I caught his shoulders before he fell from the seat.

“Let him go!”

“He is leaving.” Soren tightened his grip. “Now.”

I drove my nails into his wrist. “Take your fucking hand off him.”

The stranger’s torn sleeve slid toward his elbow.

A black mark showed beneath the dirt on his inner arm: a curved talon cutting across a silver crescent. Every wolf born into Silver Claw carried the same insignia after their first shift.

Soren’s original pack.

I looked from the mark to Soren. He had seen it. Worse, he had seen me recognize it.

This man was not some unknown rogue who had wandered onto Moonlight land. He belonged to the place Soren had come from, and Soren was willing to tear his broken body apart to keep him out of our infirmary.

Why?