3

MIRABELLE

________

The night brought him to me like a dark omen.

I was elbow-deep in herbs when Sarah burst through my cottage door, her face flushed with panic. "Belle! We need you at the north gate. There's.... there's a man. He's badly wounded."

I didn't waste time asking questions. Grabbing my medical bag, I followed her into the darkness, my boots crunching against the frost-covered ground.

The bitter wind bit at my face, but I barely noticed. My mind was already running through possibilities, cataloging the supplies I might need.

The crowd at the gate parted for me like water. They knew better than to get between a healer and her patient. And then I saw him.

Holy shit....

He was massive, easily over six feet of pure muscle, even sprawled unconscious in the mud.

Blood matted his dark hair and stained his torn shirt, which did little to hide the devastating injuries underneath. But what caught my attention wasn't the wounds – it was the raw power emanating from him, even unconscious

"What happened?" I demanded, kneeling beside him. My hands moved automatically, checking his pulse. Strong, but erratic.

"Found him just outside the barrier," Tom, one of our guards, answered. ""Looks like he was in one hell of a fight."

No kidding.

Deep claw marks raked across his chest and torso – not from any normal animal I'd ever seen. The wounds were deliberate, savage. Whatever had done this wasn't looking for food; it was looking to cause pain.

"Help me get him to my cottage," I ordered. "Carefully."

It took four men to lift him. I noticed how they avoided touching his skin directly, as if they could sense what I did – that this was no ordinary man. The whispers had already started among the villagers. We didn't get many strangers here, and never ones who looked like they could snap a person in half with their bare hands.

Inside my cottage, they laid him on my examination table. Blood immediately began seeping into the clean linens I'd just changed that morning. Fantastic.

"Everyone out," I commanded. "I need space to work."

They hesitated, especially Tom. "Belle... are you sure you want to be alone with him? We don't know what he is."

I shot him a look that could've frozen hell. "Out. Now."

Once alone, I cut away what remained of his shirt.

Jesus Christ.

His torso was a battlefield of old and new scars, the fresh wounds still oozing blood. But what made me pause wasn't the injuries – it was the tattoo over his heart.

A snarling wolf's head surrounded by intricate Celtic knots. I'd seen that symbol before, in the forbidden books my grandmother kept hidden under loose floorboards.

This man wasn't just dangerous. He was a fucking werewolf.

My hands shook slightly as I cleaned the first wound. I'd heard stories about werewolves since I was a child. Violent, territorial creatures who saw humans as prey or toys. What the hell was one doing near our village?

I was so focused on my work that I almost missed the change in his breathing. Almost. But years of treating injured people had taught me to recognize when a patient was waking up. I grabbed a small vial of wolfsbane from my pocket – another of my grandmother's secrets – and took a step back.

His eyes snapped open. They were molten gold, inhuman, and fixed directly on me with predatory intensity.

"Don't move," I warned, holding up the wolfsbane. "These wounds are deep, and I'd rather not have to stitch you up twice."

He looked at the wolfsbane, then back at me, his lips curving into a dangerous smirk despite his condition. When he spoke, his voice was rough gravel. "A human healer who knows about wolfsbane. How... interesting."

"A werewolf who got his ass handed to him. Equally interesting." The words left my mouth before I could stop them. Stupid, stupid Belle. Anttagonizing the apex predator on your table.

But instead of ripping my throat out, he actually chuckled, then immediately winced. "Careful, little healer. Not many would dare speak to me that way."

"Well, not many have you bleeding all over their clean linens." I moved closer, forcing myself to act professional despite every instinct screaming at me to run. "Now shut up and let me work. Unless you'd prefer to bleed out?"