7. Finn
FINN
F ire consumed him from the toes up. His eyes didn’t open but he knew he moved. Bumping along, dragged. One lurch at a time. He groaned and lifted his head. What the fuck happened? Where was he? The last thing he remembered… the drug smugglers. A dozen guys hiking massive packs of meth through the trees. Turning away to make it to his phone to signal Shotgun. Stepping into a hole and then…
The snap of the trap closing around his leg echoed in his mind. Finn struggled to breathe. That was it. He’d been caught and the steel tore into his leg and he would always be in pain. He lifted his head and struggled to see through a haze of pain and disorientation. He gripped what felt like straps underneath him, and arched his back against the agony flaring through his nerves as another lurch jostled his leg.
“Don’t move,” a panicked voice said. “Please don’t move, I can’t do it if things change. We’re almost there.”
Finn struggled to identify the strange but semi-familiar tone. Who the fuck was that? Young and female, uncertain, strained. In pain, too. He didn’t like that. The bear definitely didn’t like that. Her scent, made stronger from physical exertion, tangled in his brain and ran through him like morphine.
Lauren.
What the hell was she doing? He forced his eyes open to take in the situation. On the narrow trail, heading up a gentle incline. A branch to each side, straps underneath him, a rifle and shotgun cradled in his arm. Lauren’s voice came from behind him, huffing and puffing. She dragged him? She’d made a litter and dragged him away from the trap. Clever, clever girl.
His chest tightened with the kind of affection he hadn’t felt in years. She was an unbelievable gift. “Okay.”
She exhaled in relief. “Oh my God, you’re still alive. I didn’t know… I mean, of course you are. You’re going to be fine. You shouldn’t have done it on your own, though. I could have helped you open that trap. You didn’t need to…”
“Lauren,” he said, his voice rough with pain.
“Yeah?”
“Breathe.”
She laughed, though it sounded watery and barely on the safe side of hysterical. Definitely on the edge, but not pushed past her limits just yet. “I’m trying. I’m trying. It’s just I didn’t know what to do and I still don’t know what we’re going to do, because the cabin definitely isn’t where someone with that kind of injury should go. I don’t have real first aid supplies, I don’t think, although there might be some at the cabin, and we definitely can’t call an ambulance this far from town or…”
“Breathe,” he repeated. Finn squeezed his eyes shut against the white-hot fire eating up his leg. He’d never felt anything like it before. “We’ll figure it out.”
He loved that he could say “we” and mean it. He wanted to have her and him become “we.” He hardly remembered her face or any details about her physical appearance, but he knew her scent and her voice and that was more than enough for him and the bear to know she was right. She was worth everything. He didn’t know why they couldn’t call an ambulance, even though he had no intention of going to a hospital and letting a doc take blood samples and figure out he wasn’t a typical human. But if she didn’t want to call an ambulance, they wouldn’t. If she did…well, he could find a way to deal with it.
Finn hated that he lay help less , that she struggled to drag him along an uneven trail. He should have been the one carrying her to safety. But even with the bear’s powerful urge to pick her up and take her somewhere nice and warm, the man knew his leg wouldn’t support his own weight, much less hers and the pack and the weapons. He forced himself to remain still, even as he wanted to roll off the sledge and crawl to their destination instead of making her bear his weight.
One of the branches caught in a dip and wrenched to the side, almost pitching him off the straps. Finn groaned and held tightly to the weapons so they didn’t fall. Lauren lurched to a halt. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t see it, are you…”
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. Bright lights sparked behind his eyes. He couldn’t yell at her. Couldn’t risk scaring her. It wasn’t her fault, and he was grateful she still wanted to help him instead of dropping the branches and walking away. “Just ignore me. You’re doing a great job.”
She snorted and huffed at the same time, and Finn smothered a smile in case she saw it and took offense. But she might as well have been hauling around a box of rocks for all the notice she took. Lauren shook her head and took another step, pausing immediately to groan and adjust the shoulder straps. Finn braced for disaster as the branches underneath him rocked and he anticipated getting dumped down the slope to his left. That kind of fall might finish him off, and he tensed in case he needed to catch himself.
But Lauren settled and restarted her slow trudge. Finn closed his eyes but remained conscious. He had to stay conscious. He got the sense Lauren reached the edge of her control, and with the physical strain of dragging him along, she could break. Finn cleared his throat. Maybe he could distract her from the hardship and misery of dragging him along. “Where are we going?”
“Cabin,” she said, panting. Two more plodding steps, then she paused to breathe. “Small and dilapidated. But at least it’s shelter.”
Smart girl. “Have you stayed there before?”
“I live there,” she said, then groaned. “No, that’s not what I meant. Obviously I can’t live there. It’s falling down and no reasonable person would stay there with winter approaching. I just meant—I’ve stayed there before. I know the owner so when I needed a place to hi—a place to hang out in peace, he let me stay.”
She knew the owner? How did she know Simon?
But a lightning bolt of pain lanced through him and disintegrated that line of questioning as Lauren took a few more reluctant steps. Finn clenched his jaw. Something definitely wasn’t right. His leg should have been completely healed. Could there have been something on the steel that prevented the wound from closing? He squeezed his eyes shut. If they didn’t get to the cabin, there weren’t other options. It wasn’t like they could show up at a hotel looking like bears had been gnawing on his leg without drawing too much attention. He’d have to call Simon or Ethan, and one of those colossal asses would lecture him the entire drive back to the Lodge. Several hours of hearing about all the ways he’d fucked up and all the ways they dreamed about improving his behavior. Lectures. Lectures upon lectures.
He didn’t care how dilapidated the cabin was. It would be a haven compared to calling in the rest of the bears. Finn knew he’d have to contact them eventually, but at least for a couple of weeks he could enjoy Lauren’s company all alone. He would hunt or fish to feed them, and… He frowned as another thought stuck through the pain. She’d seen him change from his bear form and yet hadn’t said a word about it. She acted like it hadn’t happened.
Another bump distracted him and he groaned in a low, drawn-out protest that sounded absurd. Lauren whispered something, then exhaled and collapsed. The resulting drop rattled the Finn’s teeth and lit his entire body on fire in a deep, enduring throbbing that worsened instead of getting better. The yelp that escaped was undignified but he couldn’t swallow it back. Burning tears coated his eyelashes, but he clenched his fists and retained control by the barest thread.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren panted. She groaned, too, and the sledge jostled as she untangled herself from the harness. “But we’re here. I just need to…rest for a second. Just a second. That was a longer hike than I remembered. But we can rest and then I’ll get you inside. It’s not far. Just a little…just a few steps.”
He could imagine how exhausted she felt. She probably hadn’t had to drag a full-grown man any distance before. Finn steeled himself and managed to slowly sit up, a few inches at a time, though his head swam and nausea brewed in his guts. He broke out in a cold sweat and had to hold on to the branches as he hovered at the edge of passing out again. He grew overheated and uncomfortable, despite still being naked and outside as the fall air grew crisper with night’s approach. Clouds gathered and far away; thunder rumbled and the wind picked up.
It was probably shock or something getting close. Which meant he’d soon become a dead weight for her again. He needed to deal with his leg and get inside, and at least show her the satellite phone to call friends or whoever let her stay out there. Surely she didn’t really know Simon. It had to be a misunderstanding.
She’d emptied most of his pack’s contents onto his chest to wrangle the frame into a harness to tow the sledge, which he appreciated from a practical standpoint. He moved most of the clothes and gear off to the side until he found the first aid kit. Finn clenched his jaw. His numb fingers struggled with the heavy-duty zipper on the black bag. He was half a second from ripping the bag apart with his teeth when the damn thing finally opened. His hands shook as he fumbled the nonstick wound covers and the stretchy bandages. Clean it. Cover it. Get inside.
Finn concentrated on one step at a time, relying on the medical training they’d received in the Legion. It wasn’t an ideal situation by any means, but you seldom had the luxury of the exact tool you needed when you needed it. The water bottle had enough left that it cleaned some of the blood out of the wound and took bit of debris with it, but he knew he couldn’t delay a more thorough cleaning without risking a serious infection. But he damn well wasn’t going to crawl through the dirt to a ratty, falling-down cabin with an open wound.
The world darkened around the edges as sweat trickled down his back and his vision blurred. He was too focused on one task, knew he’d gotten tunnel vision to the exclusion of everything else, but there wasn’t anything to do about it. He had to bandage the wound. He didn’t want Lauren to see the ugly red flaps of torn muscle and broken skin, the hint of yellow-white bone shards mixed in. Finn clenched his jaw and figured he could fumble with stitches and butterfly closures later. First he needed to deal with the mess, get Lauren inside, and get some food.
He breathed through his nose as his shaking hands drew everything out twice as long as it normally took, but eventually he secured the sticky, stretchy wound wrap around his leg from ankle to knee, and exhaled in relief. It still hurt like a son of a bitch, but at least he didn’t have to look at it for a while. He helped himself to some of the morphine injectables and thanked Ethan with every cell in his body that the medic managed to keep a fresh stock of painkillers in every first aid kit. Just one didn’t help much but a second definitely took the edge off.
The trees and dirt and rapidly darkening sky tilted a bit more than normal as he unclipped the straps on one of the branches and used the gnarled wood to haul himself to his feet. Finn fixed his attention on the dark rectangle of the cabin’s door. Just needed to get inside. Just a short hop.
Lauren gasped. “You’re—you shouldn’t be walking, you’re going to…”
“Get the rifle and shotgun,” he managed to say. “Whatever other supplies you can bring in. It’s getting cold and we need to build up a fire.”
She blinked those wide, beautiful eyes at him in alarm, but she didn’t move to gather up the belongings strewn across the dirt. She hovered near him, like she meant to catch him if he fell, and Finn wanted to snap at her to back off. It was the bear, hurting and frustrated and unforgivably weak. He swallowed it all back save the growl as he braced against the side of the cabin. Every inch of his body throbbed but the morphine made things slower and softer. Not quite easy, but getting there.
“I’m okay, Lauren,” he managed in an almost gentle tone. It took all his strength and left him light-headed with the effort, but he damn well wasn’t going to snap at her. “I’ll make it inside. It’s a good idea for you to get as much of our stuff inside as you can before that storm rolls in.”
He made it inside before she finally rushed to grab up the bits and pieces that had fallen out of his pack, and she even dragged the branches inside before shutting and locking the broken door. Optimistic of her, to think that locking it would make a difference when there were holes in the ceiling. Finn looked at the structure, unimpressed. It was even worse than he remembered.
The front of the cabin was a kitchen and dining room connected to a living room with fireplace, with more rooms in the back behind a wall. The front room was all open, drafty to start with and made draftier by the cracks between the logs of the external walls. They had lost all the insulation packed between them, and the roof had thin spots and holes that let in even more cold air. She’d set up camp near the fireplace, a dragged in front of it, and a duffel bag with clothes and a few crates of food made up the rest of her nest.
Finn frowned as he surveyed the slim pickings. Something else was going on. Surely a girl like Lauren wouldn’t be living in squalor in a shitty cabin as fall turned to winter. Nothing good that would drive her out of even a small town to the edge of downright wild and dangerous land filled with bears and drug smugglers. She didn’t have enough supplies to mean it was a planned, long-term stay, but she had too much to account for just a short hiking trip with an opportunity for better shelter than a tent. Something else was definitely going on with her. Secrets. On the run from something.
As he studied the various piles of things in front of him, Lauren mumbled under her breath and rushed around him to start shoveling clothes into the duffel and straightening the sleeping bag and sheets that made up the bed. Finn wanted to laugh. She couldn’t actually be self-conscious about the state of a cabin that was falling down about their ears.
Her cheeks flushed as she put a hand to her forehead. “You should lie down. You should really lie down, but I don’t have clean sheets and I would hate for you to…”
“Looks like heaven,” he muttered. Finn hobbled one step, then two, until he almost reached the mattress. “If you don’t mind sharing.”
Her jaw dropped at she stared at him, and her expression revealed the thought of sharing hadn’t even occurred to her. He started laughing and lost his balance. He fell toward the mattress but the morphine caught him and dropped him straight down through the floor and into the dirt far below.