Chapter 4 Corbin
Corbin
Training was, actually, pretty easy for the overgrown puppy. He took to house training quickly. Sit and stay were easy enough. Even the rule about not sitting on the furniture came naturally.
The leash training, though—that was a real bitch. The dog tried to grab the leash and wrestle it from my hands more than he walked on it. He’d flop to the ground and refuse to get back up.
That’s why it took us twice as long to walk to Miss Heart’s cottage in the woods than it should have.
My knock on the door is met with silence.
Looking around, I can see her car in the driveway.
I know she took it with her when she went on the trip to see her sister—when I checked on the house while she was gone, it was gone too.
I knock again. This time, shuffling inside the cottage lets me know I’ve been heard.
I scent it before she ever opens the door—the scent of roses and lilacs, but they’re dead, rotting in the vase. Acrid and sour. The door cracks open, and two large, brown, red-rimmed eyes peek out at me.
“Hey,” I say in a low tone I might use with a skittish kitten, even though every instinct I have is blaring a five-alarm fire. “I wanted to bring you Deputy. You okay, Miss Heart?”
Her scent wafts through the cracked door, and I freeze. It’s not just the wilted blooms. There’s a base—something beneath her scent. I know that scent. I am that scent.
My teeth grind together, adrenaline spiking. I use every bit of restraint I learned in training to not show my utter panic in my face or voice.
“Can I come in?” I ask, keeping my voice level even though my alpha is raging. I reel him in hard. She does not need him right now.
Miss Heart doesn’t say anything, just nods and opens the door wider, stepping aside to let me through.
She stands just inside her doorway, looking lost and distraught.
She’s in overalls today, but despite the warm spring weather, she wears a long-sleeve turtleneck underneath.
Tear tracks line her face, though they’ve dried now.
Deputy immediately goes to her side, sniffing at her hand and nuzzling her hip. She bends down and hugs the dog, loses her balance, and ends up sitting on the floor. The dog scrambles into her lap, licking the tear tracks off her face before settling down like her crossed legs are his personal bed.
I crouch low in front of her, bringing my face as close to her level as I can. I wish to God I knew exactly what she needed, but without any context, I fall right back into sheriff mode.
“Start from the beginning.”
Miss Heart snuffles and wipes some of Deputy’s kisses from her freckled cheeks with her sleeve.
Then she tells me about the last night of the bachelorette party—the guy who tried to grab her, the protective alpha with brown hair, sharp teeth, and a bite to remember. How, in the chaos, she bit him back.
I listen without interrupting, though my head feels like it’s going to explode. She ends with how she drove from the club—upset and newly bitten—for an hour back here on her own.
My gaze drifts down to the column of her shirt-covered throat. I’m more than concerned at this point. From what she described they bit each other. A mutual accident caused by extreme circumstances. But medically…
“Sweetheart, do you mind if I look?” I ask, gesturing to her neck.
Her shaking fingers grasp the edge of her turtleneck collar and gently pull it down.
The bite is slightly purple around the edges, but it’s not bleeding, and it looks clean.
Still, I’ve seen unplanned bites before.
You can’t just bond with someone and then walk away.
Most purposeful bonds require both people to stay in close proximity for the first few weeks—otherwise, the bond can have horrible side effects.
“How do you feel?” I ask, though I already know. I thought she was shaking because she was upset when I first saw her. Now I see it’s a symptom—of bonding sickness.
“I feel sick,” she nearly whispers. “I haven’t slept. I can’t—” She cuts off and leans her back against the counter as though she can’t even hold herself upright.
Without thinking, I sit down on the floor, reach forward, and pull her, and the dog, into my lap. She gasps but doesn’t pull away, and when I manage to dredge my rusty, extinct purr out from the depths of my chest, her eyes go wide.
Her whole body melts into that sound, and I have to shift her a little so she doesn’t feel my hardening knot at the contact of her soft body against mine. For a moment, we just sit there, breathing, being together. Miss Heart’s face nuzzles into the space between my pecs.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sweetheart,” I promise her—and fuck anything that tries to make a liar out of me.
“I feel like my insides are being torn out,” she confesses. “I don’t know where I start and he ends. I just—”
Before she can finish, she convulses in my arms. A bond sickness seizure.
“Fuck! Winnie!” I yell, fruitlessly. I dump the pup off her lap and run out to my cruiser. Gently—careful with her head—I strap her into the back seat so she can lie across it. Deputy jumps in and lies down on the floor, clearly deciding he’s not leaving her.
The drive from her cottage to the nearest hospital is a blur of sirens and red lights. Nurses rush her away, and a doctor says they have her. Then I’m left in the waiting room feeling as helpless as a child.
But I’m not fucking helpless. I know what I need to do.
I don’t want to—hell, I really don’t—but for Winnie, I’d do anything.