Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CALDER
The sounds came from the trees—one step, and another. Close… too close. Then… snap
I knew what came next.
I lunged, and the other one did so at the same time.
It dropped low and cut across the clearing, driving toward the brush on our side.
Too close to where Milo Hart was. I pushed out of cover, already angling to meet it before it reached us.
Crack.
The shot hit wood behind the creature. Bark burst from a trunk. The other one did not slow. It drove harder, changing its line by a fraction, still coming across our side of the clearing.
I did not stop.
Milo Hart whisper-shouted my name behind me.
I did not turn as I shouted, “Stay!”
I drove forward to cut the thing off.
It hit me before I could turn it.
All weight and speed. Bone slammed into bone. The force drove the air out of me. I lost my footing and staggered sideways, trying to hold my ground, trying to push back.
Claws tore into me, creating deep gashes across my shoulder and down my side. Hot, sharp, and fast enough that I felt the damage before I understood it. My body jerked with it. My legs almost gave way.
I stayed on my feet, but barely. The pain came in hard now, deep and dragging. Every breath pulled at the wound.
The unknown one did not slow down.
It pushed past me, using its weight to clear me out of the way, then broke through the brush behind me without stopping.
Blood ran warm along my ribs and soaked into my fur. Branches snapped where it passed. Then that sound dropped off as it put distance between us.
I didn’t stay where I was, moving two steps back. Off the line the other one had taken—off the line the shot had come through.
The men burst into the forest, fast and focused.
Boots hit the ground where the creature had been. One man swore. The other pushed ahead of him. They did not slow. They did not look my way.
They followed its path straight through where I had been standing seconds before.
Then they were past us, chasing the intruder through the trees.
Not me.
The realization came too late.
I had stepped into its path.
And it had never been trying to reach us.
Pain ripped through my side, sharp enough to disrupt thought completely. My legs nearly gave beneath me as I looked down instinctively.
Blood soaked heavily through the fur along my ribs already, dark and spreading far too quickly.
Too exposed.
Too visible.
Every instinct in me recoiled at the thought of Milo Hart seeing the extent of it, but he was already moving.
He scurried out of the brush, closing the distance between us with the reckless speed humans used when fear overrode caution. “Calder.”
He said my name like he was already bracing for something terrible, hands landing against me before he registered the blood. One hand pulled back, blood covering his palm and fingers. Milo stared at it.
There was too much.
His breathing broke unevenly after that, sharp with panic he was trying and failing to control. “Stay with me,” he said quickly. “Just—stay with me, okay?”
I turned my head toward him despite the pain still pulsing through my side. “Are you hurt?”
For a second, he only stared at me as if I had no right to be asking such a question. “No. I’m not hurt. You are.”
There was no space in that answer for anything else.
I looked down at him.
His face was set, eyes fixed on me, on the ground, on where we were going—everywhere at once. He was scared. I could smell it on him, but he was still moving, thinking, and holding me up as best as he could.
He was not leaving.
That mattered more than it should have. I adjusted my step and leaned into him just enough to keep moving without losing my balance.
“Stay with me,” he murmured.
“I am staying,” I told him.
When I missed a step, his grip tightened. When I leaned too much, he adjusted under me, supporting more of my weight than he should have been able to.
“Easy. I’ve got you.”
The hollow came into view and I paused long enough to regain my balance. The ground felt uneven in a way it had not before. The pain pulled harder now.
“Down,” he instructed. “Sit—here.”
“Did the other one touch you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he responded immediately, sharper this time. “Nothing touched me. I’m fine.”
Good.
Something in me relaxed at that.
I let out a breath too quickly and pain shot through my side in response.
Milo’s hands returned immediately, more careful now as he tried to examine the wound without worsening it. His fingers hovered briefly near the torn fur and blood before pressing cautiously against the uninjured side of my ribs to steady me.
“It’s bad,” he hushed.
“I know.”
His expression tightened further as he looked at the damage again, the blood already spreading too quickly down my side.
“Calder,” he said, voice rough now, “that thing tore into you.”
“It did not damage anything vital.”
“That is not very comforting.”
I pushed myself upright, but the motion dragged painfully against the wound and my leg nearly failed beneath me. I caught myself before I fully lost balance.
Milo jumped into action.
He positioned himself under my shoulder, bracing himself against my weight like the size difference between us no longer mattered. I could already feel the weakness beginning beneath the pain. I had lost too much blood.
“We need to move,” he said.
The hollow was not far.
Normally the distance would have meant nothing.
Now, it meant everything.
“I can walk,” I said.
“Good,” Milo answered immediately, adjusting his grip beneath me.
I managed the first step. Pain ripped hard enough through my side to blur my vision briefly, but my legs remained steady beneath me.
Milo stayed close through it, shaking badly now despite how hard he was trying to control it.
He still did not let go.
“You do not have to do this,” I told him quietly.
“Yes,” he argued. “I do.”
The pain in my side was sharp and deep, but it was not the thing that held me in that moment. It was him. The way he stayed close and refused to pull back, the way he kept working at the wound even when his hands were covered in blood.
I had seen bonds like that before.
I had known what they were called.
I had never been part of one.
Not once.
Not in all my years.
I had watched others choose it. I had seen what it did to them, how it changed the way they moved, the way they stayed, the way they fought to keep what was theirs. I had understood it well enough to name it, but I had never stood inside it.
Until now.
This was not something I was looking at from the outside.
This was mine.
The certainty came without hesitation, without doubt, without the need to test it or turn it over.
I did not have to ask what it was, I knew–I loved him.
The thought did not feel strange or sudden. It felt like something that had been building without my noticing, something that had already taken hold before I gave it a name.
I loved Milo Hart.
Not in the way I had seen in others, from a distance.
In my own way. In my own body. In a way that took root and did not let go.
It had already been there; I had simply given it a name.
It did not weaken me.
It fixed something in place.
He was mine, not in possession, but in certainty.
It meant I would not leave him.
It meant I would not let anything take him away from me, if I could stand between it and him.
I had already moved for him impulsively. Now I knew why.
His hand tightened suddenly, and a sharp breath caught in his throat. “Calder—”
Something had changed.
The pull in my side eased by a fraction. The heat shifted. The blood under his hand slowed to a trickle. His fingers remained pressed against the wound, but fresh blood no longer slipped between them. The torn flesh beneath his hand no longer felt as open as it had moments before.
He saw it.
I saw it in his face.
Confusion first. Then something sharper.
My vision blurred at the edges.
He leaned closer. “I’m here,” he said, low and steady now. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I believed him.
That was the last clear thing I held onto before everything else slipped away.