Chapter 2
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Wen
Nobody moved.
We were all frozen, staring at the massive, tattooed and unconscious man bleeding all over my floor.
He was completely naked. Shit. Aggressively naked.
The kind of naked that made you forget how to form thoughts because your brain was too busy processing the sheer amount of muscle and skin on display.
Also, he was bleeding from multiple wounds that looked suspiciously claw-shaped.
Also, his eyes had been glowing red before he face-planted.
Also, he’d called me his mate.
Also, I was pretty sure I’d seen fur receding into his skin.
Bella broke first. She made a noise that sounded less human and more tea kettle reaching critical temperature. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-”
Krystin stood there with her arms crossed, staring at the man with the expression of someone trying to force the universe to make sense through sheer willpower.
Daphne had grabbed my arm and was gripping it hard enough to cut off circulation, whispering “this is insane this is insane this is insane” under her breath.
My brain had blue-screened. Error 404: Reality Not Found.
“Did we-” My voice came out strangled. “Did we just summon a man? A naked man? With the book?”
The pitch of my voice was climbing with each word. I sounded unhinged. I probably was unhinged.
“Is he dead? Did we kill him? Oh my god, did we commit murder via spell book? That’s not how I wanted to go to prison!”
“He’s breathing.” Krystin snapped out of her trance, pointing at his chest. “Look. We didn’t kill him. Yet.”
I looked. His chest was rising and falling steadily.
Also, his chest was extremely nice. Defined.
Muscular. In between the tattoos, he was covered in scars that told stories I probably didn’t want to know.
Stop it, brain. There was a possibly magical man bleeding on my floor.
This was not the time for horny thoughts.
“We should call 911,” Bella squeaked. Her face had gone white except for two spots of red high on her cheeks. “Right? That’s what we do? Call for help?”
But even as she said it, none of us reached for our phones.
“And say what?” I heard myself ask. “Hi, yes, we summoned... something... with a spell book and he’s bleeding in aisle three? They’ll institutionalize us.”
“We could just say we found him,” Daphne offered weakly. Her grip on my arm loosened slightly.
“A naked man. Covered in claw marks. Who appeared out of thin air during a thunderstorm. After we read a summoning spell. Sure. That’ll go over great.”
I forced my feet to move. One step. Then another. I crouched down near him, keeping my distance but trying to get a better look.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, he was huge.
Six foot nine at least. Maybe more. Pure muscle, the kind you got from actual fighting, not from a gym.
Fresh scars covered his body. Old ones, silvered with age, and fresh ones, still red and angry.
His hair was black, long enough to brush his shoulders.
Some of it had been tied back but had come loose during whatever the hell had just happened.
His face was gorgeous in a dangerous way. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. Lips that had no business being that pretty on someone who might be a literal monster. And those wounds-
I leaned closer, trying to ignore the way my pulse kicked up.
Claw marks raked across his ribs. A bite on his shoulder that looked like something had tried to tear a chunk out of him. A gash on his thigh that made my stomach flip. Blood had pooled under him, soaking into the throw rug I’d gotten at a yard sale.
And I could still see the fur receding. Just the last traces of it, vanishing into tanned skin.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. My hands were shaking. “Is he... is he a mythical creature? Like a...”
I couldn’t say it. It was too insane. Too impossible. Too much like every paranormal romance novel I’d ever read, except this was real and happening in my bookstore on a Sunday night.
“A werewolf?” Daphne breathed.
The word hung in the air between us. Heavy. Ridiculous. Undeniable.
We all stared at each other.
We were the Society of Edward’s Sparkles. We’d bonded over choosing the vampire over the werewolf. We’d spent years defending our Team Edward stance against the Jacob fans. And we’d just summoned a werewolf? What kind of sick cosmic joke was this?
“Though,” Krystin said slowly, her eyes still fixed on the unconscious man, “if we had to summon a werewolf... at least this one is fine as hell.”
“KRYSTIN!” Bella’s voice cracked.
“What? I’m just saying. Look at him.”
We all looked.
Yeah. He was... he was extremely fine. I felt guilty even thinking it. Edward Cullen was supposed to be the peak of male beauty, but this guy was giving him serious competition, and I felt like a traitor to everything my teenage self had stood for.
“We can’t call 911,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “They’ll ask questions we can’t answer. Where did he come from? How did he get here? Why is he naked and bleeding from what looks like an animal attack? We tell them the truth, and we’re all going to the psych ward.”
“So what do we do?” Daphne’s voice shook.
I looked at my friends. Looked at the bleeding, possibly-werewolf man on my floor. Looked at the spell book still clutched in my other hand, my blood still smeared across the summoning page.
“We... we clean him up? Stop the bleeding? Figure out what the hell is going on before we make any calls?”
It was a terrible plan. The worst plan. The kind of plan that got people killed in horror movies.
But it was the only plan we had.
Bella made another strangled noise. “Are you serious right now? Wen, we don’t know what he is. What if he wakes up and attacks us?”
“Then Krystin stabs him with Gerald.” I gestured to the cardboard skeleton in the corner.
“That’s not how stabbing works,” Krystin said flatly.
“Look, I don’t have a better idea! Do you have a better idea? Anyone?”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought.” I stood up, my knees protesting. “Krystin, you’ve got nurse training. Can you at least tell us if he’s dying?”
Krystin hesitated, then sighed. “Fine. But if he wakes up and eats us, I’m haunting you.”
“Fair.”
She moved closer, crouching down with the wariness of someone approaching a sleeping predator.
Her fingers went to his neck, checking for a pulse.
“Strong. Steady. Breathing is good. He’s not going into shock.
” She examined the wounds, her face going professional.
“These are bad, though. Really bad. He needs stitches. Probably antibiotics. Definitely a hospital.”
“Can’t do hospital,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, I got that.” She sat back on her heels. “We need supplies. First aid kit. Clean towels. Water. Maybe some vodka.”
“For drinking or for cleaning?” Daphne asked.
“Yes.”
We scattered. Bella grabbed towels from the bathroom upstairs.
Daphne found some old blankets in the storage closet.
I got the first aid kit from under the register and a bottle of vodka from the emergency stash I kept in my desk drawer.
Krystin was already moving the coffee table out of the way, making space.
Between the four of us, we managed to get blankets under him so he wasn’t bleeding directly onto the floor. The man weighed a ton. Solid muscle and zero body fat. My hands tingled everywhere they touched his skin, and I tried really hard to ignore that.
Krystin returned with more supplies and immediately went into full nurse mode. “Someone should cover him,” she said, her face slightly pink despite her professional demeanor. She gestured vaguely at his lower half. “So I can think. And work. Without distractions.”
Daphne threw a blanket over him, and honestly, it helped. I could feel my brain cells returning now that there was less... nudity on display.
We started cleaning his wounds. Krystin took the lead, dabbing carefully at the claw marks across his ribs. They were deep, angry, still bleeding sluggishly. The bite on his shoulder looked like something had tried to tear him apart. The gash on his thigh made my stomach turn.
“These need stitches,” Krystin murmured. “Serious stitches. But we can’t exactly take him to the ER, so...”
“Yeah, we established that hospital is out,” I said.
I was trying to help with bandages, but my hands were shaking. Every time I touched his skin, there was this weird tingle. Warm. Electric. It made my heart race, and not just because there was a possibly magical man bleeding in my bookstore.
There was this pull. In my chest. Tugging toward him. Making me want to lean closer, to touch more, to-
Nope. Absolutely not. I was not going there. I was running on adrenaline and fear and probably having a mental breakdown. That was all this was.
But god, he was gorgeous.
Even unconscious and bleeding and completely insane, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
Strong jaw that looked chiseled from stone.
Sharp cheekbones that cast shadows in the candlelight.
Lips that were way too pretty for someone who might be a literal wolf monster.
His body was ridiculous. All muscle and scars and raw power that made me feel small and safe and terrified all at once.
I’d spent the last three years thinking I might be asexual. Nobody had ever done it for me. I’d bailed on relationships before things got physical because the idea of being touched made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Apparently all I needed was to accidentally summon a werewolf from a spell book.
My therapist was going to have a field day with this.
“He had fur,” Daphne said quietly. She was holding a clean towel, still looking shaken. “I saw it. Actual fur receding back into his skin. And his eyes were glowing. Red. Glowing red.”
“And he called Wen his mate,” Bella added. Her voice was barely a whisper. “What does that even mean?”
“In werewolf lore-” Daphne started, then stopped. She laughed, the sound slightly hysterical. “I can’t believe I’m saying ‘in werewolf lore’ about a real situation. But in the books, mates are... they’re soulmates. Fated pairs.”
My hands froze on the bandage I was wrapping around his ribs.
“No. Nope. We’re not doing this. He’s confused. Or cursed. Or we’re all having a shared psychotic break brought on by too much demon romance and not enough sleep.”
But that tingle got stronger every time I touched him. And the pull in my chest was getting worse, not better. It felt ancient. Inevitable. Wrong in every logical way but right in a way that bypassed logic entirely.
I hated it.
We finished bandaging him up as best we could.
Krystin wrapped his ribs with professional efficiency.
I handled his shoulder, trying not to notice how warm his skin was.
Bella bandaged his thigh with her eyes half-closed, face red as a tomato.
Daphne held supplies and murmured encouragement that sounded more gothic poetry than actual help.
The bleeding stopped, at least. The wounds still looked bad, but they weren’t actively trying to kill him anymore. He was breathing deep and even, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that I found myself matching without meaning to.
I sat back on my heels, staring at him. At this impossible, beautiful, terrifying man who’d called me his mate and then passed out on my floor.
“What do we do now?” Daphne asked.
“We wait,” I said. My voice sounded hollow. “And when he wakes up, we get answers. Where he came from. How to send him back.”
The four of us sat there, surrounded by bloody towels and first aid supplies. The storm was still raging outside, rain hammering the windows in waves. Thunder rumbled, more distant now. The LED candles flickered in the draft from somewhere, shadowing his face.
Krystin grabbed the vodka bottle and took a long drink straight from it. She didn’t offer to share. Nobody blamed her.
“So,” she said into the silence. She was now wiping blood off her hands with a towel. “Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?”
“The naked werewolf?” I asked.
“The fact that you summoned him. With your blood. And he immediately called you his mate. On Halloween.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “I have no defense.”
“This is so romantic,” Daphne whispered. Her eyes were bright despite the fear. “Forbidden love. Fated mates. A summoning gone right.”
“Gone right?” Bella squeaked. “How is this gone right? There’s a possibly magical man bleeding on Wen’s floor!”
“But he’s her soulmate,” Daphne insisted.
“We don’t know that,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “We don’t know anything. Maybe the spell just grabbed a random person. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe-”
My voice drifted off. I didn’t know what the hell to say. Bella was hugging her knees to her chest, rocking slightly. Daphne had her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the unconscious man with an expression caught between fear and fascination.
And I just sat there, surrounded by my best friends and a bleeding werewolf, wondering how the hell my life had gone from struggling bookstore owner to protagonist in a paranormal romance in the span of two hours.
The man’s chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. Steady as a heartbeat.
We waited.