Chapter Nineteen
Pain radiated from Shane’s hip, hot and burning. Something broke when the bullet lodged there. Probably his hip. He couldn’t stand or move his leg. It hit no vital organs that he could tell. But he could swivel his wolfish head around to watch Kimberly kill the hunter.
Several emotions swirled in his chest in just a minute.
Fear that she’d be hurt, pride to see her wolf form for the first time in ten years, mild shock at the ferocity of her attack, then a quiet relief when she climbed off the dead bastard and trotted toward him.
Dark blood smeared across her muzzle and dribbled in streaks down her chest, contrasting sharply with her light pelt of blonde and white.
She nudged his muzzle with hers, the sharp whines flowing in an unending song of worry. With ears folded back and tail tucked, she looked nothing like the fierce beast from just moments ago.
Kimberly dropped to her stomach and crawled along the ground until she pressed into him from shoulder to tail.
His form dwarfed hers, but none of her comfort or his reserves of energy did him any good against silver.
If the bullet stayed in his body any longer, the silver might poison his blood.
His body quivered with the pain; the worst of the twitches concentrated in his haunches.
He never had such an intimate encounter with silver, and never hoped to again, if he made it out of this alive.
He bumped her head and tried to push her away with one of his forepaws.
She had to go for help. In his condition, he couldn’t walk, nor could he shift back into his human form.
He would be more than a load for Kimberly to carry, but two men like Dominic and Hank could cart him out of the park with no problem.
Kimberly, however, wouldn’t budge. More urgently, she buried herself against his shoulder and all but tried to crawl underneath him to drive home the point that she didn’t want to leave him.
He had to make her understand, to impart how serious this was.
Staying would do neither of them any good.
He’d continue to suffer, and he could die, but he wasn’t sure if she understood that.
In a desperate, but necessary move, he touched his forehead to hers and let out a low growl to quiet her. She did, and she would feel his soul reach for hers.
In the mating bond, Shane could communicate with her, mind to mind. They would need no language, human or otherwise. It wasn’t telepathy exactly, but close. His intentions and needs would be clear as if they were her own.
Unlike the last time he tried to form a bond with her, there was purpose behind it, and they were in a different place in their relationship.
Their foundation was less stable, fraught with the cracks and fissures he had made.
But without a human tongue and limited means of communicating exactly what he needed her to do, what other option did he have?
But this wasn’t solely an offer of convenience.
He had intended, much later down the road, to try to mate with her again.
He had pictured some romantic gesture like a candlelit dinner, or a trip to some far-off place they both dreamed of going.
It wouldn’t have been rushed. He’d have time to pour out his heart and feelings to the woman he had held a torch for all this time.
And when he made it undeniably clear that he wasn’t going to let her slip through his fingers again, he’d ask to be her mate.
Not for her to be his mate. It was his honor to have her, not the other way around.
The mating bond would join them together until death or a willful severing of the connection.
Shane would fight to keep the latter from happening, but if Kimberly didn’t get a move on, the former situation was more likely.
But this was done in the middle of a crisis. It was pushed on her with little to no explanation. It was offered as a matter of life or death, not exclusively as a lifelong commitment borne of mutual trust and love. That would have to develop later.
For a long moment, his end of the bond dangled, waiting for her.
He watched her eyes for any sign of comprehension.
There was a second of panic, several more spent in confusion, and then a gentle softening like she might have understood or was at least deep in thought about all the implications.
He tried to impart some communication through his golden wolf eyes to help sway her decision.
He wished they had the time or ability to discuss this, but he could already feel the poison spread.
Then, in one blazing moment, she met him in the ether.
Their mating bond formed. Two souls wrapped around each other, braided into a tight strand that became seamless and infinite.
Through that bond, every sensation flooded and blended, becoming one in mind and heart.
She could feel his pain and understand his needs, while he sensed every conflicting and complicated emotion over what transpired.
Now he understood. Kimberly stayed because she didn’t see hope in his recovery, and she didn’t want to miss the moment when he faded away.
Even in his darkness moment, she wanted to stay with him.
Even now, after understanding the urgency of his condition, she was hesitant to go.
If his wounds weren’t this serious, Shane would have gladly taken the time to celebrate or sink into the bond.
But he transmitted again that she needed to get help. Now.
Kimberly licked at his lips, then hastily untangled herself from his body so she could dash off into the forest. Through the bond, he sensed her promise to be fast, that she would get help and that everything would be all right.
For Shane, even if he died alone in Larson Caves Park, he would die contented.
He was mated to Kimberly. She was his, and he was hers, as they should have been all along.
*
Kimberly sat in Dominic’s parlor, a mug of lukewarm tea between her hands and unfocused eyes burning with fatigue. The world marched on toward midnight, but it felt more like days had passed in the span of a few hours.
She ran through Tolstone as a wolf, half drenched in the blood of the hunter she killed, until she came to Dominic’s house.
She scratched at his back door like a hungry stray, the panic stealing her sense to even attempt to shift back into a human.
She wasn’t even sure, given the rush of adrenaline, that her wolf would give up its skin for her to shift back anyway.
It was just as focused as she was in the mission to get help.
But the Prime Alpha had his ways, and he reached through to her wolf to make her shift back.
He gave her one of his robes to cover her nakedness and then patiently listened to her as she gulped for air and tried to tell him the whole story.
The only part that mattered was that Shane was hurt with silver in Larson Caves Park.
She gave instructions on how to get to the spot by the creek, but he would only need to pick up the stench of gore to find his way.
Dominic called Cole and Hank while he guided Kimberly next door to Erica’s.
He gave his mate the basics of the story and asked her to take care of Kimberly.
Through the haze of racing and manic thoughts, Kimberly was aware of Erica leading her upstairs to a spare bathroom and easing her gently into the shower.
She hadn’t realized how violently she was shaking until she tried to work the hot water knobs. Neither did she realize how much blood covered her body until she saw the pink and red streaks swirl down the drain. It was then that Erica’s stunned look made more sense.
Kimberly scrubbed and washed away every trace of the murder, every speck of dirt and blood. She stood under the steaming hot water, letting it pour down her face and body, but she continued to tremble as if she were standing bare in the snow.
Erica gave Kimberly a spare pair of sweatpants and a shirt before they came back to Dominic’s to wait for the men.
Nolan, the doctor from Kaelyn’s old pack, arrived just moments before Dominic pulled up in front of the house with Shane bleeding in the bed of his truck, accompanied by Hank and Cole.
The scene of the men carrying Shane in his wolf form, limp and unconscious, burned like a brand in her brain.
She would never forget it, nor the relief of still feeling their mating bond and hearing his heartbeat, faintly thrumming inside her head. He was still alive.
His nearness was a startling reminder of what they had done.
Shane wasn’t just a boyfriend, wasn’t just her future alpha.
He was her mate. As they carried him up the stairs to one of the bedrooms, she could track his progress through the house, not by sight or smell, but in her soul.
It was an intuitive tug, as if she held one end of a string and the other led to Shane, and she could sense which direction it pulled, and almost how far away he was within the home.
Not only that, but she could feel just a fraction of his pain.
No matter how she flexed or tried to shift on the sofa, her hip burned and ached relentlessly.
She didn’t have to hear the clink of silver on the porcelain plate to know when Nolan extracted the bullet.
She felt it in her own body somehow. Then, Shane could shift back to his human form to recover.
Erica stayed with her, made her tea, and offered quiet reassurances as the shifters tended to Shane.
Kimberly didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could.
Her keen ears strained to listen to their low voices and tried to make out the conversation, searching for positive words or some guarantee that he’d be all right, that the silver didn’t poison his blood, and that she hadn’t waited too long.
Maybe they kept their voices down so she couldn’t eavesdrop or make her worry.