Seven
Arwen wasn't sure if she was dreaming or awake.
And that was before a hot, dripping, definitely naked man strode into view.
Even in the golden afternoon light, she could see most of his body was covered in an angry, red rash, with welts everywhere except on his back.
Some of them were bleeding, the blood mixing with the water that dripped down his legs onto the wooden floor.
What was wrong with him? Hives? Some monstrous form of chicken pox that had escaped from a lab? Or some horrible tropical disease so contagious it wiped out entire villages, leaving no survivors?
Arwen shrank deeper under the sheets, leaving only a tiny gap she could peep through. Because while she was justifiably afraid of whoever this huge, naked man might be and whatever contagion he carried, she was not fool enough to believe that if she hid her face, he'd go away.
But then she blinked, and he did disappear. In his place stood an enormous grey wolf. The sort of wolf that had lived in these forests when her father arrived, but had been hunted to extinction in Scotland in the centuries since.
He must be a wolf shifter, then.
He obligingly demonstrated by transforming back into a man.
A man who was no longer dripping, though the welts remained.
A little less angry, and not bleeding as profusely as before, but...
ah, he'd turned into a wolf again. A truly magnificent creature.
Then again, so was the man. Muscles upon muscles, but he moved like he'd earned them, not injected them.
If she'd met him in a bar, or maybe one of the Mirror Academy balls up at Tremotino Castle, she definitely would have given him a second glance.
Especially if he wasn't wearing a shirt, like now.
His present lack of pants would have gotten him thrown out of a bar or a ball, but in the relative privacy of the cottage, she certainly wasn't complaining.
Of course, she should probably let him know he wasn't alone, but as a wolf shifter, surely his superior sense of smell had already informed him of that.
That he chose to put on a show for her...
from the stories her father had told her, this sort of thing was very much a part of fae hospitality. Fae weren't prudish like humans.
Or shifters, apparently. Because...wow. She couldn't remember the last time a man had left her heart racing quite like this. She was even a little breathless. And this bed was big enough for both of them...
"I'll be right back, beautiful," he said in a growl she felt right through to her core.
Be still her beating heart.
Except he didn't leave. He just sort of stared at her for a moment, then swore.
Damn. This definitely was a dream, then.
Most likely drug induced by whatever else Ravenna had given her with Da's digitalin, because Ravenna was as much a Dylan Thomas fan as Da had been, with no desire to send Arwen gently into the dying light, or whatever the words were.
If Ravenna had given her something to make her sleep, it would come with nightmares.
And Arwen knew better than most that this was the point in the nightmare where you started running, or things were going to get worse.
She sidled across the bed, sliding out on the opposite side to Mr Sexy Wolf. Closer to the door, too. As long as the door didn't grow tentacles or teeth or something else even more trippy, she'd be out of there and on her way to the fae realm before he could blink.
Out the door, round the corner, until her bare feet touched icy white tiles, where she remembered leaving her clothes.
She'd borrowed a worn t-shirt at some point when she'd stumbled out of bed to go to the loo some hours ago because she'd been freezing, but if she intended to go outside, she needed more than just that ratty borrowed shirt.
She'd left her clothes in the washing machine, which had seemed the safest place to put the muddy mess, figuring she'd either be able to brush the dried mud off them in the morning.
But a window full of suds was what greeted her instead – someone had set off the wash cycle on the washing machine, with her clothes inside.
The only other clothes she'd found had been in the bedroom, now occupied by Mr Sexy, Angry Wolf.
No, not any more. He stood in the doorway of the laundry now, blocking off her access to the rest of the house.
Definitely a nightmare, because what man willingly did washing?
Unless he lived alone, which would make him a lone wolf.
Packless. That was bad. Most wolf shifters would do anything to stay in the pack, which meant most lone wolves had been thrown out for one reason or another.
She knew her mother had been an exception – she'd left her pack because watching everyone else shift when she couldn't had made her miserable, but she'd been the exception, rather than the rule.
Her old pack leader and some of her cousins had flown all the way from New Zealand for her funeral, Da had told her.
Not that Arwen herself remembered – she'd still been a baby then.
But this guy...
A lone wolf, yes, but he looked more shocked than angry. Which gave her the advantage.
This called for Ravenna's ordering-the-servants-about tone.
"You washed my clothes. Provide me with suitable replacements, and I'll go," Arwen said.
"I don't know if we have any more Spice Girls shirts. I'm surprised that one's survived his long," he replied.
Spice Girls? What? Arwen looked down and suppressed a groan. No wonder the t-shirt was tatty. It was probably older than she was. "Fine. Another shirt with fewer holes, then."
"You can take your pick of the spare shirts.
I'm sure we'll have something in your size.
It's pants that might be a problem. Most of the clothes here are for kids and you're curvier than even the teenagers.
I mean, I keep a couple of spare sets of clothes here, because sometimes stuff gets shredded, but I'm...and you're..." He'd taken a moment to slide on a pair of shorts that covered the essentials but didn't leave anything to the imagination.
If anything, it only highlighted his narrow hips and those well-muscled thighs, as well as the monster that nestled between them.
If this wasn't a dream...
"You'd be better off staying for dinner while the wash cycle finishes, and the dryer one, too. Then you can have your own clothes back, all clean," he finished.
"I don't see a dryer anywhere," she snapped.
"It's a combination washer dryer. It does everything.
Someone ordered it by mistake, and when no one else in the pack needed it, I hauled it up here.
It's come in handy a few times now, and it stops the young bucks from stealing the girls' underwear off the outside line.
We thought one of the boys was doing it, until we found shed antlers wearing the remains of a bra.
We had to take all the kids axe throwing for the day to make it up to them.
The girls for getting their underwear stolen, and the boys for being under suspicion. "
Young deer stealing girls' underwear? Oh, you couldn't make this shit up. For the first time, Arwen began to wonder if this really was a dream.
"What is this place?" she demanded.
"It's a cabin in the woods where we bring some of the kids from the estate, for a bit of time away from their parents, and a bit of wilderness survival and stuff.
Deer hunting, when it's the season for it.
" He was being cautious now, not mentioning his dual nature or how hunting didn't involve guns.
"How many teen girl wolf shifters does it take to take down a deer?" Arwen asked.
The man relaxed. "Only one, if the deer is wearing her undies as a hat. Zero, if her brother spots the deer first."
"Are older brothers really that protective?
I thought it was one of those myths you only find in books and movies.
Like that having a six pack and big equipment means a man's amazing in bed, when in fact, a combination of steroids and too much time in the gym, plus possible surgical enhancement usually results in the opposite. "
Most men would have arced up in their own defence, but this one?
He just grinned and shrugged. "I've never been to bed with a man, so I wouldn't know about the second one.
Protective older brothers? I do have a younger sister.
She's only my half sister, and I haven't really known her for very long, but now I do...
it's almost instinctive, you know? I don't think she'll ever need me to rescue her clothes from a deranged deer, but when she asked me to head up here to do some detective work for her, I didn't hesitate.
She made me dinner, too. There's enough for two.
I really did mean it when I said you could stay for dinner while your clothes dry.
It's the least I could do, after washing them for you and all. "
"I should really go..." Suddenly, Arwen felt a lurch at the thought of leaving. Which was crazy.
"It'll be dark soon, and these woods aren't a place you want to be hiking through at night.
In daylight, as long as you keep to the marked hiking trails, and don't get too close to the wildlife, you should be fine, but at the moment, even I plan on staying in the cottage for the night, and heading home in the morning. "
"What lives in these woods that a wolf could possibly be scared of?
" Arwen asked. The biggest things were badgers, and while she'd heard stories about them being defensive, it wasn't like they were any match for a full-grown wolf in his prime.
Unless there were fae monsters in the woods who'd slipped through the ring between realms. Da had told stories about nightmare creatures even he dreaded.
He hesitated. "Something is making the wildlife here...
weird, at the moment. We suspected it might be something in the water, but rabies is a possibility, too.
That's why I'm here. I'm taking samples to see if we can solve the mystery.
I'd have finished sampling already if I hadn't run into a pack of angry otters. "
Arwen started to laugh. "Otters? They don't move in packs.
The collective noun for those is a drift, and even that's rare to see, or so I'm told.
I've never seen a single otter in the wild, let alone a whole drift.
They're so cute, though. Is there any chance you might be able to show me in the morning, maybe? "
"Not on your life. You should have seen what they did to me!"
The rash. "You're allergic to otters?"
"Hell, no. Those were bite marks, not hives. The little bastards attacked me."
"That's..." Crazy. Not possible. But she'd seen the marks, and he had been bleeding.
Of course, all the marks were gone now, but she hadn't imagined them.
All this must mean that she definitely wasn't dreaming.
Even her subconscious wouldn't have dreamed up half of this. It was all far too... "Weird."
"I'll say. Anyway, what do you say to dinner?
My sister runs a catering company, and she really is an amazing cook.
I can give you a lift back to your car in the morning, and hiking's always safer with a buddy, especially one who knows the terrain.
I'll even shield you from the bloody otters.
" He held out his hand. "What do you say? "
Her head was spinning. Arwen didn't know what to say. But she reached out to shake his hand and the whole world went grey.
"Fuck, are you okay? No, you're not. Your lips are blue and...fuck, your fingertips are, too. That can't be good. I'll get you back to bed where you'll be warm while I find something for you to wear."
Arwen was too weak to resist as he lifted her in his arms, like she was his bloody bride, and carried her to the bed.
Dizziness. Poor circulation. Blue lips and extremities.
It could be symptoms of digitalin poisoning, but she suspected it was worse.
She hadn't taken the antidote soon enough. The drug had damaged her heart.
"Here, I'll get into bed with you to warm you up. I won't let anyone die of hypothermia on my watch. No fucking way." A warm, hard body squished into the bed beside her, wrapping her in a cage of hot muscles that Arwen only wished she were well enough to appreciate.
All she managed was a breathy laugh, but even her breath was short. Fuck. That was not good. "It's not hypothermia. It's my heart," she managed to say.
"Your heart? You have a heart condition? We have to get you to hospital. To hell with otters and it getting dark outside. I'll call in a favour and find someone to fly you out."
"No, I don't. Or I didn't. I was poisoned..."
The words spilled out of her, and Arwen couldn't stop them. Her father's sudden illness and subsequent death. Her stepmother. Escaping to the hospital, only to have them assume she'd attempted suicide...
"So I can't go to the hospital. They'd only put me on suicide watch and call my stepmother, so she could finish the job.
So unless you know of some miraculous way of healing a damaged heart, I'll still have to leave in the morning, in search of a long shot my father suggested before he died," Arwen finished, wiping away a stray tear.
The ceiling had swum back into focus while she'd been talking, and she hadn't noticed until now.
Lying on the bed beside her, the hot wolf man took a deep breath. "This is going to sound crazy..."