Chapter 7 Harkan
Harkan
The scent of blood hit me before the door finished crashing open.
I was on my feet before conscious thought caught up, my body moving on pure instinct. Beside me, Sable tensed. Alarm spiked through the bond that connected us whether she wanted it to or not.
Protect. Defend. OURS.
The wolf surged beneath my skin, claws pricking at my fingertips, but I forced him back with an effort that made my teeth ache.
Two figures stumbled through the doorway, and for a moment, the hall went utterly still.
The man had one arm slung over the woman's shoulders, his weight dragging her down, and even from across the room, I could see the damage.
Long, ragged gashes across his chest, deep enough to show bone.
Blood soaking through his shirt, dripping onto the floor in a steady patter that seemed impossibly loud in the silence.
"Border patrol," someone said. "That's Declan and Yara."
The words broke the spell. Voices rose, chairs scraped back, and the pack surged toward their wounded members with the instinctive need to help that defined us as a people.
Somewhere in the chaos, a child screamed.
Elodie. She was frozen near the far wall, her small face white with terror, Trouble pressed against her ankles with his fur bristling.
One of the older wolves—her mother, I realized—scooped her up and carried her toward the back exit, murmuring reassurances that did nothing to stop the girl's tears.
Trouble hesitated, torn between his charge and his witch. Then Sable's magic flared, and he made his choice, darting through the crowd to take up position near his mistress.
I was moving, too, pushing through the crowd, but someone got there first.
Sable.
She was already kneeling beside Declan by the time I reached them. Her hands pressed against the worst of the wounds, her face pale but focused as Trouble stood guard at her back, his small body bristling with foxfire that cast dancing shadows across the floor.
"Set him down," she ordered, her voice sharp and certain. "Carefully. Don't jostle him."
Yara stared at her with wild eyes. "Who—"
"Someone who can keep him alive until Thea gets here," I growled. "Do what she says."
Look at her. Look at our mate. Strong. Capable.
The wolf was prowling beneath my skin, pride and possessiveness tangling together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. I wanted to pull her away from the blood and the danger, wanted to wrap myself around her and snarl at anyone who came too close.
Instead, I crouched beside her and watched her work.
"What happened?" she asked as she pressed her hands to Declan's chest, his blood staining her fingers almost instantly. Sable’s magic rose on the air, a warm pulse that brushed against my senses like sunlight through clouds.
"Border patrol," Yara gasped. She was injured, too: a gash on her arm, bruises darkening her face, but she was standing. "We were checking the eastern perimeter. Something... something hit us."
"What kind of something?"
"I don't know." Yara's voice cracked, and I smelled the fear rolling off her in waves. "There was a man—hooded, cloaked—but I couldn't... my mind wouldn't hold onto him. Every time I tried to focus, he just slipped away. Like looking at smoke. And then Declan was down and I just—we ran."
The wolf went still inside me. Not calm—never calm—but focused. Hunting.
A man the eye couldn't hold. A presence that slipped away like smoke.
I'd heard stories. Whispers from my father's court, back when I was still fool enough to listen. But I'd never seen the effects firsthand.
Until now.
"Couldn't focus on him," Sable murmured, half to herself. "Like looking at smoke..."
Something flickered across her face—not recognition, not yet, but the beginning of a question. A thread she couldn't quite grasp.
Then Declan groaned beneath her hands, and whatever thought had been forming vanished as she refocused on the wounds.
She's afraid. Comfort her. Protect her. She's OURS.
I wanted to touch her. Wanted to pull her against me and tell her she was safe, that I wouldn't let anything hurt her, that I would tear apart anything that tried.
But she wasn't mine. Not really. Not yet. And we had wounded to tend.
"Get the healer," Sable snapped, her voice steady despite the fear I could feel through the bond. "Now."
"I'm here."
Thea pushed through the crowd with the easy confidence of someone who'd seen worse than this and hadn't flinched. Her golden eyes took in the scene in a single assessing glance—Declan's wounds, Sable's magic, my white-knuckled control.
"Well," she said, dropping to her knees beside them, "that's not ideal."
"There's something in the wounds," Sable told her. "My magic won't stick. It keeps... sliding off."
Thea placed her hands next to Sable's, and I watched their power merge—Sable's cool silver and Thea's warm gold, weaving together with a precision that spoke of instinct rather than training.
Thea was quiet for a long moment, her brow furrowing as her magic probed the wounds. "There's something... wrong here. The tissue won't knit. It's like something is actively fighting the healing."
"I felt it, too," Sable said. "My magic keeps sliding off. Like oil on water."
"Not oil." Thea's expression darkened. "More like... absence. Like something ate the magic right out of the wound and left a hole behind."
She glanced at Sable, one eyebrow raised. "I'm Thea, by the way. Since no one's bothered with introductions."
"Sable."
"The witch. Yeah, last time we met, you were unconscious." Thea turned her attention back to Declan. "Keep the pressure steady. I'll handle the residue."
The wolf and I watched them work.
Strong, he rumbled. Capable. She protects what is ours. She belongs with us.
She did. Gods help me, she did. And watching her kneel in the blood of my pack members, fighting to save a man she’d never met and didn't know, her magic burning bright despite her fear—
I was already gone. Had been gone since the moment I'd tasted her lips in that shop, since the moment the bond had snapped into place and remade the world around her.
But this was different. This wasn't just the bond, just the wolf's obsession, just instinct and magic and fate.
This was watching her choose to help when she could have stayed back. Watching her push past her fear because someone was hurt and she could do something about it. Watching her become part of my pack one stubborn, selfless act at a time.
Mate, the wolf whispered, and for once, the man agreed completely.
Minutes stretched like hours. Sable and Thea worked in tandem, their magic scouring the wrongness from Declan's wounds while the pack watched in tense silence. Their fear, their anger, their desperate need to do something pressed against my senses.
Sable's exhaustion bled through the bond like water through cracked stone. She was pushing too hard, giving too much, and she didn't have the reserves for it. Not yet. Not while she was still recovering from her own injuries.
Stop her. She's hurting herself. Make her stop.
I forced myself to stay still. To let her finish what she'd started. Because she needed to do this—not just for Declan, but for herself. For her place in a pack that still didn't fully trust her.
Finally—finally—the worst of the bleeding stopped. The gashes began to close, raw red flesh knitting together under the combined force of Sable's silver and Thea's gold.
"He'll live," Thea said, sitting back on her heels. She wiped blood from her hands onto her trousers without even a hint of squeamishness. "Going to feel like shit for a week, but he'll live."
A murmur rippled through the watching pack. I caught fragments: “Did you see that” and “her magic” and “she didn't have to,” and beneath the words, something shifting. Not trust, not yet. But the sharp edge of suspicion had dulled into something closer to curiosity.
Bess pushed forward, her weathered face unreadable. She looked at Sable for a long moment, cupped Sable’s chin in her rough hand, and then gave a single, curt nod.
From Bess, that was practically a standing ovation, but it made sense. Declan was her youngest nephew, and his mother, Bess’ baby sister, had died a decade ago. Declan was her only living family, and Sable had just helped save his life.
Sable swayed slightly as she blinked away tears, and I was there before I made the conscious decision to move, my hand closing around her elbow to steady her.
She looked up at me, and for a moment, her walls were down. I saw the exhaustion beneath the stubbornness, the fear beneath the bravado, the blood pooling under her nose. The girl who'd stood on a bridge once and thought about letting go.
Never, the wolf snarled. Never again. We won't let her fall.
"You did good," I murmured, brushing the blood from her upper lip.
She didn't pull away from my grip. That alone told me how tired she was.
"The residue," she said quietly. "That feeling of absence, of something eating the magic... it's familiar."
Our eyes met, and I noticed the moment she made the connection.
"My shop," she breathed. "The hooded man."
The memory rose unbidden—her voice in the candlelit dark, describing a void wearing skin. A man with no scent, no aura, no taste of magic. Blood vanishing into his palm like his flesh devoured it.
I'd hoped I was wrong. Hoped the thing she'd described was a nightmare, a trick, anything but what I'd feared.
Devourer. The wolf's growl vibrated through my chest. Father's creature. Still here. Still hunting.
I'd known my father sent it. The token Trouble had stolen from the hooded man's cloak had confirmed that much—my father's mark, carried only by his most trusted weapons. But I'd thought it was a message. A warning. A single act of violence to remind me who held the real power.
I hadn't expected him to leave the creature here. Hadn't expected it to keep hunting.
"It's still in your territory," Sable said quietly, echoing my thoughts. "It never left."