Chapter 14 Teeth at the Line #2
He pulled me to my feet and caught my elbow when my leg buckled. The coat hung past my thighs, still warm from him, and I held it closed with one fist while I turned toward the hut. I pulled it tighter than the cold called for.
“Anybody in there?” I called.
Abe Hessler came out shaking. His face was gray and his hands weren’t steady, but he was unhurt. He looked at the destroyed fencing, the blood in the snow, the fur and torn fabric littering the clearing, and his mouth opened twice without producing sound.
“You’re okay,” I told him. “That radio call saved your life.”
He nodded once, hard, and Shane guided him away from the hut.
“Where’s Rick?” Shane asked him.
“His mate’s sick. I told him to go home.” Abe swallowed. “I figured one more hour alone wouldn’t matter.”
I turned back to the clearing and found Dominic.
He’d shifted to human form near the tree line.
Naked, kneeling in the snow, one arm pressed hard against his left side where dark blood ran freely between his fingers.
The gash from Kurt’s teeth started below his armpit and followed the curve of his ribs down toward his hip.
Three parallel tears from Kurt’s upper jaw, each one deep enough that I could see the white edge of bone before his hand covered the worst of it. Blood welled up each time he breathed.
“Dom.” I limped to him and dropped into the snow beside him. “Let me see.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Bullshit. Move your hand.”
He moved his hand. It was every bit as bad as it looked. The longest tear ran almost to his hip, and the edges of the wound were ragged where Kurt’s teeth had dragged through muscle.
“Fuck,” I said, and clamped both hands over the worst of it.
He flinched but held still. His skin burned beneath my hands despite the cold, and I felt his heart hammering under my fingers.
The bond between us was wide open, carrying raw sensation instead of words.
His pain. My fear for him. And underneath both, a fury so deep it didn’t need teeth or claws to cut.
“You put yourself in front of me,” I said. “You stupid, stubborn—”
“I’d do it again.”
“Shut up and let me work.”
Around us, West wolves shifted and raised voices filled the clearing. Someone brought blankets. Someone else had a field kit. I kept pressure on Dominic’s side and talked him through the cold while hands I didn’t look up at wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and another around mine.
Zeller showed up with a truck and a stretcher. Shane settled Abe in the cab, still trembling, and I heard someone radio the lodge infirmary. Zeller crouched beside Dominic and me and looked at the wound with the flat expression of a man who’d seen worse but didn’t like seeing this on his mountain.
“Who did that?” Zeller said.
“Kurt Lamb,” I said. “He stood there on two legs, watching his wolves tear down the fence. He shifted in front of me and charged the hut.”
Zeller looked at the destroyed fencing, the churned and bloody snow, the clearing full of West wolves who had come running at the sirens. His jaw tightened, and he didn’t question it.
“Let’s get him to the lodge,” he said.
They lifted Dominic onto the stretcher over his insistence that he could walk.
I stayed beside him with my hands pressed against the bandage someone had taped over the wound, my bare legs freezing under Shane’s coat, my calf sending a sick throb up through my knee with every step on the uneven ground.
Shane drove. The ride was quiet except for Dominic’s controlled breathing and the crunch of tires cutting through fresh snow. I held his hand, and his grip tightened every time the truck jolted over a rut.
“Every wolf at that river saw what you did,” I said.
“Good,” he said.
“Dom.”
“I said good.” He met my gaze in the truck’s dim light. Pain tightened his features, but his expression stayed hard and certain. “Let them know.”
I didn’t argue.
The bond between us held, open and bright.
And beneath it, buried so deep I nearly missed it, Everett’s side of the old connection sent a flicker through me.
His usual anger and jealousy had become background noise over the past weeks, distant and dull, something I barely noticed.
But this was different. A quick, involuntary spike that felt like surprise.
As if he’d been sitting somewhere on the East side of the river when my fear and pain struck him through the bond, and he hadn’t been expecting it.
Hadn’t known it was coming.
I turned that over while the lodge lights grew closer through the pines.
Kurt had stood in that clearing with the calm of a man carrying orders.
Everything about the incursion was deliberate, from the fencing he tore to the hut he targeted.
But Everett’s reaction through the bond was the startled flinch of someone caught off guard.
Maybe Kurt had gone past whatever he’d been told. Maybe Everett’s surprise was genuine. Maybe it didn’t matter, because Kurt had brought his wolves across the river and opened Dominic’s ribs with them, and whatever permission had or hadn’t been given, the blood on my hands was real.
Dominic’s fingers tightened around mine. I squeezed back.
The lodge appeared through the trees, windows bright, the infirmary already lit, and the people gathering at the door were the ones who had come running when the sirens sounded.
They’d brought blankets and bandages and their own fear and anger, and they were watching me step out of the truck with Dominic’s blood drying on my palms and Shane’s coat wrapped around my shoulders.
I limped through the door and into the light and let them see me exactly as I was.