Chapter 17 A Bitter Guest
Dominic POV
The bunkroom door was open six inches when I found him.
Shane sat in the straight-backed chair at the end of the corridor, boots crossed at the ankle, a paperback folded open on his knee. He looked up when I came around the corner and tilted his head toward the gap.
“Been like that for an hour,” Shane said. “He asked if I’d crack it. Said the walls were getting close.”
“You let him.”
“Six inches of hallway air won’t help him escape, Dom.”
I looked at the yellow stripe of lamplight falling across the floorboards. From inside came measured breaths through clenched teeth, the sound of someone fighting nausea.
“Go eat,” I told Shane. “I’ll sit with him.”
Shane closed the book, studied me, then stood without arguing. His boot steps faded toward the common room, and I pushed the door the rest of the way open.
Everett Pryce lay on the narrow cot with one arm across his eyes and the other hanging off the edge, his fingers brushing the floor.
The wool blanket was bunched at his waist. His coat hung on the wall hook, leaving him in only a thin undershirt darkened with sweat despite the cold air leaking through the window facing the pines.
His hair was damp and stuck to his forehead, and in the low light his skin looked gray and waxy.
His hand trembled against the floorboards, a constant, fine vibration that ran from his wrist to his fingertips.
He moved his arm and looked at me. His eyes were glassy and shot through with red, and for a second he didn’t seem to know where he was.
“Salvi,” he said. His voice came out dry and scraped.
“Pryce.”
His gaze shifted past me to the black window. “She’s still out there.”
“Finishing patrol.”
“I know. I can feel her.”
I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms, then immediately uncrossed them when the movement pulled at the bandage beneath my coat.
My left side had been stitched and packed after the attack, then wrapped again after the fire, and every deep breath reminded me that Kurt Lamb’s teeth had found bone.
Everett’s gaze tracked my careful adjustment. He said nothing about it.
“Can you keep water down?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“When was the last time?”
He thought about it. The fact that he had to think told me enough.
“Before the bridge,” he said.
That was this afternoon, before the hut and the fire. He hadn’t kept anything down in the hours since.
I should have felt nothing. This man rejected Liza because her face embarrassed him, then turned his Beta loose on my territory. Every stitch along my side, every torn inch of fencing, every minute Abe spent hiding behind that bench whispering into a radio traced back to Everett’s vanity.
Vanity wasn’t making him shake. His own bond was eating him alive, and killing a sick man on my floor would prove exactly what Kurt had been telling the East wolves: that West Valley wanted conquest, not peace.
“Get up,” I said.
Everett looked at me.
“The yard gate’s been dragging since the last dump. If we stay in this room together, one of us is going to shift, and I don’t have the ribs for it.”
He sat up slowly. His stomach muscles seized, and he swallowed hard, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth until it passed. Then he reached for his coat and stood.
? ? ?
The night was clear, and stars shone above the black tree line.
Our boots broke through the crust of refrozen snow as we crossed the yard.
Fresh powder had drifted against the heavy timber gate overnight, packing into the arc where the bottom rail dragged against the ground.
The gate had sagged a full inch at the latch side, and when I tried to swing it, the bottom rail groaned against the packed snow and stuck halfway.
I couldn’t lift the damn thing. Not properly. Every time I braced and pulled, the stitches along my left side burned, and I could feel the wound shift beneath the dressing. I got the gate partway up and held it while my vision darkened at the edges.
“Move,” Everett said.
He crouched, got both hands under the bottom rail, and lifted. The effort cost him. His face went from gray to white, and sweat broke across his forehead despite the cold, but he held the gate off the ground while I kicked frozen snow and packed ice out of its way with my boot.
We worked without talking for a while.
I found the screw jack in the maintenance shed and brought it back.
Everett held the gate steady while I set the jack beneath the rail near the latch and cranked it high enough to take the strain off the hinges.
The handle was stiff, and working it one-armed sent a deep, sick ache through my whole left side.
But I kept going, because the alternative was asking Everett for help with my own gate.
“Higher,” I said.
He adjusted. His hands shook on the rail, and his breath came in short, controlled bursts that told me he was fighting his stomach with every exhale. But he didn’t let go.
“You looked at that scar and saw a problem with your image.” I stopped cranking and looked at him across the gate. His arms trembled. “You took the proof of her courage and used it against her.”
Everett’s eyes found mine, sick and furious.
“You think I don’t know what I did?” His voice cracked on the last word.
He set the gate down carefully, braced both hands on the top rail, and breathed.
“You think I haven’t replayed that night every hour since she left?
I feel her, Salvi. Every goddamn minute.
I feel how safe she is with your people.
I feel her pride every time she works your mountain.
I felt what she gave you, and I couldn’t close my eyes or turn it off or do a single fucking thing about it. ”
I pictured him lying awake in the East lodge while Liza and I were together in the warming cabin. I didn’t let myself dwell on it.
“Good,” I said.
He laughed, a thin, ugly sound. “You got the second chance I threw away. You didn’t earn it. She walked through your gate because she had nowhere else to go, and you happened to be standing there smelling right.”
I kept my temper. He wanted me to swing, wanted the fight and the pain because both were easier than standing in the cold fixing another man’s gate.
“She had choices,” I said. “She came to my gate, and I let her in.”
“Because fate told you to.”
“The scent was fate. Everything after that was up to us.” I picked up the jack handle again.
“I gave her a room instead of a demand, and I kept my hands off her until she put hers on me. You want to know the difference between us, Pryce? I wanted her, and I made room. You wanted her, and you made conditions.”
He had no answer. His hands tightened on the rail, and the tremor ran all the way up his forearms.
I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Here, you crank the jack,” I said, and handed him the handle.
He took it with shaking fingers and cranked until the latch met the post again.
We cleared the rest of the packed snow from its swing, snugged the upper hinge as tight as its old bolts would go, and eased the jack out from under the rail.
The gate sat square without it, but the hinge would need new bolts.
By then the anger between us had cooled, though neither of us had anything else to say.
Everett straightened and pressed his fist against his stomach.
“If you’re going to throw up, do it in the snow, not on my gate,” I said.
He turned away, walked four steps into the yard, bent at the waist, and vomited nothing. Dry heaves that went on long enough to make me look away. When he came back, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, his legs barely held him.
“How long since you’ve eaten?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I studied him. The hollows beneath his cheekbones were deeper than they’d been this afternoon.
He had dropped weight fast; his coat hung loose across his shoulders, and his wrists jutted from the cuffs.
The sickness was accelerating. If he didn’t eat and keep it down soon, he’d be too weak to stand.
Headlights swept across the tree line. An engine climbed the road, and before it cleared the last turn I recognized the sound of the lodge truck Liza drove.
She parked near the garage, and I watched her climb out carefully, favoring her left leg but moving better than she had this afternoon.
Her patrol jacket was dusted with fine snow, and her black hair caught the light from the lodge windows.
She saw us at the gate and changed direction.
“What happened?” she asked, looking at the jack and the heaps of cleared snow.
“Gate was dragging. We’re fixing it.”
Her eyes went to Everett first. To his hands, specifically, where the tremor was visible even in the low light. She watched the fine shaking for a long second. Concern crossed her face, and I didn’t want to think about it.
Then she looked at me.
“You should be inside,” she said. “You shouldn’t be lifting anything.”
“I wasn’t lifting. He was.”
She stepped close and put her hand inside my coat before I could argue. Her fingers found the edge of the bandage and pressed gently, checking for warmth and wetness, and when she pulled her hand back, her fingertips were clean. The dressing had held.
“It’s dry,” she said. “But you’re an idiot for being out here.”
“I’ve been told.”
Her hand stayed against my ribs for a moment longer than the medical check required.
Through the mate bond I felt her concern sharpen into something warmer, something possessive and certain, and I covered her hand with mine and held it there.
The cold numbed our bare fingers, but neither of us pulled away.
Everett stood four feet from us and watched. He didn’t look away. I saw his throat work and knew the open bond was carrying Liza’s response to him, and I didn’t care. She was mine. She was here, her hand against my ribs, her scent mixed with patrol sweat and pine and cold air.
The jealousy was petty. I knew it. I held her hand against my side anyway.
Liza pulled free after another second and looked at the gate. “Does it swing?”
“Try it.”
She pushed the gate with her good leg braced, and it swung through its full arc without a catch.
“It’ll hold until you replace those bolts,” she said.
Liza looked at Everett. He met her eyes, and whatever passed between them through the open bond, I couldn’t read. But she nodded once, short and flat, acknowledging the work without thanking him for it.
“Come inside,” she told me. “Both of you. It’s below zero and neither of you should be out here.”
? ? ?
Inside the lodge, the common room was warm and half empty. A few West wolves sat near the far fireplace with mugs and low conversation. They looked up when Everett walked in behind me, and the conversation didn’t resume until he was past them and into the corridor.
I found dry clothes in the supply closet. A flannel shirt, wool socks, a pair of heavy canvas pants that would be loose in the waist but long enough. I brought them to the bunkroom and set them on the cot.
“These are clean,” I said. “Change before you freeze.”
Everett looked at the folded clothes, then at me.
“Thank you,” he said. It sounded like it cost him something.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the quartermaster.”
I left him to change and went to the kitchen. The evening meal had been cleared, but whoever ran the West kitchen tonight had left two covered plates in the warmer for latecomers. I took one for Everett and carried it back down the corridor.
He was standing in the hall in the borrowed flannel, the sleeves rolled to his forearms because the shirt was cut for a heavier man. The canvas pants hung from his hips. He looked like a man wearing someone else’s life.
I handed him the plate. Roast elk, potatoes, a piece of bread that was already going stale at the edges. The same food any wolf under my protection would get.
He took it and stood there holding it while Mel Fitch settled into the guard chair at the end of the corridor. Mel had the same expressionless patience that Shane brought to the job, and he positioned himself where he could see both the bunkroom door and the corridor’s only exit.
Everett ate standing up. He took small, careful bites and chewed slowly, testing whether his stomach would hold. After the first few, he closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. The food stayed down.
When he’d eaten half the plate, he set it on the narrow shelf beside the bunkroom door and leaned against the wall.
“I won’t go to her tonight,” he said quietly. “Not when all I have is another apology.”
“See that you don’t,” I said.
“But if Kurt crosses that river again, I need to be standing when he does. And right now I can barely stand.”
“Then eat the rest of the plate, drink the water on your cot, and try to keep it down until morning.”
He picked up the plate and went back into the bunkroom. He left the door open six inches, the same gap Shane had allowed.
I walked to the common room, where Liza sat near the fire with her injured leg stretched toward the heat and a mug of something between her hands. She looked up when I lowered myself into the chair beside her.
“He ate?” she asked.
“Half a plate. It stayed down.”
She nodded and drank from her mug. Through our bond I felt her turning something over that she wasn’t ready to say. I didn’t push.
“Your bandage needs changing before bed,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I know that too.”
She almost smiled and leaned sideways until her shoulder touched mine. I settled against her despite the ache in my ribs, rested my arm along the back of her chair, and let my fingers brush the ends of her hair where it fell past her collar.
Down the corridor, behind a cracked door, Everett lay on a cot in borrowed clothes, feeling Liza answer my touch through a bond he refused to release.
I pulled Liza closer and let him feel that too.