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Chapter 6
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2021-09-29 10:44:08Three things occurred to Isabella as she watched the vampire charge the alpha wolf as if in slow motion. The first was that, based on those bloodstained fangs diving toward them, vampires were far more lethal than stories had led her to believe. As a Rogue who’d grown up in the countryside of the Sunshine State, she hadn’t had occasion to encounter many. Aside from being in New Orleans, they were more common in the northern parts of the country, and they tended to keep to big cities with high human population density—the sort of places where she’d never spent a day in her life.
The second revelation she had was that not only was she without an ounce of fighting ability to fend off this creature, but she wasn’t athletic. She was soft and feminine, and running without a proper sports bra was unworkable. That was certainly an annoyance, but it had never occurred to her as a survival problem. Until now that she stood frozen in place.The third and final conclusion she came to was that this arrogant commander was likely her only chance at survival. Though he had told her that her ass was large, and she felt certain that was enough for any man to deserve death. But at the moment, she needed him in full fighting capability, so he’d have to live for now.
He was yelling at her. She saw his mouth moving, but someone seemed to have turned off the sound. Instead, there was a harsh ringing in her ears.
Run, she finally deciphered.
Unfortunately, it was too late for that.
The slow motion stopped as the commander shoved her square in the shoulders, sending her stumbling backward several feet and out of the way as the vampire collided with him. Sharp pain shot up her spine.
At least her ass cushioned her fall.
Scrambling to her feet, she bolted away from the melee. Isabella only made it several yards before a second terrifying hiss stopped her in her tracks. Another vampire.
Glowing red eyes glared at her from the darkness. Adrenaline quickened her pulse. She didn’t think about the fact that she had no idea how to battle a vampire. Instinct took over. It was her or this red-eyed bloodsucker, and hell would freeze over before she went down without trying.
She shifted into her wolf as the vampire lunged. Fangs and canines clashed. Isabella snarled and bit indiscriminately, her canines locking down and sinking in. The taste was awful. Like putting something dead in your mouth, which she supposed she was, but still she held her grip, shaking her head back and forth to cause further damage.
But the vampire wasn’t having it.
It leveraged her hold, throwing her onto her back. She yelped and released it. Poised above her, the vampire reared to strike. No. She couldn’t let it damage an artery. She blocked her neck with her front paw. The vampire’s fangs sank into the furred flesh of her foreleg and a high-pitched keen tore from her throat. Pain, the likes of which she’d never known, seared throughout the limb.
Suddenly, the vampire’s weight lifted. The commander stood over her, having thrown the vampire off her. His eyes blazed the golden of his wolf’s, and even in human form, his teeth were bared in a feral snarl. He clutched a bloodied stake in his hand.
He was lethal and glorious, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away.
The commander charged the bloodsucker head-on, meeting its attacks blow for blow in a calculated battle that was every bit as mesmerizing as it was terrifying. Isabella shifted back into human form. He had a knife at his belt, but the fury of his
fists and the stake in his hand seemed enough. She’d never seen someone so skilled at combat.
A thread of hope for their safety grew in her. Until she spotted movement in the trees. The glowing red eyes of another vampire watched the commander with malicious intent, but this one was less animal-like than the other, almost human in appearance.“No!” Isabella shouted a warning.
The commander’s attention snapped toward her as the vampire looming in the trees retreated with a terrible, sadistic grin. The other bloodsucking beast he’d been fighting seized the moment of distraction and dove in for the kill. Isabella screamed, covering her eyes. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t.
And then everything went quiet.
Keeping pressure on her bleeding arm, she slowly lifted her gaze. Relief flooded her as she stared up at the face of the commander. He stood over the vampire, who was now truly dead, the stake sticking from its chest. Jeremy looked lethal, panting with exertion.
“You saved me.” Her words came on an exhale. “Thank you,” she whispered. He didn’t acknowledge her gratitude, as if he often saved people’s lives with random acts of bravery. He glanced toward her without fully facing her.
Something dark flashed in his eyes as he noticed her wound. “You’re hurt.”
As he watched her, the hard planes of his face softened, and the open concern in his steely eyes caught her off guard. It was as if the mask he wore had fallen away. This was a man who shielded his true self under layers of jagged battle scars, hiding away behind lock and key. He faced the world as a hardened warrior, but he was far more complex than that. She realized that now with total certainty, because for a brief second, she had seen him as he truly was.
This was a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, who saved others pain by making it his own. The hurt in his gaze at the sight of her injury tore her to shreds. She was a stranger to him, but that failed to matter. It was as if he held himself personally responsible for her injuries, her protection, and her safety. In that moment, her pain was his pain.
The intensity of that stopped her breath short.
In an instant, he broke the contact between them, his face hardening again as he glanced away. But her heart had been warmed by that intense gaze, brief as it had been. There’d been so few times in her life when someone had looked at her that way—as if they cared for her, as if she mattered, as if she meant something to them.
As if she were someone worth fighting for…
But for a moment, this man who was supposed to be her enemy had given her just that, and now that she’d seen it, she’d give anything to see just a glimpse of his tenderness again.
“Are you all right?” he asked, further breaking the tension between them. With careful movements, she probed the tender flesh to test the depth of the
lacerations. An inch or so deep, but it would heal within a night. She cradled her arm against her chest, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. The pain was sharp, but it was far from the worst that could have happened.
“It will heal. Trust me. I’m a doctor. A few stitches will take care of it.”
She may have been a miserable fighter, but she knew medicine. She’d been tending animal wounds on the ranch since she was a small child, long before she’d gone to medical school. Animal, human, a werewolf cross between the two: it didn’t matter. As an orthopedic surgeon for the rodeo, she’d had a fair amount of experience handling organs and protruding bones.
She could handle the aftermath of fighting. It was the violence she couldn’t handle. Not after Wyatt. She’d experienced violence every day for the past several years at the hands of the Wild Eight.
The commander sounded breathless from the fight, though she didn’t blame him. What he’d done had taken amazing strength. “There’s antiseptic and medical thread back at the ranch,” he said.
On the Missoula Grey Wolf ranch. The very prison from which she’d escaped. She shook her head. “I can’t go back there.”
His brow crinkled. It made him look far older than she guessed he was. Those golden wolf eyes blazed with unchecked frustration. “You’re going back there whether you like it or not. For your own s-s-safety.” He slurred his s.Isabella raised a brow. She was about to tell him that saved life or not, he was no
boss of hers. But that was when he turned fully toward her, and she noticed the blood, pooling beneath him in the snow. Her gaze followed to the bloodied blade in his hand, which he’d clearly removed from his own abdomen. She blanched.
With slow, unsteady movements, he followed her gaze, weaving slightly as he did so. “Shit,” he muttered as his eyes rolled back into his head. He collapsed, dropping like a stone.
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Isabella scrambled toward him, allowing her medical training to take over. She checked his pulse, measuring the beats and feeling them quickly dropping. The rise and fall of his chest seemed weak. His lips were slightly bluish around the edges. Placing her ear to his chest cavity, she listened to the sound of his labored breathing.From the looks of it, the knife had pierced the pleural space of his chest cavity, causing a steady stream of air and blood to flood in. The gravity and pressure had created a tension pneumothorax—a collapsed lung. With only one functioning lung, the air supply in his blood was dropping, causing his pulse to slow, and he was going into shock.If the blood continued to pool in his lungs, his prognosis was grave. He could die within minutes if the condition continued to deteriorate. Faster than even the most powerful of wolves could heal. She used both hands to hoist him onto his left side.Blood drenched the snow beneath them. Sh
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As Isabella monitored Jeremy’s pulse, she spent the next several hours alternating between watching the snow-capped mountains and memorizing the relaxed lines of his handsome face. There wasn’t much else to do inside the cabin, and she tried to reassure herself that was the sole source of her intrigue with him—but she was failing miserably.Every time she looked at him, especially in this relaxed state of sleep, the vulnerability and emotion she’d seen from him in the woods haunted her, softening her opinion of him. He’d been so stoic throughout her wound care, the perfect image of the hardened soldier, yet when she’d turned away, she’d heard him wince in pain.He was strong, fierce, brave, hardened by war. All the things he showed the world, yet…There was softness underneath it all. She’d seen it. And now that she had, she couldn’t bring herself to forget it.She shook her head. She should know
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Jeremy had been about to ask where he’d heard her name before, but as he’d watched her pretty features become stricken with terror, he’d recognized her in an instant. He’d seen her once before in a photograph. A photograph inside a file at Grey Wolf command control back at Wolf Pack Run.A file labeled Wanted Wild Eight.“Isabella Beaumont,” he said, recognition flooding over him.The Wild Eight’s only physician.Which meant this woman who’d saved his life, who he’d held naked beneath him until he was aching with anticipation and pleasure…was his enemy.She dropped the empty basin in her hands as the fear in her eyes deepened.And then she ran.Shit.Jeremy raced after her. He couldn’t let this woman go. She bolted into the trees as he chased her, rounding pine trunks and leaping over mounds of snow. She was fast, but even with her head start, he gained on her q
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Isabella was certain no other person—wolf, human, or otherwise—had ever infuriated her more than Jeremy Lennon. She’d always considered herself a mild-mannered person. Having grown up on a ranch in the Deep South, she’d been taught to be polite, accommodating, and generally pleasant. Sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her mother used to say of her. Some would have called her bookish, shy even—when she wasn’t donning her lab coat overtop her cowgirl boots, that is.Yet, at the moment, as she looked into this cowboy’s ruggedly handsome face, all Southern hospitality flew out the window. Everything about him turned her tosalt instead of sugar. Who did he think he was, bossing her around and acting as if he gave a crap about her safety?The high commander of the Grey Wolves, that’s who.And now he was baiting her. Playing on her sense of curiosity with that dark, playful grin on his face. And she was falling
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Jeremy had almost let her walk away.That thought haunted him as they rode down the mountainside atop Silver. The snow-covered pine trees and surrounding scenery passed in a steady blur. Or maybe he was too distracted by the enticing scent of a certain beauty’s dark hair inches from his face. She smelled of spring, of lemon verbena and sweet wildflowers, despite the cold winter air surrounding them. It was a warm, intoxicating mixture that made his cock ache.What had he been thinking? If he’d let her go, Maverick would have been beyond pissed, but that paled in comparison to what really vexed him. It was the thought that if he’d let her walk away, that would have meant he couldn’t guarantee her safety. This woman was an enemy to him, but all things considered, the thought of leaving her open to potential attack was torturous. He never showed an enemy mercy, yet he wanted to help her.And he hated it. He fucking hated it.The last
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