As I’d been flattened against Dillon’s back when he did most of the damage, my chest was largely intact. My arms and thighs had taken the brunt of his rage. Sam checked the dressings on my arms and removed one where water had got beneath the seal. When she pulled it away, my eyes widened. It amazed me that I still had an arm attached.
She noticed my expression. “It’ll heal up fine. The wulf will see to it. But you’ll have interesting scars.”
I flexed my hand and it still functioned, although not without protest. She moved to my thighs and had to remove a bandage that ran from my knee to my hip. Stitches connected the deepest section, but below the row of sutures, the flesh had been torn away. Deep black bruising surrounded the wound, fading through the shades of purple, burgundy, red, green, and yellow as it dispersed into the tissues.
“Christ,” I said.
“They always look more impressive the next day.” Her voice remained unemotional. She dried the skin around it. “I’ll leave that inflamed one uncovered too, and I’ll get the doc to check it.”
I hoped the wulf in me was up for it. I was a mess.
A vehicle pulled up outside, and Sam got up. The door to my suite creaked open and, with a clatter of claws on bare floor, Keen launched herself onto the bed, where she bounced all over my sore body.
“Sam, meet Keen,” I gasped as I curled into a fetal position and shivered in pain.
“Keen, down,” Sam said, in a tone that resonated through me and the dog.
Panting, Keen sank onto the bed, watching Sam with an alert expression. The towel had vanished in the tussle, and I pulled at the sheets, managing to get them across the most important bits before too much was revealed. I hoped.
I grasped for a distraction by admiring the sudden perfect obedience of my dog. “Is that a wulf thing? I need to learn that.” I stared first at Sam, then at Keen.
I caught a glimmer of mischief in her glance and realized my attempt at discretion was a failure. My face must have been fluorescent as Sam held her hand out for my dog to sniff. Keen sniffed and wagged her tail but stayed down.
“Sam’s a natural trainer,” Josh said from the doorway. “Dogs, horses, men . . . we all jump when she snaps her fingers.”
I grinned up at him, ridiculously happy to see him standing there. I thought he looked worse than me, but that might have been due to the shadows in his eyes and the dark bruises and puncture marks on his throat. Teeth? My God, she came at him with teeth. How is he still walking?
Sam strode to the door, snapping her fingers as she passed Josh. “Good to see I have you trained, anyway,” she said with a smile. Her eyes returned to me. “Catch ya later, soldier.”
When she left, Josh sidled to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
Pushing Sam to the back of my mind, I focused on what I needed to say. “I feel stupid, that’s what,” I said. “I’m sorry, Josh. You were right. I should have waited for Chris. What I did almost got us killed.”
Josh’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You saved Peter’s life. No one could have known Chloe tried to kill him; you thought you were saving her from Dillon.” He frowned. “She fooled everybody. Even Peter.”
“And you’re lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” he said, his eyes full of pain. “I tried to get her off, but she kept coming. Insanely strong. I couldn’t hold her back.” He shook his head. “Chris says she’s better off dead, instead of thrown into the wulfan equivalent of jail. Wulves don’t do well in prison. But I can’t stop thinking . . . if I’d been a little stronger or faster, she’d still be alive.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to go to prison,” I pointed out. “She wanted you to end her.”
Josh fell silent for a moment. “What did she see in Dillon? You saw what he did to her?”
I nodded, feeling sick. “I think their connection was even more powerful than we realized.”
The hazel eyes widened. “A mating bond?” He chewed on his lip. “Why didn’t I think of that? It makes sense. When he slipped into madness, he took her too. She tried to control the beast in him, but she couldn’t.”
I gestured to the chair Sam had vacated. My limbs seemed weighted, exhaustion creeping up on me. But I sensed Josh needed to talk this through, and I owed him. Big time.
Not without reluctance, Josh sat. Or rather, draped—the man moved, as always, like he had no bones, loose jointed and supple. Keen shifted from her position and jumped off the bed to sit on Josh’s feet. He petted her absently, but I well knew Keen’s ability to soothe by mere presence.
“Tell me,” I said.
He took a few minutes to gather his thoughts. “Doc Hayek arrived not long after you left, and I debated going after you. I had just changed to wulf in the backyard when Chris arrived with Matt and Sam. In a bloody helicopter. They landed on the road.”
A helicopter. That’s how they got here so fast. “What happened to their hunt?”
“They got a few of them, but after that the hunt went south. They called it off, right before Chris got Peter’s call.”
Peter was lucky to reach his phone on the kitchen table. I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t made it. Peter would be dead. Dillon had come unhinged. There were farms all around, houses full of sleeping people. My stomach twisted at the thought of that madness loose among them.
“Chris said he tried to call both our cells while they were on the way, but we didn’t answer. With everything going on, I forgot to check his message before you left. I got his last call just before they
