“You’re not coming near him.”
I was doing my best to shield Wyatt from her, but every move I made, she countered, and it only brought her closer to him. Despite everything, I was beginning to panic, and that could be deadly in this situation.
My eyes hadn’t left her once, and that was the only way I caught the slight twitch in her tail before she launched herself toward Wyatt. I leapt almost simultaneously and caught her throat mid-air.
We fell into a snarling heap in the middle of the floor, with her trying her best to claw me while I tightened my jaw around her neck.
“All right. That’s enough,” Bea said from somewhere nearby.
Seconds later, a large set of hands pulled me away from Aubrey as she got dragged in the other direction. My fight instinct was still very much alive, and I squirmed and scratched at the hands that held me until his voice broke through the haze.
“Callie. Stop. It’s me.”
Wyatt’s voice was trying to be calming, but it barely dented my rage. I caught sight of Aubrey being held down by Beatrice and tried to struggle out of his hold again.
“Just stop. It’s over. We need to get you looked at.”
I scoffed, which in wolf form sounded a bit like I had something stuck in my throat. It would have been much easier to communicate if I shifted back, but I couldn’t do that yet. The threat to me and my mate was still very much there, and my wolf refused to back down.
My whole body froze as one word repeated in my head.
Mate.
I’d referred to Wyatt as my mate. I’d never thought of him as mine before.
That was like an icy bucket of water over my head, and I instantly stopped fighting him.
“’Atta girl. Just relax and shift back so we can take a look at your neck.”
My neck?
I looked back toward Aubrey and saw Bea had dragged her outside with a couple other enforcers. Seeing that the danger was gone for now, I relaxed enough that my wolf receded, and my bones slowly shifted back into a woman’s.
When I was fully shifted, I looked down at Wyatt’s hands on my bare skin and shivered.
“Are you cold?” he asked softly from behind me.
I stepped out of his hold and shook my whole body, attempting to get the feel of his hands off my skin.
“No.”
He was quiet for a moment, and when I got up the courage, I met his eyes, instantly regretting it.
Because nothing had changed.
It didn’t matter that I’d spent weeks avoiding him.
It didn’t matter that I was still so angry at him.
It didn’t matter that he was the last person I wanted to see right then.
Because one look in his light brown eyes and all those things disappeared. It was just me and him. Nothing and no one could touch this. Nothing could touch us in these moments.
I ripped my eyes away from him and stared at the floor instead. I didn’t need him clouding up my brain at a time like this. I was still amped up from my fight with Aubrey, my veins buzzing with electricity.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I nodded once and stalked past him toward the bathroom. I almost closed the door in his face, but at the last second, I let him in with me.
One glance in the mirror and I realized why he’d suggested I get cleaned up. I had blood streaked from my mouth down my chin and neck. Despite the scuffles I used to get into when I was younger, I don’t remember ever looking quite so horrifying.
I let the hot water run in the sink and soaped up my hands, doing my best to ignore the fact that Wyatt was only inches away from me. He made that a hundred times more difficult when he reached out and traced his rough fingers down the side of my neck.
“Does that hurt?”
I shook my head as I dipped my face into a handful of warm water. I scrubbed at the drying blood as Wyatt gathered my curly mess of a hair and draped it over one shoulder.
“She did a number on your neck over here.”
“Don’t even feel it,” I mumbled.
“You should get Doc to look at it before it heals up.”
“No.”
He sighed and stepped back, allowing me to take the first real breath since he’d invaded my space minutes ago. “Figured you’d say that. Will you at least let me clean it before it closes? We don’t need you getting an infection there.”
We.
Since when were we a we?
I’d been an I for as long as I could remember and everything he’d ever said to me had led me to believe he also wanted to just be an I.
“Callie?”
I shook my head and met his gaze in the mirror. “Fine,” I spat.
He sighed again and pulled some cleanser and antibiotic cream from the medicine cabinet. “What happened back there? I never thought I’d see you get into a fight like that.”
I ground my teeth together and shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It had to do with me, didn’t it?”
I pressed my lips together and watched him in the mirror as he dabbed a wet cotton ball against the wound on my neck.
“And at the end there, she was aiming for me, wasn’t she?”
He met my eyes in the reflection and I looked away before I could be caught in their depths again.
He let out a deep breath and swiped some ointment on my wound. “For what it’s worth, thank you. She caught me completely off guard. Who knows what could have happened if you hadn’t gotten in between us.”
I felt the ice cracking
