Before he could recover, I swung it again. This time, it connected with the side of his face. Blood gushed over fur. He staggered and nearly dropped to the ground. Even in the dark, I could tell that the side of his face was a mess. Blood covered everything and made my stomach flip.
Harvey staggered. Before I could think of lifting the sledgehammer again, a strong arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me from the ground. The hammer slipped out of my grip. I fumbled for it, but Ryder whisked me away before I could grab ahold of the hammer again.
The swaying wolf grew smaller and smaller behind Ryder. Once we were far enough away, Ryder asked me if I could walk on my own. He must have noticed my inside-out sock wrapped around my foot.
I said that I wasn’t sure if I could walk on it but that I was willing to try. Ryder didn’t give me a chance to walk. He shifted me in his arms so that he cradled me against the front of his chest. Though I inhaled his scent and let it wash away the last of my fear, I worried that Bri would be mad.
Ryder’s mate wouldn’t like the way he carried me so gently. She wouldn’t want him to hold me like this. Surely, she would want us to be far apart.
She didn’t seem like the jealous type, though. If anything, she seemed confident in her relationship with Ryder.
I buried my face in my hands. Nothing about tonight had gone the way I’d wanted it to. Sure, I’d gotten some practice with my arcana, but there were also several new holes in my body that burned like hell. The throbbing pain grew more and more intense as the shock slowly bled away.
Exhaustion tried to drag me into a deep sleep, but I clung to the last bits of my wakefulness. I couldn’t afford to sleep. Not now. I’d destroyed half of Harvey’s face.
Would shifting fix what I’d done? As much as Harvey deserved it, I knew that the repercussions would not be nice. Alvin and Harvey would breathe down the back of my neck until they’d enacted their revenge.
“You’re okay,” Ryder whispered.
Before I knew it, he climbed the steps to his rental. He kicked the front door open because I’d left it open in my rush. Before setting me down, Ryder turned the lights on. He peered into the kitchen and down the hall. When the coast seemed clear, he set me down on the couch.
“I’m going to check every room. Then I’ll be back with a first aid kit. Your foot needs something other than a sock around it.” He paused and raised an eyebrow. “Why is it inside out?”
“I figured the outside of the sock would be dirtier, and I didn’t want it touching the gash.”
He said nothing but lifted his chin as if that answer would suffice for now. I’d thought I was being pretty smart, considering the fact that I was being chased down by a maniac at the time.
Ryder
My head still swam.The world rippled as the faery wine hummed in my veins. I’d barely taken more than a drop, and yet it still tormented me. I’d managed to get back to Ness by sheer force of will alone. I’d barely made it in time. My beast shuddered to think of what might have happened if I’d been any later.
It almost hadn’t mattered. Ness’s command still had ahold of me. I couldn’t harm that damned wolf, not even if he was in the middle of tearing Ness to shreds.
The thought filled me with hot fury. Light flashed across my eyes like a lightning strike. I gripped the nearby doorframe as my beast filled my mind with everything it would have done had that wolf killed her.
Destruction would have rained down from above. Maybe I couldn’t harm him individually, but there was a chance I could kill him by accident. If this pack succeeded in killing Ness, then this town didn’t deserve to stay standing.
I shoved every door open. I even threw the closets open to make sure that no one was hiding anywhere. It occurred to me to check the kitchen cabinets, but I figured that might be paranoia. I doubted anyone would hide in a cabinet.
Once I was convinced there was no one waiting to strike while our guard was down, I went to the bathroom to see if the rental had a first aid kit. If Ness had eaten enough, then she might not need it. There was a chance that she’d been living on iced coffee until I’d ordered the pizza for us.
I didn’t think about how grateful I was that she was still alive. I didn’t think about the kind of person I might have become if I’d lost her. Ness couldn’t mean that much to me. Holding her close like that would bring me one step closer to the same Treasure Sickness that had taken my clan leader.
If I couldn’t stay, then I couldn’t have her. It was as simple as that.
Letting myself believe that I could hold her and protect her would be a lie that I didn’t need to believe right now.
I bent and rummaged beneath the bathroom sink. There was a first aid kit shoved all the way to the back. It was outdated, but I didn’t need anything more from it than the bandages. A bottle of peroxide sat beside it. Thankfully, it was newer than the kit.
I brought both back to the living room, where Ness had sprawled across the couch. She immediately sat up and cringed, reaching for the back of her neck.
“I forgot about the back of my neck. I hope I didn’t leave stains on the couch.”
Once again, she seemed too small. I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to hold out against both Alvin and his maniacal son. My dragon begged me to stay and protect her. Leaving this place was the best safety I could offer so long as my brother hunted me. I didn’t want to add to her problems.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The couch will survive.”
I set the first aid kit and peroxide on the coffee table and took a seat beside her. She moved and lifted her legs so that her feet hovered over the couch cushions. I pulled her feet over my lap and noticed the soft blush that reached her cheeks.