It stepped closer, head low, sniffing, never turning from me. The wolf was as big as a Great Dane, with bulky shoulders and a thick ruff of fur. Even with me sitting on the table, it could reach me without trying.
Later, I learned that the wolf could smell the blood from my injuries, and instinct had told it a wounded animal was near. Easy prey.
I trembled like a rabbit, and like a rabbit, the minute I thought of running, it pounced.
I screamed as its claws raked my leg and I lurched away, falling off the table. I kept screaming when its jaw clamped on my hip. Using that as purchase, it climbed up my body, scratching the whole way. My flesh gave way like butter, pieces of it flaying with every touch.
Panic, panic, panic. I kicked its face. Startled, it backed off for a moment. In an adrenaline haze, I jumped and grabbed hold of the edge of the shelter’s roof. Gasping, clutching, gritting my teeth, I swung one leg up. The wolf jumped, scraped claws down the other leg. I screamed, falling—but no, I clutched the edge, the wolf lost its grip, and I caught one leg over the edge, then the other. Lying there, spent, I dared to look down.
The wolf looked back at me, but it couldn’t reach me. It turned and ran.
I didn’t have the energy to move another muscle, so I fell unconscious, one arm hanging over the edge of the shelter.
Something squeezed my hand. The sky was light, pale with dawn.
With a shriek, I pulled my hands close and started shaking. Blood caked my legs, my skirt, my shirt. Blood had pooled on the roof of the shelter, but it was dried. I wasn’t bleeding anymore.
Carefully, I inched closer to the edge.
Hands gripped there, and a woman hoisted herself up. I scrambled crablike away from her, all the way to the other edge. I looked down to where a couple of men stood, watching me with cold eyes.
The woman knelt at the edge of the roof. She had long black hair, brown eyes, and moved with a dancer’s grace, settling to a seated position without taking her gaze off me.
“What’s your name?” she said.
I looked around. A half-dozen of them surrounded the shelter, men in various states of scruffiness, unshaven and uncombed, wearing leather or denim jackets, T-shirts, and jeans. All of them were barefoot. The woman also wore jeans and a T-shirt without much thought to style. Still, they all managed to intimidate, radiating strength just in the way they stood.
I didn’t answer.
“The bites, the scratches—do they hurt?”
I had to think about it, which meant they didn’t hurt. I touched my hip. It was tender, but not painful.
“Look at the wounds,” she said. “What do you see?”
I pulled up my shirt, exposing where the wolf had taken a bite. A scar, red and healing, maybe a week old, puckered the skin. The gouges on my legs were pink lines, closed and healing.
/> I started hyperventilating again. I managed to gasp, “How do you know what happened?”
She said, “One of our people attacked you. We’re here to take responsibility for his actions.”
“But you’re—”
She crept toward me, her eyes focused on me, her nostrils quivering. I flinched, but if I backed away any farther, I’d fall off.
“I won’t hurt you. None of us will hurt you. Please, tell me your name.”
All I wanted to do in that moment was fall into her arms, because I believed that she wouldn’t hurt me. “Kitty,” I said in a small voice.
For a moment, she looked disbelieving. Then, she smiled. “Oh, that’s rich. You’re way too nice for this life, kid.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. You’ll have to. I’ll help. T.J.?”
Hands appeared on the edge of the roof behind me. One of the men pulled himself up easily, like he was hopping onto a tabletop and not climbing up a seven-foot-high shelter. He crouched at the edge, one hand resting on the roof to steady himself. He was—God, he was gorgeous. Tanned, well-built, biceps straining at the sleeves of his white T-shirt, dark hair flopped around an intense face.
He radiated energy and scared the daylights out of me. I backed away, scraping my knees on the roof’s asphalt shingles. But then she was there, just as intense, trapping me. I curled in on myself, on the edge of screaming. Something inside me started to rip.