Up close, he looked even worse. Blood was everywhere.
“Oh, god,” I said, repeating it over at least half a dozen times. “You need an ambulance. I’ve got to go get you help. There’s so much blood, Linc, oh my god.”
Full-blown panic was setting in. I was babbling, my voice rising to a fever pitch.
A hand reached out, grabbing my wrist as I tried to stand. The movement, but also the physical contact, broke through my fog like an arrow bolt.
“No,” Lincoln said, spitting blood. “No ambulance.”
“You’re joking. Right? You’re lying in a pool of your own blood. You need help.”
He shook his head and then groaned. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”
“You are very badly hurt. Possibly fatally.”
“Not fatal,” he grunted and then slumped limply back flat to the forest floor. “I’ve been hurt worse.”
“I highly doubt that.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his torn lips. “Promise. Besides, you’re here now. I’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”
I pulled my eyes away from his face, looking down his body as he talked. Some of his wounds were fresh and still bleeding, but others were older and healing. Ugly and red, but closed and showing signs of fresh pink skin. That was good, but they presented a new problem, including the one on his face.
Because it most certainly hadnot been there the night before.
“Did the wolf do this to you?” I asked.
“No. The wolf did not do this. You know that.” He rolled slightly, looking me directly in the eyes. Staring, unblinking. Forcing me to look right at him. Right into those different-colored eyes. Heterochromia-a fascinating genetic trait that made it difficult to look away. A trait he shared with the wolf that had saved my life.
Those eyes were boring into me now. They contained a truth. A truth he wanted me to see.
“Lincoln.”
“Yes?” his voice was stronger now. Less near the precipice of death. That was good.
“Why …” I paused, gathering myself while trying to ask the absurd question. “Why are your eyes the same color as the wolf? And how did you get here? Where is the wolf? It was hurt badly … just like you.”
My eyes fell to his side, where two long, jagged marks that were still all sorts of ugly were beginning to heal. Bisecting them, however, right through his clothing and down through the flesh, was a wider, more vicious-looking gash. Right where the tree-thing had whipsawed the wolf near the end.
“Lincoln, what the hell is going on here?” I swallowed. “Who are you? Whatwas that thing?”
A long silence lingered between us, long enough I had to wonder if he had maybe passed on without me knowing. Then his chest rose and fell in a large, ragged breath. He cautiously pushed himself into a sitting position across from me, wiping at his mouth, likely trying to remove some of the black gunk smeared across his chin.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said at long last.
My eyes narrowed.
“Honestly,” he replied, taking another deep breath. “I’ve never seen or heard of any such thing before.”
That wasn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. Not for me, not now, after all I’d witnessed and gone through. He needed to do better.
“But you weren’t surprised by it either.” I didn’t phrase it as a question. I didn’t want him dodging the answer.
“I’ve seen a lot of unusual things,” he said, speaking carefully. “To the point that it takes a lot to truly surprise me these days.”
He was still holding back. We both knew it. I opened my mouth to accuse him of just that, but he surprised me by continuing with blunt honesty.
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
My laughter echoed through the forest like a gunshot. “Lincoln, if there is one thing Ido know, it’s that I don’t know a lot. That everyone around me has been leaving me in the dark. Including you. So how about for once, you break that trend, andtell me.”
I hadn’t meant to get angry, but I was, and it was showing. I locked eyes with him, and this time I held them, forcing him to be the first one to look away. It was key that he knew this was a make-or-break situation with me. No more double-speak, no more avoidance. The truth, or nothing more.
“Not here,” he said at last. “We should leave before it gets darker. Get to your place.”
Bring him back to my place? That didn’t seem like a good idea.
Linc’s eyes lit with fire from within. “Vee,” he said with more strength than I’d thought he still possessed, “I am not leaving you alone. Not now, not after what happened. I’ll sleep outside if
I have to, but thatthing is still out there. I won’t risk it coming for you. I can’t.”
Swallowing was suddenly impossible. My throat was dry and blocked with a lump the size of my fist at the protectiveness he was exuding. Regardless of how weak he was, how hurt he was, Lincoln still wanted to be there. For me.
If I let him. A man who shouldn’t be where he was. Who shouldn’t have the wounds he had. Who shouldn’t … who shouldn’t … anything. None of it should be!
“Vee,” he said softly, taking my hand and squeezing it in that annoyingly reassuring way that could always break through the darkness. “You can trust me. I swear it.”
I stared at where my hand was sandwiched between his thick paws, disappearing into the giantness that was Lincoln. My gut was telling me he meant it. That I could believe him and be safe with him.
But then I looked up. Into his eyes. One blue. One amber. The same eyes as the wolf.
Impossible …
Sylvie
My entire musculoskeletal frame groaned in relief as Lincoln’s weight disappeared, following his body down onto the couch in my grandmother’s living room. It was still her house, in my mind. Which is why I winced so hard when the furniture protested loudly under the sudden bulk deposited onto it. The wood creaked, and for a second, I thought it was going to give out. Lincoln more fell than anything, but the couch held together, for now.
Letting out an audible noise of relief, I gently stood up straight, my hands on my lower back to help stretch it out. Getting Lincoln back from the forest had been a blur of grunts, groans, yelps, and sweat, earned one shaky, wobbly step at a time. It would have been hard enough on solid, even ground, but to move him through the forest? Pure hell.
The only way we’d even made it was because he’d regained some strength partway through. Not much but enough that my spine wasn’t slowly being compressed like a spring anymore. Not fully, at least.
“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked now, staring up at me from his makeshift throne of blankets, made double-thick to act as a protective layer for the couch itself. “Did I hurt you?”
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