Wolf at the Door (9 page)

He stops beside the steps to the giant wrap around porch and crouches down slowly.  Darin takes it as his signal, and he slides off of Raylan’s back as quickly and as carefully as he can.  He takes the stairs two at a time and his hand is on the doorknob when he hears the sound of bones groaning and rearranging that is quickly becoming familiar to him.  Darin turns and catches a glimpse of Raylan half turned with his body twisted grotesquely, caught between wolf and man, when something slams into his shoulder with enough force to send him crashing back into the door.

Dazed, Darin doesn’t move for a moment, and then he raises a hand up and touches his fingers to the front of his hoodie gingerly.  Pain sparks through him, a bright starburst of agony that causes him to cry out, and he’s not surprised when he slumps back down against the door and his hand comes away from his shoulder wet with blood.  The world rushes back in on him in a tidal wave of color and noise and pain, and Darin’s mind kicks into overdrive.

He’s been shot.

Chapter Thirteen

Darin’s a nurse and he knows enough about the human body to know that there’s no actual safe place to take a bullet.  He knows that depending on where he’s been hit and whether or not the bullet has nicked anything vital he could have only minutes left before he bleeds out.  He knows that he needs to put pressure on it, needs to try to stem the flow, and his training kicks in and his hands are moving almost before he realizes it.  His hand scrambles to loosen straps and to get the pack off of his back even as he hisses in pain when the movements jostle his shoulder.  When it’s finally off Darin clamps his hand back down over the wound as tightly as he can and doesn’t even bother to try to hold back the tears that spill out of his eyes.

Raylan’s there in the next second, still only half transformed as if Darin being hurt had frozen him halfway between one form and the other.  He’s hunched over, spine still bowed and face strangely pointed, his eyes glowing bright and teeth and claws sharp and deadly looking.  His hands are surprisingly gentle when he sweeps out an arm to gather Darin close to his chest, but the movement still makes him cry out.  Snarling, Raylan rams his shoulder into the center of the back door, which sends it flying off of its hinges to land inside the house somewhere with a crash.

He’s half carried, half pulled into the house and propped up against a wall inside of what looks to be a rather spacious kitchen.  Raylan is alternating between growling low in his throat and almost whimpering as he runs his hands lightly over every bit of Darin he can reach.  Darin knows that he doesn’t have long before he passes out. He can feel the strength draining from him along with his blood.  Darin reaches his free hand up so he can cup Raylan’s misshapen face in his palm and draw him down so that Darin can press pain bitten lips to his forehead.

Darin wants to tell Raylan so many different things.  He wants to tell him that this is not his fault and that he needs to get out and find Karen and kill her for what she’s done.  He wants to tell him to forget about her and run in the other direction and never look back no matter what.  He wants to tell Raylan that he’s scared, that he doesn’t want to die, and that he needs an ambulance and a hospital.  Darin wants to tell Raylan that he would have said yes to being his mate and that he thinks they would have been happy together.

There’s so much he wants to say, but he doesn’t get the chance because the sound of a rifle being cocked rips through the air around them like a knife.  Raylan goes dangerously still above him and when Darin looks up and over his shoulder he’s unsurprised to see Karen, rifle in hand and standing just beyond the door that they’d busted through.

“I really liked you, Darin, I honestly did.  I was hoping we could avoid all of this, and that I could take that fucker out before you got too deep into this, but I messed up and my shot went wide.  Then you took that
thing
into your home, your
bed
.”  Darin can practically hear the sneer in her voice, contempt rolling off of her tone in waves.

“Don’t be a jealous bitch, Karen.  It doesn’t suit you.”  Darin’s voice is harsh and grating, but he refuses to let this bitch monologue at him before she shoots him again.

“Shut the fuck up, Darin!  You have no idea what you’ve done.  You fucked that beast and turned your back on your own species, and that’s not something I can forgive.”

“Who in the ever loving hell asked you to forgive me, Karen?  Maybe I don’t want your forgiveness.  Maybe all I want is for you to have not fucking shot me!”  Darin coughs, his cheeks pale from strain and wet with tears.  Raylan remains frozen over him, unmoving, unresponsive. 

“It doesn’t matter in the end.  Although to be honest I was expecting it to be harder than this.  They always tell us that mated weres are vicious and more deadly than we could imagine, but I think they got it wrong.  One bullet in you and this one’s worthless.  I mean he didn’t even put up a real fight.”

Karen steps farther into the room as she lifts the rifle and sights down the scope, victory hanging around her like a tangible cloud.  Darin tenses, body weak from blood loss, but he’s ready to gather what’s left of his strength and hurl himself at Raylan in order to keep him from getting shot.  It might be too late for him, but Darin sure as hell isn’t prepared to sit back and do nothing as Raylan’s frozen form is gunned down in front of him.

“See you and your dog in hell, Darin.”

Raylan moves then; he twists around as quick as lightning and rushes Karen, swiping the rifle out of her hands with one well-placed blow as he roars his anger for the world to hear.  There’s a glint of claws and another swing of a muscled arm half covered in fur and then crimson is coating the wall to Raylan’s right.  There’s the bright splash of red spraying across the white paint and a thump as Karen’s body hits the floor, eyes glassy and throat torn wide by sharp claws.

Darin looks up, sees Raylan whirl around, clawed hand dripping blood as he rushes back towards Darin’s slumped form.  Darin grins up at Raylan’s worried face, which is slowly smoothing back into its normal human form.  He closes his eyes for a moment and then finds that he’s too weak to open them again.  There’s another bright flare of pain in his shoulder like something’s digging into him again and then another in his throat, but he’s too weak to pay much attention to them.

The darkness that’s been lurking around the corners of his mind claims him between one breath and the next.

Chapter Fourteen

When Darin wakes up, everything is bright and fresh and
real
in a way he doesn’t remember things being before.  The sunlight that’s streaming through the window seems brighter and warmer than before.  He can hear a low-pitched humming in the air, birds chirping, leaves rustling, the distant sound of running water and two steady thumping beats that are incredibly familiar but he just can’t place.  The thing that stands out the most in the jumble of information he isn’t used to receiving from his senses is the smells.  It’s like someone dialed his nose up to twelve when he’s spent his entire life with it fixed firmly at five.

He can smell fresh paint and furniture polish, the crisp scent of pine and dark rich soil, the coppery bite of blood that he’s long ago learned to identify and something else.  Something warm and rich and intoxicating like dark chocolate and hickory smoke and cinnamon, scents that make him feel dizzy and relaxed all at the same time.  Things that he’s always associated with cold winter nights and warm blankets and are comforting to him in a way he’s deeply grateful for since the rest of his memory is blotted out in some places and hazy in others. 

His throat feels itchy in a way that makes him desperate for a glass of water, but what gets his attention the most is the fact that he’s naked in an unfamiliar bed.  Darin’s sitting up almost before he registers the desire to move, dark blue sheets pooling at his waist as he looks around curiously.  The room is simply decorated, the bed taking center stage and the dark wood floors uncluttered and clean.  Darin knows he should be upset, should be freaking out at waking up somewhere strange with all of his senses dialed up, but that scent from before is thick in the air and it takes the tension from his muscles as soon as it forms.

He reaches out to grab the sheets in his hand and his shoulder throbs in pain, the area stiff and sore.  Darin reaches a hand up towards it instinctively and when his fingers make contact with skin that’s almost fever hot, everything comes rushing back to him.  He remembers Raylan and Karen and making a mad dash from one house to another.  He remembers thick dark fur and twisting bones, a gunshot and searing pain.  He remembers Karen falling bloody and lifeless to the floor and Raylan standing above him, twisted and fierce but his hands gentle when they touched him.

There’s a rush of fresh, sharp pain in his shoulder, and Darin jerks his hand away from it like it burned him only to stare in horror at the red stained claws that now tip his fingers.  He scrambles his way across the bed, arm flailing out in front of him like he’s trying his best to escape his own hand even if he knows that thought is ridiculous.  The scent from earlier grows stronger, like the source is getting closer, and it begins to relax him almost against his will and that in turn makes him almost frightened so all Darin can do is cry out for the help he hopes will come. 

“Raylan!”

The door to the room bursts open, and Raylan is there in the next second, on the bed beside Darin, large hands gentle as he cups Darin’s cheeks in his palms and tells him to breathe.

“Just breathe, Darin, you’re safe, we’re both safe.  Just breathe.  Everything’s alright now.”  Raylan stays calm even when Darin reaches out and clamps a hand around the curve of his shoulder.  Sharp claws dig in and draw blood so easily that Darin can feel himself go pale as he jerks his hand away and watches the wound he’d accidentally inflicted knit closed on its own.

“I hurt you!  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  Darin hears the way his voice lisps heavily, and it sends his hands to fretting uselessly in between him and Raylan’s warm form.  They flutter through the air like he’s going to grab ahold of Raylan again, but he’s too scared to follow through with the urge because he doesn’t want to hurt him again.  Then he promptly bites through his lip with his now abnormally sharp teeth, teeth that he knows will look just like the sharp fangs Raylan has sported in front of him if he looks in a mirror.

“It was nothing, Darin, it’s already healed.  You’ll give me worse later, and I’ll give you worse, but it’ll heal, Darin.  It’ll always heal because we’d never really harm each other so just calm down.  Concentrate on me. I know it’s hard and your senses are screaming at you, but focus on me, on my voice, the sound of my heart beating, and most of all my scent.  Just focus.”

Darin tries to do what Raylan’s asking him to do; he takes a deep breath and turns all of his attention towards Raylan.  He listens to him breathe and whisper reassurances, to the sound of his heart beating, which is enough to almost cause Darin to freak out again.  It’s the smell of him that grabs him, his scent weaving its way through Darin’s mind and slowing his heartbeat down and evening out his breathing.  It’s the same scent that had wrapped around him before, the smell of chocolate and hickory smoke and cinnamon.

He can feel it when his new claws and fangs retreat back into the more human versions he’s familiar with.  It’s like a rippling beneath his skin, like some part of him is being locked down and away just beneath the surface.  It’s frightening and yet comfortable, a paradox of strange new sensation and a sense of rightness that he’s never had before.

“What happened?”  Darin’s proud of how calm he sounds, of the way his heartbeat has slowed and he can keep his voice from breaking.

Raylan’s face falls almost comically and his eyes dart about the room like he’s too nervous to meet Darin’s gaze.  Darin sees him visibly steel himself and then Raylan’s looking directly at him again, amber eyes bright and nervous.

“The bullet, it nicked an artery and you were bleeding so much, too much.  I didn’t have a choice, Darin. I couldn’t give you the chance to choose like you should have been able to.  That bitch took that from you, and I took it from you, too, but I couldn’t let you bleed out like that.  I couldn’t sit there and see it and smell it and do nothing while you were in pain.”  Raylan sounds like he’s almost pleading with Darin, like he’s desperate for him to understand.  Darin knows what’s coming next. He’s smart enough to have put the pieces together on his own, but he wants to hear Raylan say it.

He’s not trying to be cruel, but he
needs
to hear Raylan say it.

“What did you do, Raylan?”

“I dug the bullet out, Darin, but you were bleeding and even if I called for help we’re so far back in the woods there’s no way anyone would have made it in time.  So I bit you.  I bit you and I willed the change to happen and I bound us together.  I turned you, Darin, and that kind of bond isn’t easily broken; you’re mine now just as much as I’m yours.”

Darin feels the breath whoosh out of him again at finally hearing Raylan say what he already knew out loud.  It’s a relief to actually hear it, a solid reminder that he’s not crazy and that all of this actually happened.  He’s not angry
with Raylan for what he did, not even a little bit.  He remembers thinking about the blood loss and knowing that he was slipping away with every second that passed. He remembers the way cold had settled deep down in his bones and began to spread throughout his entire body with every drop of blood he lost.

He remembers wanting to tell Raylan that he would have said yes to being his mate.

“It’s alright, Raylan.  You did exactly what I would have done in your position.”  He keeps his voice soft and reassuring and watches as the tension seeps from Raylan’s shoulders as relief begins to overtake him.

“Are you sure, Darin?  You didn’t get a choice, not the way you should have, and I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.”