Page 4 of Gold & Shadow

“Easy,” I said quietly, holding out one hand before me in supplication while I slowly moved backward.

The screech of an owl startled both me and the wolves, and with a growl of fright and fury, they pounced.

I was knocked to the side by a huge, brown blur as a roar rent the morning air. There were growls and screeches as I rolled to my feet, stumbling over the partially unbuckled snow shoes and toppling back to the ground. I felt something snap in my ankle and cried out, drawing the attention of the wolves back to me and away from the bear that had charged them.

The golden chain around the bear’s neck told me it was the same shifter from the cabin, but I didn’t have time to wonder why he had followed me as one of the wolves lunged for me. I twisted in the snow, crying out as sharp claws tore through my winter coat and drew blood. My ribs were on fire, and red began to dot the snow as I rolled away from the wolf.

Another growl sounded, and the wolf snarled as the bear charged him, tossing him against a tree with a sickening crack as if he were no more than a rag doll. The other two wolves whined as they scampered off, and the bear turned to fix me with a black-eyed stare and a snarl as I bled into the snow.

“You saved me,” I said, my voice weaker than I had intended it to be. I tried to rise, but everything felt cold and numb, not just from the freezing temperatures. A pool of red was spilling out from me, and I had the sinking feeling that the wolf had done more damage than I’d thought.

The bear growled, the sound more concerned than angry now, and the last thing I heard before the world went dark was the shifter saying, “I have a feeling I’m going to regret it.”

Chapter 3

Everything hurt when I opened my eyes.

On the bright side, I hadn’t been eaten, but if I had, maybe I wouldn’t be in quite so much pain. My ankle throbbed with each heartbeat, the limb feeling heavy and immobile. My chest burned, both the act of breathing and the skin around my ribs stabbing me with each breath.

“Why aren’t you healing?” came a gruff voice.

Iblinked the sleep from my eyes and found the bear-shifter in his fae form, sitting on a coffee table carved from a slice of a huge tree trunk, and looking at me suspiciously.

He wasn’t naked this time, thank the gods. His clothing was practical but finely made, clearly expensive with a clean linen shirt and leather trousers. Some kind of knitted coat was pushed up at the sleeves to reveal muscular forearms. Tattoos of lines and shapes like those on his chest crept down to his hands, and his fingers bore symbols that looked like the runes in Izzy’s old spell books.

His dark hair was combed in waves over his forehead, his beard neatly trimmed, and…

Gods. He wore a pair of rectangular black glasses that made him look more like a scholar than a shifter. I had a serious weakness for males who looked like they could string two thoughts together.

“Well?” he pushed, raising one bushy eyebrow and jolting me out of my reverie. “You’re elven, aren’t you?”

“Half,” I choked out, wincing as I tried to sit up. The male didn’t move to help me, so I wiggled my body as best as I could up the pillows. “Only half-elven. It takes me longer to heal than a full elf.”

“That explains all the blood then,” he said gruffly. He was sitting with his forearms resting on his knees, his gaze intent on my face. “And the ankle.”

“Is it broken?” I hissed, trying to push myself up to look at the ankle. My boots had been removed, and the injured foot was propped atop several cushions and wrapped in linen bandages.Twigs had been wrapped up to steady the joint. I tried to wiggle my toes, which didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. “Did you do this?”

“Sprained. And I did,” said the male, nodding at my foot. “Stitched the gash across your ribs too.”

I looked down to see that my shirt and cloak were gone, replaced by a bandage that wound around my torso, a lump over the injured area indicating it had been dressed. I felt myself flush as I realized he would have had to lift my shirt and camisole to clean and stitch the wound, and he likely had seeneverything.

“Where’s my cloak?” I asked, panicked as I tried to sit up.

“Easy,” said the shifter, pushing me back down gently, his warm hand on my shoulder. “I have it. If you move like that, you’ll tear your stitches.”

I relaxed, allowing the shifter to guide me back down. “I thought fae couldn’t touch iron,” I said, feeling my side gently and wincing in pain. Surely an iron needle would have hurt him to use on me, but the stitches felt firm and neat.

“You thought right,” said the male, still unmoving as he studied me intently. “But I am a shifter, not fae, despite having a fae form. We are different.”

“Oh,” I said, unsure how to reply. “Sorry.”

I’d never met a fae or a shifter before. I knew there were many fae on the other sides of the Deep Wood, but the fae realms were at least a hundred miles away, if not more. Shifterssometimes came this far west to trade or hunt, but I’d never met any who lived out here.

The bear-shifter rolled his eyes, rising to his full height and glowering down at me as he threw a blanket atop me. “Well, I suppose you can’t walk back to wherever you came from like this, and I can’t drag you out into a blizzard without you freezing to death.”

I craned my neck behind me to look out one of the windows. Sure enough, wet glops of snow were pelting the glass, and a frigid breeze leaked in between the panes. I snuggled under the blanket more deeply.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to think how I might work this to my advantage. Was it ethical to steal from a male who had patched me up and sheltered me? No. But it was technically his fault I was in this mess.