Page 48 of Rough

“Now,” he commanded.

I blinked again and pulled myself together. I slid seamlessly into his place, dropping to my knees on the wet ground to provide rescue breaths. Human bodies I could handle—regardless of how they appeared in front of me.Had he just been a wolf?My training made it easy to go on autopilot, doing everything I could to save his life.

Boyd was already jogging away and up the steep bank along the side of the waterfall. “I gotta keep Markle from seeing him.Do not call 911. And don’t worry about the gunshot wound, just get his lungs cleared.”

I knelt beside the blankets where just a short time ago we were naked and… making love. No, that hadn’t been making love, it had been fucking. But it had been more than that.

Now I was trying to resuscitate a kid who’d been a wolf. I heard Boyd speak, but it took a while for his words to filter in.

Markle.

Jett Markle had shot the boy—wolf. Whatever he was. Whatever the fuck just happened.

I heard Boyd’s voice shout in the distance. “You just shot my motherfucking dog, Markle!”

The sound of the two of them shouting continued, but I missed the rest because the boy at last coughed, and his lungs started to clear. I rolled him to his side and let him work the rest of the water out with gasps and coughs.

“That’s it,” I encouraged. “You’re going to be okay.”

Was that true? The kid just got shot. But Boyd had said not to worry about that part. And then the pieces started to fall into place. It was as if my brain finally understood what had been in front of me all this time. I wasn’t crazy.

I now knew why Boyd’s wound that miraculously healed. Why he didn’t want me to examine it. How he’d walked out of the hospital right after being gored by a bull. The way he’d known this wolf was actually a man. No, boy. I looked at him more closely and guessed him to be sixteen or so. Not much more.

Had Boyd ordered him to change form?

Shift, kid.

Yes. Boyd had known what he was. Known what to do to help him. Knew because he’d done it himself.

That meant… Boyd was one of them. Boyd Wolf wasn’t just a cowboy, a rodeo champ. Wolf wasn’t just his last name. He was awerewolf.Or whatever I was looking at right now.

It seemed far less strange than it should, but I was sure that was because I was in crisis mode. There was no time to get dramatic. I had a patient to save. Despite Boyd’s instructions, I couldn’t let the bullet wound go untended. Breathing had been his first priority, but now that his lungs were clear, I grabbed one corner of the blanket and yanked it up to ball over the wound, providing compression, rolling him to his back to look for an exit wound. There wasn’t one. Which meant the bullet was still inside.

I needed to get him to a hospital.

The young man reached down. I thought he was going to feel for his wound, but instead he tried to tug more of the blanket around his waist. Oh right. Because he was, well, naked. It seemed wolves couldn’t very well run around wearing clothing.

Boyd stalked back, anger radiating from him, I presumed from his interaction with Jett Markle, who he must’ve managed to send away. His clothes still dripped water as he crouched beside the kid and took his jaw in his big hand. He wasn’t gentle. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Boyd, I need to get him to a hospital,” I said.

“You don’t, Audrey.” He gentled his voice with me, which seemed sweet, considering the circumstances. “If he’s breathing, he’s going to be fine.”

“He’s been shot.” I knew I was stating the obvious, but the obvious was well… strange as hell.

“And I was gored by a bull. He’ll be fine,” he told me. Then, to the boy, “Who are you?”

The young man coughed a few more times, not opening his eyes. “James. James Clifton.”

“You care to explain why you were running in wolf form across my neighbor’s ranch?”

“Visiting—” He coughed again. “—my girlfriend.”

Boyd groaned. “You just endangered the whole fucking pack, my friend. Just so you could get laid.”

His eyes blinked open, and he tried to sit up, but Boyd pushed him back down. “Please—don’t tell my parents. You can call my sister instead. Karen. She’ll pick me up.”

Glancing at Boyd, I cocked an eyebrow, silently asking “who?” He must have caught on because he said, “The woman from the bar.”