Page 10 of Silver Claw

“I’m going to take a shower,” I said. “Ask Evan to run me over some clothes. Boots, too. Everything is in Jared’s closet.”

Jared had given his housekeeper, Nell, an assistant recently. She hadn’t been happy in the beginning but seemed to be falling quite naturally into the role of cheerfully bossing him around. Evan took it with a longsuffering look and many sighs.

When my mother left the room, Ben and Belinda approached me. “Lie down,” Ben said. “I want to check the slash wounds you came in with. They’re…” He shook his head. “Strange.”

“Her blade was amazing,” I said, remembering. And I still wanted it.

I was reclining back on the pillows, Ben and Belinda peering at my wounds, when I felt Jared striding into the clinic.

“Leave the bandages off,” I told them, when Belinda started to press a new dressing over the still raw injuries. “I have to take a shower, and the wounds will heal.”

They didn’t hurt, really. They looked worse than they felt. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be settling into the emptiness, filling it up with something that was almost…nice.

It was weird.

“When you came in,” Ben told me, “there was so much blood it was like something was pushing out your blood to make room for the magic. The wounds changed from red to black. But now…”

I looked down at the tender cuts. They were slightly raised and completely silver. And as I stared, I thought I saw the flash of green beneath them, like the glowing symbols I’d seen on her blade.

“They’re decorative,” Belinda said. “Like your tattoos. And they’re fading, Kait.”

I ran my fingertips over the one on my chest, frowning as my fingers buzzed and tingled from the contact. What thehellhad she put inside me?

Jared walked into the room, his stare finding mine immediately, and as it always did, my heart stuttered, then leapt, beating faster as he neared me.

I held up my arms, and Ben and Belinda headed for the door. “We’ll talk after,” Ben told Jared.

Jared gave him a nod, then leaned over and picked me up off the bed and into his warm arms. “Damn you, Kait,” he said tenderly.

I laughed, but the sound was full of tears, and relief, and joy. Not even everything I’d lost could be stronger than the way my alpha made me—and my wolf—feel.

Evan hurried in, holding a bag. “Clothes,” he said.

“Thanks, Evan,” I said, but my lips were against Jared’s throat, and I barely noticed when he placed the bag on the bed and made a hasty exit.

Jared let me slide down his body to stand on the floor, then began yanking clothes from the bag.

“I need a shower,” I said.

“Nell has drawn you a bath,” he told me. “And food will be waiting.”

And it didn’t matter that apparently, I’d nearly died. It didn’t matter that proof of her attack was slashed across my ribs and chest in pulsing magical cuts.

It also didn’t matter how hard he tried to remain clinical and focused as he helped me dress. His fierce stare heated as I leaned into him and ran my tongue over the side of his neck, as our fingers tangled and our hearts thudded.

“I won’t lose you, Kait,” he murmured.

“No,” I said. “You won’t.”

And neither of us would say out loud that for a little while, we’d both believed I was already gone.

Chapter Four

We’d talk about what happened, but later, after I’d gotten cleaned up and was sitting at the dinner table with my people. We’d discuss it and we’d figure it out.

By the time I’d finished my bath, into which Nell had put something that smelled like a summer garden and helped my poor battered body recover from the brutal beating it had survived, I felt almost back to normal.

But I’d looked into the mirror. I didn’t look like I was back to normal. My shift hadn’t lasted long enough to help me, because I was so far gone when I’d attempted it.