Page 6 of Untamed

He lowers his head to the threshold and pulls in a long breath without crossing it. The guards get one last look, then the dark foyer, then me. I stay out of his way. After seeing what containment did to him, I’m not putting a hand on his shoulder or using Alpha pressure to shove him across another line he didn’t choose.

“I’m going inside either way. You can stay on the porch if you want.” My gaze catches on his flank, where the darts pull against matted fur every time he breathes. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

One ear angles toward me before he finally squeezes through the doorway, his shoulder brushing the frame despite how wide I’ve opened it. I close the door and throw the lock. Orion stays in the foyer with his nose moving through every unfamiliar scent, eyes tracking windows, hallway, stairs, then the door again. Blood is drying around his muzzle and three darts are still buried in his flank, yet the first thing he does in a place I called home is work out where the next threat could enter.

I make it three steps toward the kitchen before my knees start folding. My palm catches the wall, but Orion reaches me before I hit the floor and shoves his head beneath my arm, panic spilling through the weak bond so abruptly that for a second it’s hard to tell which of us is dizzy.

“Don’t start.” I breathe around the cramp in my side and lower myself on purpose instead of pretending my legs are going to keep cooperating. Orion crowds closer until his muzzle is almost against my chest, watching every breath like he can count me back to functional. “I know what it looks like. I’m still not dying.”

The bond gives me enough suspicion to know he doesn’t believe a word of it. I drag the first-aid kit out from under the sink and peel my ruined shirt away from the claw marks along my ribs, which immediately feels like a mistake once I see them properly. Four long tracks split the skin and pull every time I inhale. Nothing looks punctured where it matters, but Orion’s eyes lock on the wounds anyway, and a wave of disgust comes through the bond so hard I almost mistake it for mine before I realize every bit of it is aimed inward.

He lowers himself beside me until the heat of his flank settles against my shoulder, one eye still fixed on the front door. The lock is thrown, there are no restraints in sight, and he still puts himself between me and the entrance without thinking about it.

“I’m cleaning mine first,” I tell him while I soak gauze with antiseptic. “Then I’m looking at your finger. The darts stay where they are tonight.”

His head swings toward me so fast his ears flatten with the motion.

“I don’t like it either, but I’m not digging around in your body while my hands are shaking and I can barely sit upright. You can disagree. I’m still not risking it.”

Orion holds my gaze long enough to make the disagreement obvious, then looks away without trying to stop me. The kitchen settles into the small noises of cleanup: water rushing into the sink, tape tearing, gauze sticking faintly against wet skin. Pink runs over my hands and disappears down the drain. Orion gives me room when I need it without ever moving far enough to lose contact, and when I finally ask for his paw, he sets it down between us with the careful weight of a warning.

“Fair. I’m touching the finger I bit. Nothing else.”

The wound is small and already closing, which should make it easier to look at. It doesn’t. My teeth left two shallow marks in him because I decided, in a cage full of rifles, that hurting him a little was better than letting everyone else hurt him worse. Maybe I was right. The fact that I still have to use maybe is enough to keep my eyes on the bite longer than I mean to before I clean around it and let his paw go.

When I push myself up for more gauze, my legs nearly fold again. Orion is underneath me before I can hit the cabinet, taking enough of my weight that both hands disappear into the coarse fur over his shoulder. His entire body locks beneath my grip. I keep my hands exactly where they landed instead of snatching them back and making the contact sharper than it already is. “Give me a second.”

He braces harder under me until the dizziness starts to pass, then shifts only far enough to let me sit again. I finish the bandage while he keeps watch on the doors and the last of the adrenaline leaks out of me slowly enough for the room to stop tilting. Only then do I really look at him and notice the guard’s blood dried almost black around his muzzle.

“You opened a man because he grabbed my arm.” Orion turns his head slightly, listening even while his eyes track the front window. “I know what you thought you were protecting me from, but we can’t leave that reaction where it is.”

He breathes through his nose and gives me nothing that looks remotely like agreement, which is probably fair considering I’m still sitting on the kitchen floor because he clawed my ribs open less than an hour ago.

I wash the blood from my hands and leave his alone. He’s had enough people deciding what gets done to his body tonight without me trying to drag several hundred pounds of bear into a bath because the sight bothers me.

By the time I turn off the kitchen light, Orion has moved into the foyer and lowered himself across the front door, his body spanning almost the entire frame. It should look ridiculous, a grizzly planted across cheap floorboards like an oversized draft stopper, but there’s nothing funny in the way he keeps one ear on me and the other pointed toward every sound outside. He picked the entrance because it’s the only thing between me and everyone else.

“Planning to stay there all night?”

His amber eyes lift to mine, steady and completely unapologetic. I don’t bother asking again. I make it as far as the bottom stair before sitting because the couch has somehow become a very long distance away, and Orion keeps one ear angled toward me while the other follows boots somewhere beyond the house.

“Nobody’s coming through that door tonight, Orion.”

He stays exactly where he is, eyes fixed on the dark window beside the frame. I rest my head against the banister and let exhaustion pull at me until arguing feels more difficult than the floor. “Fine. Then I’m staying here too.”

Chapter Five

Orion

Iwake when Arlo shifts against the bottom stair, the scrape of fabric against wood pulling me out of sleep before I remember where I am. For one disorienting moment, I expect concrete beneath me and fluorescent light burning through my eyelids. Instead there are floorboards under my paws, the locked front door a few feet from my nose, and the smell of old pine, coffee, dried blood, and leather settled through a house that still belongs more to him than it does to me. Arlo is exactly where he was when I closed my eyes, one leg stretched awkwardly to spare his ribs, watching me wake without reaching for anything.

I lift my head and check the door first. The lock is still turned. Nothing has changed at the windows, and no unfamiliar scent has worked its way inside while I slept.

When I look back, Arlo is rubbing one hand over his face, exhaustion dragging at him hard enough that even his scent has gone dull around the edges. "Morning," he says, his voice rough. His gaze drops to the blood dried around my muzzle before returning to my eyes. "You’re still enormous."

Air pushes hard through my nose. His mouth starts to curve, but the movement catches when he braces a hand on the banister and forces himself upright. Whatever joke he was about to make disappears under the pull in his ribs, and I hear the breath he cuts short even though he tries to hide it.

Yesterday, a guard put one hand on his arm. I answered by opening the man from shoulder to stomach before Arlo could make me understand the difference between being touched and being hurt.