Chapter 6

Three things occurred to Isabella as she watched the vampire charge the alpha wolf as if in slow motion. The first was that, based on those bloodstained fangs diving toward them, vampires were far more lethal than stories had led her to believe. As a Rogue who’d grown up in the countryside of the Sunshine State, she hadn’t had occasion to encounter many. Aside from being in New Orleans, they were more common in the northern parts of the country, and they tended to keep to big cities with high human population density—the sort of places where she’d never spent a day in her life.

The second revelation she had was that not only was she without an ounce of fighting ability to fend off this creature, but she wasn’t athletic. She was soft and feminine, and running without a proper sports bra was unworkable. That was certainly an annoyance, but it had never occurred to her as a survival problem. Until now that she stood frozen in place.

The third and final conclusion she came to was that this arrogant commander was likely her only chance at survival. Though he had told her that her ass was large, and she felt certain that was enough for any man to deserve death. But at the moment, she needed him in full fighting capability, so he’d have to live for now.

He was yelling at her. She saw his mouth moving, but someone seemed to have turned off the sound. Instead, there was a harsh ringing in her ears.

Run, she finally deciphered.

Unfortunately, it was too late for that.

The slow motion stopped as the commander shoved her square in the shoulders, sending her stumbling backward several feet and out of the way as the vampire collided with him. Sharp pain shot up her spine.

At least her ass cushioned her fall.

Scrambling to her feet, she bolted away from the melee. Isabella only made it several yards before a second terrifying hiss stopped her in her tracks. Another vampire.

Glowing red eyes glared at her from the darkness. Adrenaline quickened her pulse. She didn’t think about the fact that she had no idea how to battle a vampire. Instinct took over. It was her or this red-eyed bloodsucker, and hell would freeze over before she went down without trying.

She shifted into her wolf as the vampire lunged. Fangs and canines clashed. Isabella snarled and bit indiscriminately, her canines locking down and sinking in. The taste was awful. Like putting something dead in your mouth, which she supposed she was, but still she held her grip, shaking her head back and forth to cause further damage.

But the vampire wasn’t having it.

It leveraged her hold, throwing her onto her back. She yelped and released it. Poised above her, the vampire reared to strike. No. She couldn’t let it damage an artery. She blocked her neck with her front paw. The vampire’s fangs sank into the furred flesh of her foreleg and a high-pitched keen tore from her throat. Pain, the likes of which she’d never known, seared throughout the limb.

Suddenly, the vampire’s weight lifted. The commander stood over her, having thrown the vampire off her. His eyes blazed the golden of his wolf’s, and even in human form, his teeth were bared in a feral snarl. He clutched a bloodied stake in his hand.

He was lethal and glorious, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

The commander charged the bloodsucker head-on, meeting its attacks blow for blow in a calculated battle that was every bit as mesmerizing as it was terrifying. Isabella shifted back into human form. He had a knife at his belt, but the fury of his

fists and the stake in his hand seemed enough. She’d never seen someone so skilled at combat.

A thread of hope for their safety grew in her. Until she spotted movement in the trees. The glowing red eyes of another vampire watched the commander with malicious intent, but this one was less animal-like than the other, almost human in appearance.

“No!” Isabella shouted a warning.

The commander’s attention snapped toward her as the vampire looming in the trees retreated with a terrible, sadistic grin. The other bloodsucking beast he’d been fighting seized the moment of distraction and dove in for the kill. Isabella screamed, covering her eyes. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t.

And then everything went quiet.

Keeping pressure on her bleeding arm, she slowly lifted her gaze. Relief flooded her as she stared up at the face of the commander. He stood over the vampire, who was now truly dead, the stake sticking from its chest. Jeremy looked lethal, panting with exertion.

“You saved me.” Her words came on an exhale. “Thank you,” she whispered. He didn’t acknowledge her gratitude, as if he often saved people’s lives with random acts of bravery. He glanced toward her without fully facing her.

Something dark flashed in his eyes as he noticed her wound. “You’re hurt.”

As he watched her, the hard planes of his face softened, and the open concern in his steely eyes caught her off guard. It was as if the mask he wore had fallen away. This was a man who shielded his true self under layers of jagged battle scars, hiding away behind lock and key. He faced the world as a hardened warrior, but he was far more complex than that. She realized that now with total certainty, because for a brief second, she had seen him as he truly was.

This was a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, who saved others pain by making it his own. The hurt in his gaze at the sight of her injury tore her to shreds. She was a stranger to him, but that failed to matter. It was as if he held himself personally responsible for her injuries, her protection, and her safety. In that moment, her pain was his pain.

The intensity of that stopped her breath short.

In an instant, he broke the contact between them, his face hardening again as he glanced away. But her heart had been warmed by that intense gaze, brief as it had been. There’d been so few times in her life when someone had looked at her that way—as if they cared for her, as if she mattered, as if she meant something to them.

As if she were someone worth fighting for…

But for a moment, this man who was supposed to be her enemy had given her just that, and now that she’d seen it, she’d give anything to see just a glimpse of his tenderness again.

“Are you all right?” he asked, further breaking the tension between them. With careful movements, she probed the tender flesh to test the depth of the

lacerations. An inch or so deep, but it would heal within a night. She cradled her arm against her chest, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. The pain was sharp, but it was far from the worst that could have happened.

“It will heal. Trust me. I’m a doctor. A few stitches will take care of it.”

She may have been a miserable fighter, but she knew medicine. She’d been tending animal wounds on the ranch since she was a small child, long before she’d gone to medical school. Animal, human, a werewolf cross between the two: it didn’t matter. As an orthopedic surgeon for the rodeo, she’d had a fair amount of experience handling organs and protruding bones.

She could handle the aftermath of fighting. It was the violence she couldn’t handle. Not after Wyatt. She’d experienced violence every day for the past several years at the hands of the Wild Eight.

The commander sounded breathless from the fight, though she didn’t blame him. What he’d done had taken amazing strength. “There’s antiseptic and medical thread back at the ranch,” he said.

On the Missoula Grey Wolf ranch. The very prison from which she’d escaped. She shook her head. “I can’t go back there.”

His brow crinkled. It made him look far older than she guessed he was. Those golden wolf eyes blazed with unchecked frustration. “You’re going back there whether you like it or not. For your own s-s-safety.” He slurred his s.

Isabella raised a brow. She was about to tell him that saved life or not, he was no

boss of hers. But that was when he turned fully toward her, and she noticed the blood, pooling beneath him in the snow. Her gaze followed to the bloodied blade in his hand, which he’d clearly removed from his own abdomen. She blanched.

With slow, unsteady movements, he followed her gaze, weaving slightly as he did so. “Shit,” he muttered as his eyes rolled back into his head. He collapsed, dropping like a stone.