by Bec McMaster
Her heart clenched in her chest, and she staggered over the doorstep. She wanted to see him, but how could she help? She’d only be in Eden’s way. Without any nursing skills, she was worse than useless.
But at least she’d be the one person who hoped he pulled through. At least she could stop Eden from giving up on him
“I want to go to the infirmary,” she stated, reaching out and shoving against the wall to stop his inexorable drag. Her bloody hand left a perfect print on the walls.
McClain’s body turned toward her, and Riley dug her heels in. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to go to my room. I want to be there. I want to make sure he knows I’m there.”
“He can’t hear you,” McClain said slowly, searching her face.
“I want to be there,” she repeated.
McClain’s tawny brows lowered. “Riley, I know... it was hard out there. I know what he did to you, what happened... If you think—”
“What he did to me?”
McClain tipped her chin to the side, his fingers warm against her skin. He brushed them down her neck, against a spot that hurt at his touch. His eyes went dark with unsaid emotion. With fury.
She looked down, but couldn’t see. There was a mirror in the hall, with a hat stand. Shrugging his hand off her, she crossed to the mirror.
Bruises marred the smooth skin of her throat. And where McClain had touched her lingered an unmistakable bite mark.
Heat flushed up her neck, into her cheeks. She met McClain’s gaze in the mirror and looked away first.
“You don’t have to tell me about it.” His voice had an edge to it, and his arms were held stiffly at his sides. “I’ll never ask. But I know you’re not thinking right at the moment. Sometimes it happens, when a man kidnaps a woman.”
Riley’s gaze shot to his. “It’s not that. You don’t—” She made a gurgling sound, hating this. “Is that why you’re so angry with him?”
No answer. But from the look on his face, she knew.
Hugging her arms across her chest, careless of the blood, she shook her head. It was both her secret shame and a moment of intense rightness in her life. She couldn’t regret what had happened, but the fact that she’d enjoyed it... That she didn’t know if she’d say no if she had the chance to live through it again... That was her shame, right there.
But if she didn’t say anything, McClain would bury Wade where he stood. She could read his body language. He had no intentions of seeing Wade back on his feet. In his mind, Wade had done the unthinkable.
“It’s not what you think.”
His hat lifted, revealing just a hint of those stunning eyes. Hard-edged now. Lacking all emotion. “Riley, you don’t have to—” He scraped his hat off his head, revealing close-cropped tawny brown curls. “I’m not the person for this. You want to talk about it, you need to wait for Eden. I can’t hold your hand through this.” His own fisted. Clenched. “I want to kill him right now. For daring to put his bloody hands on you.”
Riley grabbed his forearm, feeling the muscles flex beneath her grip. “It wasn’t rape,” she blurted. “I said yes.”
She might as well have hit him. McClain didn’t flinch, but his entire body turned to stone, his head slowly swiveling toward her. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, focusing instead on the line of his mouth. Silence filled the air, thickened it. And within him, every muscle bunched, as if violence was but a thought away.
He let out a harsh breath. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped, backing away. There was blood on his arm in the shape of a handprint. Wade’s blood. “You don’t understand. It was crazy out there. Wade was an asshole, but he helped me get Jimmy back. He didn’t have to do that. I don’t even know why he did. He’d kidnapped me. All he had to do was overpower me and drag me back out into the desert, but he didn’t.” She met his eyes then, begged for him to understand. “I’m not saying he’s one of the good guys. But... there were moments when he was almost human. I was so scared of the dark, of the revenants, but he helped me through it. Christ, he tucked me into my blankets like I was a kid. There’s something there, McClain, that isn’t all bad. And we’d been through so much that... I gave in. I said yes. Even knowing what he was, I said yes.”
Her words were met with silence. McClain bristled. “Yet you never once allowed me to touch you.”
Riley licked her lips. “Don’t think I never considered it.” Until he opened his mouth. “But you want more from me than I can give. You want me to be something I’m not. Maybe I could make you happy for a few months. Maybe I’d even be happy myself, but in the end we’d only hate each other. Wade and I... It didn’t mean anything. It was just sex, just... someone to turn to after everything I’d been through, but it was consensual.”
He lifted an unsteady hand and raked it through his hair. A harsh bark of a laugh erupted from his throat. “Fucking karma, that’s what this is.” Looking up, he focused a predator gaze on her. “He’s going to die, Riley. We all knew it. Eden’s just making him comfortable.”
The blood drained out of her face. “He’s a warg. He’s strong, he can heal anything—”
“Not even a warg can heal after that much blood loss.”
The words were brutal. They tore something deep inside her, an inexplicable pain. “No.”
McClain stepped closer. “Just sex?” Another low, bitter laugh. “Don’t fool yourself, Riley. If it was just sex for you, I’d have had you in my bed years ago.” He reached out, brushed his fingers against her face. “You never let down your guard. Never.”
A long moment of horrible silence. Because he was right.
Then he took a deep breath. “Clean yourself up. Then come to the infirmary. I’ll meet you there, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“You said he needs blood,” she whispered. “Where the hell are we going to get compatible blood from here?”
McClain turned on his heel. “Just get yourself to the infirmary. And keep your mouth shut.”
* * *
A breathless knock.
Riley exchanged glances with the man guarding the door. His hair was cropped close to his scalp and he waited in a prepared stance, his hands crossed in front of him, biceps bulging.
The door opened just enough to reveal Eden’s face. Her expression relaxed when she saw Riley, and she gestured her through a crack in the door Riley could barely squeeze through.
Her gaze went straight to Wade, as if something linked them. He was flat on his back on the hospice bed, his tanned skin drained of color, and a mass of white bandages around his chest. The sight punched her in the chest, and Riley dragged her wet hair over her shoulder, licking at her lips. She’d washed herself as quickly as she could, splashing cold water over her face before she came. It was enough to slough off the fog that slowed her movements, her thoughts. Enough to bring the stark reality to the forefront.
She didn’t want him to die.
McClain had his back to her, sitting on this side of the bed, his hat dragged low over his eyes. The room was clean and sterile, with bloodied bandages overflowing the bin and a bowl full of crimson water on the table. Eden returned to the table, wiping her hands dry on a towel, weariness staining her features.
Riley noticed it... and said nothing of it. She couldn’t stop her eyes from traveling back to Wade. She kept expecting him to sit up and arch a brow in her direction with a mocking quip. But he didn’t. His body was as still as death, skin as waxen as a corpse. Bruises marred his face, and the bloody tear through his eyebrow had been stitched.
“Is he...?” She couldn’t ask.
“He’s still alive,” Eden murmured.
Stepping closer, Riley saw the needle taped to the inside of his elbow, and the tube leading away from it. Red blood filled the clear tube.
The other end of the line ran up to McClain’s elbow, and the butterfly-shaped clip there. Riley stopped in shock, and Eden bumped into her.
Without his hat, McClain looked almost approac
hable. He looked up, his expression tired. “Sit down,” he said. “And shut your mouth.”
Slowly, Riley moved around the bed and settled on the seat on the other side. She was right. McClain was giving Wade his blood.
But how? A frown drew her brows together. A warg wasn’t human. Not any longer. Were they? “They can take human blood? His body won’t reject it, will he?”
Eden examined her work carefully, keeping her mouth shut. Riley looked to McClain for the answers.
He didn’t look at her. Instead, he stared at Wade emotionlessly. “With your background – your father – I never thought you’d take to the monsters. I didn’t—” He looked down. “I never made a move. I didn’t think you’d ever trust me enough.” His head turned, pinned her with a gaze that made her shiver. “You might think it wouldn’t have worked, but I’m not so sure. You never knew me, Riley.” A soft laugh. “And it’s my own damned fault.”
Slowly, he reached inside his shirt and drew out the length of a chain, a heavy pewter amulet dangling from it.
Riley froze.
McClain dropped it against his shirt, his gaze returning to Wade and the identical charm around his throat. “He told you about it then. Told you how it works?”
“He said if he lost it, I had to run.” Riley had to swallow to get the words out. McClain? A warg? The words smashed every preconception she’d had of him, and raised a thousand questions in their place.
“How?” She looked down, then realized the connection between them. “Who?” she asked. “Who turned who?”
And again, she answered her own question.
“It was you,” she said. “You made him what he is.”
McClain nodded slowly. “I’m not proud of any of it, Riley. You don’t think seeing him like this doesn’t hurt me? Luc and I rode together, out along the Rim. I had his back, and he had mine.”
“That’s why he wants to kill you.”
Eden pressed a gentle hand against her brother’s arm. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said fiercely.
“I made the choice,” he replied. “I chose you over him.” He closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to face the truth himself. “A man named Bartholomew Cane rode into town one day when Eden was sixteen. Didn’t know it at the time, but he and his man Colton were wargs. Both of them carried charms like this one. Gave me a bad gut feeling, but what could I do? There were signs, but the moon didn’t affect them. So Luc and I dismissed our intuition.
“They were after local men to help ride down a warg who’d done them wrong, they claimed. The money was good. I put my hand up. Wade’s wife was pregnant, and he didn’t want to leave her side, so I went out alone.”
Eden’s grip tightened, leaving white imprints on his arm. “Adam,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”
His shoulders tensed. “Did you know he had a wife?”
Riley looked at Wade, at the silent figure on the bed. “He told me. Said her name was Abbie.”
The feel of McClain’s gaze on her face was like a palpable touch. She met it and saw a new question smoldering there, though he never gave voice to it. Instead, he shifted uneasily. “We hunted the warg down and executed it. He was wearing the same charm as Cane and Colton, but I didn’t notice until I rolled him over. He’d never gone beast on us, not once. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering, and Cane knew it. Tore me up, out there on the range. Told me the warg had been his third, that he’d tried to run and borne the price. I was to be his replacement.”
Disgust flavored his tone. “They had a spare charm. Colton’s got native blood, and his grandfather’s a shaman, so he made ‘em. I don't know how any of it works. It just does. Cane wanted one more to ride with him.”
“Wade,” Riley whispered.
“I said I wouldn’t do it.” McClain shook his head emphatically. “Cane tried to force me to his will the way he’d done to Colton, but... I wouldn’t. Nearly broke me. You’ve never felt such pain, like he was ripping my mind apart. I woke up hours later, and Colton was just sitting there. Said I should have agreed. That Cane had ways of breaking a man.”
Eden stroked a hand over his shoulder. “He came for me, while Adam was out of it.” She shot a fierce glare toward Riley as if daring her to condemn him. “Tore the charm off Adam and shoved us in a room together.” She licked dry lips. “Night was coming.”
McClain held out his hands. “I could feel it. Like an itch under the skin. I’d never turned, not once, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it. So I told Cane I’d give him what he wanted. I’d lure Wade out if he let Eden go.”
His words fell into silence. Riley tucked her knees up in front of her, far too aware of both men. McClain, rock-solid McClain, had a face like granite, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel anything. The revelation made something ache within her. Sympathy. Would she have done the same in his position? Either way, the choice was hard – kill his sister with his own hands, or betray a friend.
“I can’t blame him for his hatred,” McClain said wearily. “I earned it. I betrayed him in the worst possible way. I’ve tried to make amends, but he won’t hear of it.”
Eden leaned on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. No man should have to make that choice.”
Riley shook her head. “I still can’t believe... How do you hide it? If the settlement knew—”
“The only way they’d find out would be if you told them.” Harsh words. Untrusting ones.
She stiffened. “I wouldn’t do that. A week ago, maybe.” But the man on the bed had changed that, changed all of her perceptions.
And McClain knew it. “He’s not the man he once was, Riley. What I did to him... it turned him hard, bitter. He walked away from Abbie, even though she’d just lost the baby. Walked away from... everything. He’s spent the last eight years trying to kill me.” Reaching down, he stroked the thin tube that fed directly into his vein. “This changes nothing. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. When he wakes, he’ll come after me as sure as the sun rises in the east.”
Eden scowled. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.” A defiant look in Riley’s direction. “I pity the man, but I won’t let him take my brother. No matter what happened.”
Riley’s heart raced. Eden wouldn’t hurt him, not in this condition. She was a healer, not a killer, but if she thought her brother was in danger there were ways she could manage that. Leave the door open to someone with a grudge against a warg. Or keep him incapacitated with drugs or herbs.
“Maybe he’s not the man he once was,” Riley argued. “But I don’t think he’s entirely lost.”
McClain tensed. “Don’t be a fool, Riley. He used you.”
“Yes,” she said. “He made no mockery of his intentions, but you weren’t there.” With a frustrated sigh, she spread her hands. “I’m not an idiot. This... This is misplaced guilt. Because he gave me what I wanted, and I reneged on my side of the bargain. I gave him into the hands of his enemy, and that led to this. I don’t want him to die. I don't want it to be my fault.”
An intense look that burned her to the core. Without his hat, McClain looked amazingly vulnerable. Tawny curls and eyes that threatened to drown her. Green eyes, she realized now, with flecks of silver through them. Eyes she’d once thought were a mysterious grey-green. He reached down, lips twisting angrily as he tugged the needle from his arm. Weariness stained his hard features. “I wish I believed you,” he snarled, handing the needle to Eden. Snatching a piece of gauze, he pressed it against the bleeding vein. “But I’ve never seen you soften. Not for any man.”
Wrenching to his feet, he staggered slightly. Eden grabbed his arm, shooting Riley an exasperated glance.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, warding her off. “I just need to sleep.”
“You’re not staying?” Eden murmured.
McClain shot Wade one last condemning look. “No. Let the bastard bleed out, or let him live. I don’t give a damn anymore.”
Without looking at her, he surged toward the doo
r, tucking the charm beneath his shirt once more. The door slammed behind him, and Riley took a slow breath. The man drove her crazy, but she didn’t doubt his charisma. His presence filled a room, pressed against the skin.
Silence fell, full of unspoken reprimand.
Riley settled back into the chair, finally able to relax. “I won’t tell anyone about him,” she replied. “I don’t have it in me to be vindictive.”
Eden sighed. “He’s lying, you know.”
“McClain?”
“He cares. He cares far too damned much.” With one last enigmatic look in Riley’s direction, she sat on the bed and took Wade’s wrist in her hands, pressing her fingers to his pulse.
“I wish I did too,” Riley whispered. “Maybe it’d be easier. I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. Your brother’s an attractive man.” Heat flushed through her cheeks. “Always so damned hard. If there’d been one hint that there was something else there, one hint of softness, maybe my feelings would have changed. Argh.” She sank her head into her hands. “Men. Why did any of this have to happen?”
Eden shrugged. “At least you’ve got options.”
A trace of their old relationship, of friendly banter. “I’ll trade you,” Riley muttered. “Two options for none.” She looked down at the prone figure on the bed. What was she thinking? Maybe she wouldn’t even have two options. And when had Wade been put on that list? Her voice softened, a faint tremble to it. “Will he live, Eden?”
“You know I don’t give promises.”
“Your bedside manner sucks.”
Eden grimaced, then took her fingers off his pulse. “It’s stronger,” she said. “The bleeding’s slowed, and he’s got a few pints of blood back into him. There’s a chance. That’s all I can give you. Now, we just have to wait.”
“Waiting’s for the patient,” Riley grumbled.
Eden settled into the seat McClain had vacated. “Maybe we could talk.” She shot Riley a sidelong glance through thick lashes. “How are you feeling? Have you recovered from your ordeal?”