by R. E. Butler
“Iron,” Logan said.
The truck slowed and stopped, and Logan lifted his head and saw a hospital ER sign and the bright lights of the ambulance bay.
He draped the shirt over the female and opened the door. “Call Jason and tell him I need someone to bring my truck up here. You guys can head back.”
Ben shook his head. “We’re not leaving you alone.”
Luka nodded. “We’re pack, and pack sticks together.”
Logan was touched by the show of solidarity from the young wolves, but couldn’t vocalize it. Nodding at them, he kicked the door shut and turned, racing inside.
Balancing her against him with one arm, he grabbed a doctor who was walking by and pulled him close. “She’s nearly dead, help her!”
His voice had taken on a growling tone. He didn’t care if they were afraid of him. He just wanted her to live. He needed her to live.
The doctor frowned, opened his mouth and pointed towards the reception desk. “Right there — ”
Logan jerked him harder by the collar. “Look at her. Fucking. Look. At. Her.”
Angrily, the doctor cast his eyes downward and then his mouth fell open. “Shit!”
He yelled over his shoulder for a gurney, called a ‘Code F’, and barked orders at the nurses and staff that suddenly surrounded them.
The gurney appeared and the doctor said, “Put her down, we’ve got it from here.”
Logan laid her down gently and grabbed the doctor by the collar again. “I go where she goes.” He snarled the words, barely able to separate his thoughts from his growling wolf’s.
If the doctor thought to argue, he changed his mind quickly. “Fine. Stay out of the way.”
The gurney raced down a hallway and Logan followed, fear riding him hard. He hadn’t cared whether someone lived or died since his grandmother had passed away when he was twenty. Now, though, his thoughts were consumed by the female racing down the hall ahead of him.
Several minutes later, he stood leaning against the wall in a private room in what he came to find out was the “supernatural” wing of the hospital, watching a group of doctors, nurses, and specialists hover around the female. They had cut the dirty gown from her and dropped it into a plastic bag. Her pale body looked even paler under the harsh lighting.
The first doctor, Young, looked over at Logan. “Do you know who did this to her?”
Logan shook his head, feeling emotionally drained and physically exhausted. “I already explained that I found her in the woods off the highway. What happened to her? Is she going to be okay?”
A whiskey-rough voice spoke loudly, “If she is strong, yes.”
Logan looked at the open door and saw a very short, round woman walk into the room, carrying a patchwork bag. Twin gray braids hung down to her knees, and her tanned face was wrinkled with age. The doctors moved away slowly, like they were afraid to spook her, leaving the female on the gurney naked under the lights.
He clenched his hands into fists to fight against the urge to cover her from prying eyes, and instead looked the old woman straight in the eyes. She placed the bag next to the female and cast her gaze up and down her body. In the harsh light of the hospital room, the damage to her was even worse than Logan had originally thought. Her bruised and cut skin wasn’t just pale, it was almost grey, and her dark hair was dull, save for the little sparkles of silver. And those damn purple lines were everywhere.
He took a step forward and the old woman looked up at him. She regarded him carefully, one eye narrowing, and he had the distinct feeling that she was peeling away the layers of his mind. “She is yours, yes? Your mate?”
He swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t thought any further than her just living, but it explained a lot about his reactions.
He heard his wolf’s answer to the old woman, a guttural, growling acknowledgment. He stepped forward until he was standing next to the gurney and he reached his hand for the female’s smaller hand. When her cold, limp hand was cradled in his large one, he felt a connection spark between them. The old woman was right: the female was his truemate.
He looked at the old woman and had to force his voice to work past the knot in his throat. “Can you save her?”
The old woman busied herself removing things from her large bag. Vials of oddly-colored powders and liquids, and a narrow wooden case. The woman looked over at the hospital staff and said, “If you aren’t supernatural, you need to leave the room immediately.”
Everyone moved to the door, leaving Logan and the old woman with his mate. “Do you know what she is?” the old woman asked.
Logan shook his head.
“She’s fae, a fairy. Fairies are the only creatures that are deathly allergic to iron. These marks,” the old woman gestured to the thick welts on her wrists, ankles, and neck, “were made with iron shackles. Someone put her in shackles designed to kill her. Somehow, she escaped or was set free.”
“How did she call for me if she doesn’t know me?” He watched the woman pull a stone bowl from the bag and pour the vials into it.
The woman raised her brow. “Because fairies are magical, young wolf, more magical than your kind. In the depths of her pain, she called out for help to the only one who could find her in time — her truemate. If you’d been further away, you might have been too late or never heard her. She might have died, alone and in pain.”
“She knew she was safe,” he said quietly, watching the woman stir the contents of the bowl.
“Of course she did. She-fairies often mate with wolves and other supernaturally strong creatures.”
The old woman instructed him to lift his mate up so she could force the liquid from the bowl into her mouth. Logan let go of her hand and bent over, sliding his arm gently under her and lifting her upper body from the gurney. He pulled her jaw down so her mouth opened as her head lolled back.
He rubbed her throat to encourage her to swallow as the old woman poured the contents of the bowl slowly into his mate’s mouth. She choked and coughed weakly, and Logan had to breathe out of his mouth to escape the putrid scent of the liquid she was being forced to drink. When the bowl was empty and he had soothed the last of it down her throat, he was told to keep her upright.
“It’s a magical chelating compound, to help rid her body of the iron poisoning and begin the healing process.”
He was about to ask how it was going to rid her body of the iron poisoning, when the old woman put a plastic bin on his mate’s lap just seconds before she vomited violently. The old woman held the bin steady and Logan kept his mate’s hair back, holding her up so as little got on her as possible.
Every few minutes she would throw up again, still unconscious, and it tore at his heart to see her so ill and weak. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the bin had been emptied multiple times. Slowly, the purple lines began to fade away.
The old woman, who had identified herself as Brigid, a supernatural healer, looked at him as she began to put away her things. Only the narrow wooden box remained on the gurney next to his mate.
She opened the lid after directing him to lay his mate back down. “The iron is mostly gone from her body. The chelating compound forced the iron in her blood to move to her stomach so she could vomit it out, but there is severe damage that her natural healing abilities are having difficulty fixing. Do you wish to see her live, Logan?”
“I will do anything to see her alive and safe, I swore on it.”
“Then give me your left hand.”
He stretched his arm across the body of his mate. From the box, Brigid pulled out a thin blade with a handle that looked like it was made of bone. She turned his mate’s left hand over so that her palm faced upwards and then she brought the tip of the blade down into the center of her palm and twisted, opening a hole in her flesh. Logan growled, prepared to shove the old woman away, when she grabbed his left hand and stabbed his palm in the same way, twisting the blade so deeply that he felt the scrape of the b
lade against the bones in his hand.
He ground his teeth together as she turned his hand over and the blood in his palm dripped into the wound on his mate’s hand. To his surprise, the wound in her hand seemed to absorb his blood. Brigid wiped the blade free of blood before putting it away.
“You are fully bonded now, wolf, save for the mating marks. Only a strong bond with her truemate could pull her back to consciousness and help her body heal, reversing the damage that was done from her poisoning.”
Thanks to his natural accelerated healing, his wound began to heal. Brigid handed him a gauze pad. He pressed it to his palm and watched as she sprinkled a sand-like powder into his mate’s wound and then wrapped it in gauze.
“She’ll need to stay here until she can walk out under her own power. It shouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours. I will make arrangements through the hospital to allow her to stay.”
She disappeared into the small bathroom and returned with a white cloth and a plastic bowl filled with water. She poured a vial of blue-tinted liquid into the water and dipped the cloth into it, wringing it out and handing it to him.
“The oil I poured into the water will not only cleanse her skin but also rid her of any traces of iron left on the surface.”
He nodded, taking the cloth and picking up his mate’s hand and stroking as gently as possible across the fading marks. Brigid packed up the remainder of her things.
“Wait,” he said as Brigid headed towards the door. “How long until she wakes?”
“I cannot say for sure. When you have bathed her, lie beside her on the bed and hold her close. She will draw strength from being near you. When she awakens, she will need to eat to regain her strength. I’ll be around, Logan.”
As he finished cleansing her arm, he dipped the cloth back into the water and said, “I’m here for you, baby, whenever you wake up. Whoever did this to you is going to suffer.”
Feeling a bit like a pervert, he cleansed her skin with the water, which smelled slightly of rosemary and something else herbal he couldn’t place. He paid careful attention to the thicker wounds on her neck, wrists, and ankles.
When he was finished, he patted her body dry and picked up her slight form. He carried her to the bed, pulled the covers aside, and laid her down. Pulling the sheet up, he covered her just as there was a knock at the door.
He stroked her cheek with the back of his finger and went to the door. To his surprise, Jason and Michael were just outside with Ben, Luka, Paul, and Drake. He opened the door further and let them in.
“The boys told us what happened. How is she?” Jason asked, keeping his voice low.
Logan explained about her injuries and that they were now bonded mates through blood-sharing. Jason’s brows rose. “I’ve never known any fairies. They’re a very secretive group. Drake told us where you found her, and Bo is searching maps of the area to see where she might have come from. Did she say anything, except to ask for your protection?”
Logan shook his head. The door to the room opened again, and Toby walked inside carrying a duffel bag that had been in the bottom of Logan’s closet. He set it down on a small two-drawer dresser near the bed and joined them. “When I stopped to get your truck, I packed a bag for you since Ben said you gave up your shirt for your mate. I brought some things from your bathroom for you, too. You look like hell, bro.”
He’d never been so relieved to be insulted. “Thanks, T.”
Toby nodded. Jason suggested the boys go get something from the cafeteria and handed them a few bills from his wallet.
When the four young wolves were gone, Jason and Michael sat in two chairs against the wall and Toby stood near them.
Logan moved to the bed and pressed his hand lightly to her shoulder, just to keep contact with her. Until they were alone, he wasn’t going to climb into bed with her. It was too … intimate.
“A blood bond is a serious thing, Logan.” Jason said. “It’s like a truemate bond on steroids.”
He didn’t know what a blood bond meant, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was his precious little fairy waking up and getting better. He would deal with the mating and bonding stuff later. They would.
Michael hummed. “I don’t think he cares.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Still, I just want you to know that if you need anything from me, from the pack, that we’re here for you. For both of you.”
Logan stopped looking down at his fairy and looked at his friends.
“Thanks.”
The boys returned with trays of vending-machine sandwiches, chips, sodas, and coffee. Logan set aside two sandwiches and sodas for his fairy, and ate with his pack. Conversation touched on everything but the unnamed woman in the hospital bed.
He took his keys from Toby, and thanked his packmates for their help and support. He’d never really had a support structure in a pack like he did with the Tressel Pack. Once his grandmother passed away, he hadn’t really had anyone in his corner.
When he was alone with his fairy, he shucked his boots and jeans and lifted the sheet, climbing into the bed slowly so he didn’t jar her too much. She looks better, he thought, as he flipped the button to turn off the light and settled carefully next to her. Sliding one arm under her neck and the other across her stomach under the sheet, he pulled her against himself and closed his eyes, resting his forehead against her temple.
His wolf prowled in his mind, anxious for her to wake up, and he found himself talking nonsense to her, asking her wake up, telling her how badly he wanted to get to know her, to see her healthy, that she was safe forever with him. He had no idea how much time passed before he drifted off to sleep, clinging to the hope that she’d wake soon.
Chapter 3
*One Day Earlier*
“Oh, Jenna,” her best friend Kari grinned as Jenna twirled in front of her, “you look fantastic.”
“Thanks. It’s my last bash before I spell for my truemate. I’m going to have a blast.” Jenna looked in the full-length mirror, lifting her mass of brown hair up to decide how she wanted to do her hair. The silver strands in her hair sparkled in the overhead light.
Kari joined her and took her hair in both hands, twisting the long length this way and that. “Are you sure you want to spell for your truemate? You’ll have to leave the glen and go live wherever he is.” Kari shivered as if it were the worst idea in the history of fae-kind.
Jenna was fairly certain that spelling for her truemate was one of the best ideas she’d ever had. There were no he-fairies that she was interested in, and even if she had been, as a lockinfae, she wasn’t considered a female of worth to her people. Lockinfae were the blue-collar workers of the fae world, those that couldn’t conjure magic, unlike her friend Kari, who was a blosomfae and used her magic to control nature. Jenna could unlock anything. It wasn’t a glamorous ability, but she’d never had to carry a key, and her parents were honest and hard-working.
Tonight, on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, she would party like the world was ending; then in the morning, on the first day of the twenty-fifth year of her life, she would cast an ancient fae spell that would lead her to her truemate. Somewhere outside of Harom Glen was her truemate. A shifter; a wolf perhaps, or maybe a big cat. He would feel compelled to find her, and she him, tethered by the spell until they met.
In her mind, there were fireworks and stringed instruments playing as she met her truemate for the first time. Then he’d gather her into his arms and kiss her until the whole world dropped away and it was just the two of them, cementing their new life together with the most passionate of kisses.
Kari twisted and clipped Jenna’s hair into a complicated mass on her head. Then she opened her clutch and withdrew a small paper envelope. She opened it, turned it over Jenna’s head, and sprinkled the contents — small seeds — into her hair.
Kari waved her fingers over the seeds and they began to sprout into delicate, dark-green vines no thicker than thread, which wove in and out of the
locks of Jenna’s hair. The vines sprouted miniscule silver flowers that complemented the silver strands of Jenna’s hair, making the classic style look even more elegant.
Kari held one more seed between her fingers and set it on the top of Jenna’s wrist. As it began to grow into a light green vine, it circled Jenna’s wrist several times over, so a thick circlet of vines lay on her wrist like a bracelet. Delicate blue flowers, like the sky in the summer, popped up and filled the vines.
Jenna touched the bracelet gingerly, her eyes misting with tears. “It’s so pretty, Kari, thank you.”
Kari hugged her and smiled down at her. Jenna was shorter than her best friend, who towered over her five-foot-four frame by four inches. “It’s my pleasure, Jen. You’re my best friend and I love you. I wish you weren’t leaving the glen. I’m worried I’ll never see you again.”
Kari, not only powerful but beautiful, was betrothed to a he-fairy named Raynir, a captain in the fae-army. He had high status among their people as a warrior, and he seemed entirely devoted to making Kari happy.
“I visit my cousin, Leah, in the Mortal Realm where she lives with her truemate. You can visit me anytime, and I’ll come back here to visit, too.”
Kari smiled and wiped at a stray tear, turning around to gather the makeup supplies that she had brought over to help Jenna get ready. Jenna kept her thoughts about the Mortal Realm to herself. Kari didn’t really understand what it was like to be an outcast in this world, to live on the sidelines. As a member of the lower class, Jenna hadn’t enjoyed the plush life that Kari had, going to parties and being courted by the most handsome he-fairies in the glen. Jenna had only been courted by a handful of he-fairies since she turned eighteen, and none of them had led her to believe that their potential marriage would be anything but one of convenience and duty. Jenna didn’t want to be married to man that didn’t want her, didn’t love her. She wanted to be swept off her feet by a strong pair of arms and kissed senseless, driven to ecstasy by talented fingers and lips, not groped blindly in the dark and left unsatisfied.