by Zoe Chant
Faye shook her head. She couldn’t let herself think like that. She refused to believe she’d lost Lincoln, just as they’d finally found each other again.
Faye held the phone to her ear, but there was no sound from the other end. Biting her lip, Faye held it in front of her, wiping the screen with her soaking wet sleeve to see it better – not that it did any good.
There’s no signal. Shit. Shit.
Suddenly furious, Faye threw the phone away from her, so it splashed down into the mud.
What can I do?
Frantically, she looked out over the paddock, trying to see if Mason or Joe was visible, but in the low light and driving rain, it was virtually impossible to see anything past a few feet beyond them.
“I’m sorry, Lincoln,” she whispered, reaching out to brush her fingers over his face. “There’s no signal – the phone – ”
“It’s not… a problem.” Lincoln’s voice sounded strained. “I can – I can –”
He closed his eyes and Faye gasped, tensing, as she saw him prepare to move.
“No, Lincoln, you could have a spinal injury! Stop – !”
But it was too late.
Lincoln gritted his teeth, his fingers curling in the mud. She was expecting him to try to lift the massive bough off his back, but instead, she realized something quite different was happening.
Lincoln wasn’t moving – he was transforming.
Shifting. Her brain vaguely supplied the correct word as she gazed down at him in shock.
Despite the fact she knew of shifters and had proof of their existence, she’d only seen them shift between their animal and human forms at a distance. And aside from that, they had been wolves – not the magnificent golden lion that Lincoln was now becoming.
It took her by surprise, how smoothly he changed – his body becoming bigger, a massive dark brown mane sprouting over his shoulders and head. Even sodden by the rain, she could tell that it was huge and shaggy, and completely appropriate to the powerful alpha lion she knew he was.
Even like this, injured and trapped, she could see the strength and beauty in him. The cord and sinew of his powerful shoulder muscles; the massive paws.
Lincoln was a big and powerful man, Faye thought, still dazed. It made sense that his lion would be just the same.
Looking down at him, Faye felt a pain deep in her heart that such a beautiful and impressive creature could be so hurt.
The lion before her growled, its snout wrinkling in pain. But she wasn’t frightened in the least. Instead, she reached out to him, stroking her fingers through the coarse hair of his mane, a soft, soothing sound leaving her lips.
“Lincoln…” she whispered.
The lion’s eyes, brilliant green in place of Lincoln’s dark gray but somehow still recognizable as his, were focused on her face.
The massive paws scrabbled at the muddy earth, and Faye caught her breath. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to tell Lincoln to lie still, that moving could make his injuries worse – but then, the lion had pulled itself forward, its changed shape and greater upper body strength making it easier for it to pull itself out from beneath the tree branch.
The lion snarled in pain, the sound low and deep in its throat, but it didn’t stop. He dragged himself forward, the branch sliding from his body, slowly and painfully.
“Oh, Lincoln…”
Tears sprang anew into Faye’s eyes as she saw his injuries. Blood matted his beautiful fur along his flank – but it wasn’t until his left back leg came into view that she realized what must be causing him the pain: the horrific open fracture in the upper section of his left hind.
She clenched her fists. The protruding bone was shockingly white against the red of his blood, and the dark mud that had soaked into his fur.
The wound was at terrible risk of infection as it was – it needed to be thoroughly cleaned, and he’d need surgery. Her head spun as she tried to remember everything she knew about the treatment of such injuries. She’d known a man back in Chile who’d developed a chronic infection in his bone as a result of something like this, and his arm had never quite been the same again…
No, don’t think like that, Faye told herself sternly. She’d never have done all the things she’d been able to accomplish in her life if she’d always been imagining the worst-case scenario.
And Lincoln was strong and healthy. It seemed almost impossible to imagine him in anything but peak health, despite the fact he was lying in front of her now, with a terrible injury.
And he’s a lion.
What had he said to her? Faye tried to remember.
Shifters heal much faster.
She prayed it was true.
Biting her lip, Faye stroked her hand over the velvety fur of Lincoln’s nose. Her hands moved without her conscious will – she only knew she wanted to comfort him, somehow. To show him that he wasn’t alone.
She – his mate – was with him.
For a moment, Faye didn’t recognize the low sound that began emanating from Lincoln’s chest – but when she did, she almost laughed out loud, despite the dire situation.
Lincoln was purring.
“You’re just a little bigger than any cat I’ve owned in the past,” she said, as she continued to scratch his nose. “And maybe just a bit pushier. But we can work it out. I know we can.”
Faye was barely aware of the words she was mumbling as she sat next to him in the rain, the mud soaking into her clothes. After a moment, it came to her that she was shivering, and she looked up – the fire in the tree had almost been entirely extinguished.
Well, so much for that, she thought. She wondered where Mason and Joe could have got to – she hadn’t had a chance to talk to them, but they both seemed like strapping, capable young men who couldn’t possibly be taking this much time to hook up a hose to a water pump.
Faye swallowed. The last thing she wanted to do was leave Lincoln, but without phone reception, she had no choice but to go for help herself.
“I’m just going to go find help,” she said softly. “Promise me you won’t try to move. I’ll only be gone a moment. All right?”
The lion’s brilliant green eyes opened slightly to look at her. She wasn’t sure how, but she knew in that moment that Lincoln understood her, and would do what she asked and stay where he was.
Faye wasn’t about to question it, but she knew she had a lot to learn about this strange mated bond between the two of them. How did it work? How could she understand him even when he was in lion form – and without the need for words? And would it be strong enough to overcome their equally headstrong and stubborn natures?
She didn’t know. But all of these things were questions for another time.
Because we’ll have another time, she told herself firmly as she got shakily to her feet. Everything will be okay. Lincoln will recover, and then we’ll have all the time in the world.
Chapter Eleven
Lincoln
When Lincoln awoke, his head felt like it had been run over by a truck.
His tongue felt dry and sticky in his mouth, and his eyelids felt heavy, as if they were weighed down with stones.
For someone who had never experienced a day of sickness in his life, it was an unfamiliar – and unwelcome – sensation.
He snarled a little – the last thing he remembered was shifting into his lion form and pulling himself out from beneath the massive tree branch that had landed on him. Everything after that was fuzzy, lost in a haze of pain – except for the memory of gentle fingers and wide, sky-blue eyes.
Faye.
Lincoln sat up with a jerk, sending pain rolling down through his body. His vision swam and he groaned, but he wouldn’t allow himself to relax until he knew Faye was safe…
“Lincoln!”
Her voice rang out, clear and soft like the smallest of bells. All at once, her face was before him, her blue eyes clear and wide, her pink lips slightly parted, her beautiful auburn hair falling in waves around her face.
“You’re awake. Thank goodness.” Her voice was breathless with relief.
Lincoln swallowed painfully, trying to lick his lips with a tongue that felt thick and dry. Faye immediately reached over to grab a glass of water from the bedside table, lifting it to his lips. Lincoln took a long, grateful sip, the liquid sliding down his throat like ambrosia.
He took a breath when the water was gone, trying to organize his thoughts into home kind of coherence.
Glancing around, Lincoln finally took in his surroundings. He was in his own room, in his own bed. He was glad of that. It was the best place for an injured shifter to be.
And Faye had stayed here with him. She clearly hadn’t left his side.
The knowledge sent a rush of warmth through him, his lion, still groggy, purring gratefully.
But first things first.
“How long was I…” he began to ask.
“Three days.” While she was speaking softly, the tension in her voice was obvious.
Lincoln blinked, thinking he must not have heard her right.
“That’s impossible…”
But even as he heard himself say it, his voice sounding weak and cracked, he knew it wasn’t.
Faye licked her lips. “I was… scared, Lincoln. More scared than I’ve ever been before in my entire life. But they told me you were strong, and that shifters sometimes… when they need to heal…”
Despite his aching muscles, Lincoln nodded. “Healing takes a huge amount of energy. Sometimes it’s just easier to sleep through it. The body knows what it needs to do.”
But still, three days…
Most shifters slept for three hours when healing.
It was usually all they needed.
He glanced down at himself, and was actually somewhat surprised to see that his body beneath the blanket looked more or less normal. He felt like hell.
“It’s your leg,” Faye said, as if she’d guessed his thoughts. “Heath – I think that was his name, I’m sorry, everything’s been a bit of a blur – said your ribs would heal up just fine. And I think they have. But your leg is… well, what he said was…”
Cold, unfamiliar fear suddenly sliced through Lincoln’s chest.
He’d been injured before – sometimes badly. He’d come off his horse once as a cub and caused his mother a week of crying, though he’d been just fine in the end. Another time, as a young and far more reckless man, he’d gotten on the wrong side of a horny bull and been gored for his trouble, but again, he’d healed up in no time, from an injury that might have proved too severe to recover from in any human.
It can’t be true.
Cold sweat breaking out over his brow, Lincoln pulled back the cover from his leg, staring down at it.
The skin over his thigh was angry and swollen, and still obviously puckered and red where his bone must have broken through the skin.
Lincoln could see immediately why any of the other shifters who’d seen it would be concerned – this didn’t look typical for a half-healed wound. Shifter medicine was, even now, still based largely on tradition and knowledge passed between pack members. Naturally, there were some shifter doctors, but Lincoln had no idea if any of them had ever gotten together to write a manual of shifter health.
Shifters’ naturally quick healing and instincts for what they needed had always been a trusted given.
“Is it that bad?” Faye’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Lincoln took a deep breath. “Well, it’s not good.”
He didn’t want to frighten her. But to be honest, he had no idea what this meant.
It’s only been three days, he thought to himself. He knew shifters who had taken longer to heal from serious injuries – his own nephew Heath had taken over two weeks to heal from the gunshot wound and other injuries he’d received while protecting his mate from the men who’d wanted to hurt her.
But something told him this was different.
Lincoln looked up from his leg as the door to his room opened.
He was mildly surprised when he saw Heath’s face appear from behind it – though he recalled that Faye had mentioned he was here earlier.
“I thought I heard you talking.” Heath’s voice was quiet – but again, Lincoln could hear the relief in it. “I came down and brought a friend – a medic I trust – with me.” He paused, as if waiting for Lincoln to question him, but Lincoln stayed quiet. “She’s a shifter, so she knows what she’s doing.”
Lincoln swallowed. He didn’t know what to think of any of this. Sure, he knew he’d been hurt bad by the falling tree branch. But being completely out cold for three days, the ugly, puckered skin of his leg, and the way he felt were all nothing like what he’d ever experienced before, even with the worst of his previous injuries.
Before he could dwell on it for long, however, his alpha instincts came to the fore.
You can’t let members of your pride – and your mate – see you like this. Get up. Now. How can you protect them if you can’t even stand?
“Well, thank your friend for me,” Lincoln said, moving to sit up straighter. “But I won’t need any more attention now. I’ll be fine. This will heal.”
He started to swing his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the sharp spike of pain the movement sent all through his body. Before he could get far, though, he felt Faye’s hand on his shoulder – her grip surprisingly firm for something that looked so small and soft.
“Lincoln.” If her hand was firm, her voice was pure steel. “Do not do this. You stay right where you are, and let Heath tell you what happened.”
Lincoln’s lion swelled up inside his chest. Are you going to let a member of your pride dictate to you like that?
Lincoln hesitated, looking into Faye’s eyes. Her gaze was utterly unwavering, piercing him to his very soul.
She’s not a member of the pride, he argued with his lion. She’s more than that. She’s my mate. And I owe her my life.
The lion growled, its tail flicking, but, after a long moment, it backed down, glowering.
Remember what we agreed on, Lincoln reminded it. He had come to several realizations out there in the paddock in the middle of the storm. The lion needed to be reminded of them. But it wasn’t surprising it had temporarily reverted to its old ways: it had been injured and was still in pain. The animal instincts always resurfaced in times like these.
Swallowing, Lincoln moved his legs back onto the bed, slowly and carefully. He looked up at Heath.
His nephew looked a little tense – but, Lincoln supposed, he probably hadn’t seen anyone talk back to the pride alpha like that before. He hadn’t been around during the worst of Lincoln’s arguments with Mason, after all.
“I’ll get Williams – that’s Julie Williams, my medic friend – to explain. She’ll do a better job of it than me,” he said, before leaving the room again.
The silence that followed was thick with tension. When Lincoln looked up at Faye’s eyes, they were just as uncompromising as before.
“Faye,” he started to say, but before he could get far, Heath had returned, this time with a short, stocky woman. She was built of pure muscle, as far as Lincoln could tell – and like him, was clearly a shifter. It was a gift shifters had: being able to detect who was of their own kind, even if they couldn’t tell what exactly other shifters turned into.
“Seems like you’ve done yourself quite a bit of damage there,” Williams said without prelude. She crossed her arms across her chest. “Normally I’d say this is the kind of thing a shifter could overcome in a matter of days. But in your case, there’s some complications.”
Lincoln felt a shiver of unease run down the length of his spine.
Complications?
“Number one: you shifted with a badly fractured leg. It happens sometimes, but it’s never a good idea. And you somehow managed to do it twice.”
Lincoln frow
ned. He didn’t remember that – but then again, he knew he’d shifted into his lion form after the accident. It had been the only way to free himself from the branch that was crushing him. He hadn’t consciously willed it: his instincts had taken over.
He didn’t remember shifting back into his human form at all. But he clearly had.
“Bones are tricky things,” Williams continued. “With flesh wounds, well, it’s not the best idea to shift with them, but we usually cope. But bones, that can be a real problem.” She shrugged. “Call it a trade-off for the fast healing time we have. But changing the shape of the bones while they’re trying to heal can cause serious problems.”
“What kind of problems?” Faye’s voice was low, but she spoke quickly, revealing her unease.
Williams turned to look at her. “I’ll leave out the technical jargon. Put simply, the bones may not knit properly. Because shifters heal so quickly, the break would have already started to heal by the time Lincoln here changed forms. So it would have destroyed the healing work that had already started – almost like he’d broken it again. Twice, in this case.” She shook her head. “And then we have the fact that it’s a compound fracture. Again, that doesn’t really work in our favor. With a human, there’s plenty of time to clean the wound, make sure as much foreign material is flushed out as possible. But with a shifter, the wound seals up much faster, and even if you get to a doctor right away, you’re still going to be stuck with it. That can mean infection.”
“But a shifter can fight off the infection,” Lincoln said.
Williams nodded. “That’s true. And usually, not really a problem. But in your case, we have a complicated injury that’s been exacerbated by multiple shifts. We have a deep infection that might have gotten into the bone. And then there’s your age.”
Lincoln stiffened. “My age?”
Williams nodded. “Look, I’m a doctor. I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes,” she said carefully. “I’m just trying to give you a full picture. You’re not old, but you’re not young. And I can see that you’ve led a harder life than some – ranching can be tough on the body. Healing slows down a little as we age, just like everything else.”