Killed protecting a man who might have murdered my father.
At the thought, she gave a soft, harsh laugh, jagged as broken glass.
She crawled to the entrance of the cave, her muscles screaming in protest.
Outside, the desert landscape stretched before her, bathed in the soft pink glow of dawn.Her stash was close—hidden in a rock formation that resembled a sleeping coyote.
Still, Gregory Torrance’s daughter wasn’t going down because of a Sunburst wolf and a graze from a silver bullet.
She’d endured worse.
Nadine shifted forms, gritting her teeth as the transformation pulled at the damaged tissue.
The wound looked worse in wolf form, silver particles glittering hideously in the torn flesh.She’d need to shift back to human to treat it properly, but for now, four legs would carry her faster than two.
She limped through the scrubland, each step a fresh jolt of agony.The desert’s scents assaulted her sensitive nose—creosote, rabbit, coyote.And something else that shouldn’t be there.
Cedar and sage.Desert air and sunshine.
Him.
The mate bond thrummed beneath her skin, a constant, unwelcome reminder of the connection she’d neither asked for nor wanted.It pulled her westward—toward Sunburst territory.Toward Conall.
No, she snarled, the word coming out as a low growl in her wolf form.
She deliberately turned northeast, fighting both the pain and the insistent tug of the bond.
Silver poisoning was the more immediate threat.She could deal with unwanted mate connections later.
After thirty agonizing minutes, the coyote rock formation appeared on the horizon.Nadine pushed herself harder, ignoring the blood that matted her fur where the wound had reopened.Almost there.
Her cache was exactly where she’d left it—a weatherproof pack wedged into a crevice beneath the rock formation, camouflaged with desert debris.Getting to it required shifting back.
The transformation back to human felt like being flayed alive.
Nadine bit her lip until it bled, refusing to cry out.Weakness was unacceptable.
Her fingers, clumsy with fever, fumbled with the pack’s zipper.When it finally opened, she could have wept with relief.
Medical supplies.Water.
Everything she needed to survive.
She uncapped a water bottle with shaking hands and drank deeply, the lukewarm liquid like heaven against her parched throat.
Then she turned her attention to the medical supplies.
First, extraction tools for the silver fragments.Then antiseptic.Healing herbs.Bandages.
The silver extraction was going to hurt like hell.
Nadine positioned herself with her back against the rock, leg stretched out before her.The specialized tweezers glinted in the morning light.
Let’s get this over with,she muttered.
She probed the wound, clenching her jaw as the tweezers connected with the first silver fragment.The contact sent electricity shooting up her leg.
With surgical precision despite her fever, she extracted the sliver of metal, dropping it onto a cloth beside her.
