Then he is no more.
The wolf is dead, but the dragon is injured.
There are no winners here.
Chapter Eight
Cameron
“You’re hurt,” she says, rushing over to me.”
“I’m fine,” I growl, but she ignores me and takes my arm in her hands. She looks at my skin and makes a weird little clicking sound. Disapproval. She disapproves of my injury. Well, it’s not up to her, now is it? She had a chance to avoid all of this, but she chose to run. She chose to make me chase her. It’s her fault I’m hurt. Really. It is.
It’s not the human’s fault, my dragon whispers to me, but I ignore that fucker.
“Stop touching me,” I pull my arm away, but she glares at me.
“You listen here,” she says. “You might be some big, bad shifter, but my mother was a nurse, and I know a bad injury when I see one. We need to get this cleaned up. Now.”
She stands and offers me her hand. What? Is she going to pull me to my feet? I’m much too big and heavy for that, but I humor her, offering my hand in return, and she tugs. I push myself up to help her, and then I allow the human to lead me into the wolf’s cabin. We both pointedly ignore his corpse, not wanting to even deal with that at the moment. I should burn it, most likely, or bury him, but I get the feeling we don’t have time for pleasantries.
The inside of the cabin is dirty and dusty. I don’t know how long the wolf lived here, but it’s obvious he didn’t take well to solitude.
“This place is disgusting,” the human says.
“Human, you simply don’t understand the ways of shifters,” I say.
“Peggy.”
“What?”
“My name is Peggy,” she says. “Please don’t call me human. Call me Peggy.”
“All right, Peggy,” I say. “You just don’t understand the ways of shifters.”
“I think you just don’t want to admit that I’m right,” she says, and I notice she doesn’t ask me my name. Maybe she knows I won’t give it to her.
I sit at the dusty table. The chair creaks beneath my weight and Peggy begins to move around the cabin. She takes off her backpack and sets it on the floor. Then she unzips it and two little kittens pop their heads out.
“Go on, then,” she tells them. “This is your one chance to play and stretch, so don’t waste it.”
The kittens nervously begin to climb out of the bag. One at a time, they come out and look around nervously. The kitten who notices me first begins to hiss and spit at me, and the other follows suit.
“They’re charming,” I say dryly.
“They’re strays,” she says. “Someone abandoned them.”
“So you just took them in?” What a strange human.
“What was I going to do?” She shoots me a dark look. “Let them die?”
She doesn’t place Daisy down, I notice. Instead, she keeps the baby in the carrier on her chest and she begins to walk around the room. She gathers a washcloth and some other random supplies. Then she comes over to the table and sits across from me.
“Give me your arm.”
“You could say please, you know.”
“I think we’re past the point of pleasantries. Don’t you?”