Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
But the person who emerged from the trees with a woven basket held to one side was neither an enemy who needed to be shot nor a hard-nosed wolf trainer in combat fatigues. Tall, her curves lush, she had hair of midnight that rippled down her back in a cloud and midbrown skin that glowed under the faint winter sunlight that penetrated the canopy.
A scar, old and taut, bisected her right eyebrow, ran over her eyelid, and down her cheek before trailing off toward her ear. But it circled back across her neck, or perhaps that was a different scar.
Her clothing couldn’t be further from fatigues: she wore an ankle-length dress of vivid aqua with a swirly skirt that had a white frill around the bottom. Her cardigan was the same white, but the clusters of gemstones that dangled from her ears were all the hues of the world, with no regard at all to her dress.
Ivan found himself staring, it seemed so impossible that she existed in this time and place. He was concerned he was hallucinating. That would mean he did have an infection.
“I knew I smelled blood!” Striding over to him on long legs, a stern frown on her face, she put down her basket with a bad-tempered grumble that was very real. “I’m going to have to talk to the wolves about this,” she said as she began to undo his tourniquet. “They can’t just keep releasing helpless people into the wild!”
Ivan preferred to keep people at a distance, but somehow, he’d not only allowed her this close without protest, he’d then let her grumble at him—however, this he couldn’t let go. “I’m far from helpless.”
She didn’t bristle or startle at the ice in his tone, her attention on sanitizing her hands using what looked—oddly—like a medical wipe. “And I know what I’m doing, so hush and let me concentrate.”
No one told Ivan to hush.
But since her hands were confident and competent on his leg as she examined the injury, he held his silence … and watched her with a fascination he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not since he was a child perhaps. He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that this woman who’d appeared out of the rain-soaked forest intrigued him in ways he’d have believed impossible only two minutes earlier.
She wasn’t a wolf, he knew that in his gut. She didn’t move like any of the wolves he’d met. Neither was she a bear. He’d seen enough bears in Moscow to be certain of that. But she was definitely changeling. Aside from the wall of her mind, she was too comfortable in these surroundings to be human or Psy.
It fit her, the wild.
Having removed the tourniquet, she made an aggravated sound at the renewed bleeding, then reached into her basket … to come out with a tiny bottle of disinfectant. Ivan was no longer so certain he hadn’t hallucinated her. What kind of woman wore makeup that made her eyelids shimmer and her lips glossy, then walked around a forest with a basket of miniature medical supplies?
“It’s going to hurt,” she said, then kind of … petted him on the other leg, as if to comfort him.
Right before she poured the disinfectant on the wound.
Fuck. Oh yeah, this was fucking real.
Gritting his teeth, he rode the burn without a sound. When the pain finally began to ebb, he looked up to see her retrieving a very small suturing device from her basket. “You’re lucky whatever cut you didn’t hit bone,” she said. “It looks like you cleaned out the wound, and the disinfectant will have finished the job—it’s powerful stuff. So I can seal it.”
A glance at him, her eyes as dark as the rich soil of the forest—and as unknowable. “I don’t have any numbing gel though, just a single shot of anesthetic that’ll make you dozy.”
Ivan’s entire self recoiled. “There’s no need for it.” Psy minds didn’t do well with drugs as a rule, but that wasn’t why Ivan refused to use any drug that might influence his thought processes. “I can regulate my pain responses.” Grandmother had made sure he’d learned how. “I’m ready.”
The woman with the healer’s hands raised an eyebrow. “Psy? Thought so. Or you could’ve been a grumpy wolf, I suppose. They like to snarl a lot.”
“I. Am. Not. Grumpy.”
A lithe shrug. “Okay, cutie pie. Now think happy thoughts.”
Ivan was yet agog over that statement when she began stitch-stapling with quick, efficient hands. He clenched his gut, gritted his teeth again. Pain regulation wasn’t a cure-all. It just meant he wouldn’t pass out. She’d also sealed half the wound while he’d still been trying to process the way she’d addressed him.
Clever.
His breathing was harsh by the time she’d finished, his heart rate accelerated, but he knew she’d taken care to be gentle in the scheme of such things. “Thank you,” he managed to get out while she took a small disinfectant wipe from her basket and wiped down the wound.