Page 82 of Wolf's Gambit

My head was resting against his chest, my eyelids drooping. “It’s not right,” I muttered. “The only person who shouldn’t be touching me is you.” I nuzzled into his chest more. “I’m so tired,” I told no one in particular. “I need to sleep.”

“We need to clean this up,” Royce spoke for the first time in a while.

“Kezia?”

Tipping my head back, I looked up at Cannon. “What?” I asked him sleepily. “What else can you possibly want?”

His hand cupped my cheek. “Why didn’t you shift?”

“She said the silver binds,” I mumbled, yawning widely. I slid my arms around his neck, trying to climb his body like a tree until Cannon bent and scooped me up. “I think it stops the shift,” I told him, yawning again.

“Did she say anything else?”

I felt the cot beneath me, and I curled onto my side. “No. I made her shift to heal the rest of the way.” I flung my arm out, waving an accusing finger at him even though I couldn’t see him since my eyes were firmly closed. “Dick move, by the way. You don’t shoot your hostages.” I paused, thinking of some of the movies I’d seen. “Okay, sometimes the hostages get shot, but you shouldn’t have shot me.”

I heard someone snort out a laugh, but I was too tired to look to find out who.

“This place looks like a battlefield,” I heard Royce murmur. “You made it happen…you clean it.”

“I’m your Alpha.”

“You’re a shit, that’s what you are. She’s right. You know that, right?” I heard him asking. “You shot her, for fuck’s sake. You could have killed her.”

“I knew she’d heal.”

“Did you?” That was Mal. “You didn’t seem so certain about ten minutes ago.”

“My wolf isn’t happy with me,” Cannon said, his voice gruff. “She survived three shots before, so I risked it.”

I wanted to tell them to shut up so I could sleep, but curiosity at their openness when they thought I was sleeping kept me on the brink of consciousness.

“She said the wolf told her she can’t shift with the silver in her body…it binds?” Royce asked quietly.

“Sounds like it,” Mal agreed.

“What does that mean?” Royce asked. “How is she alive?”

Because I healed. Duh.

“She healed,” Mal said what I was thinking. Thank you, Doc. I knew I liked you.

“She would have bled out,” Cannon told him quietly. “She was in a truck with them. She told me she could feel how weak she was when she regained consciousness.”

“And she shifted?” Royce asked dubiously, and I somehow felt like they were all staring at me. “How? If the wolf says it binds them to the human form.”

“She never shifted tonight either,” Cannon said softly. I felt the cot dip as he sat down, a warm hand soothing my hair back. “I thought she would shift,” he admitted, his voice low. He let out a slow breath. “That would have been irony in itself if I killed her.”

I didn’t find it ironic. Massive dick. And he needed to understand what irony was.

“If she can’t shift,” Mal spoke slowly, “and she was bleeding out…how is she here?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Cannon told him. I felt him leave the bed. “She won’t tell us.”

“Does she know?” Royce asked doubtfully. “Her wolf is…different. What if there is more of her that is different?”

“I can give her a full examination.”

I’m not different. Old sadness welled as I thought of my old pack and how they had never welcomed me fully because I was different from them.

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