Page 25 of Brutal Mate

She rang the doorbell urgently, over and over again until she saw the light in the hall go on, and even then, she pressed one more time.

“Hold your horses, would you?” a muffled voice yelled through the door, and she was relieved to recognize Lauren's voice.

Glancing over her shoulder, she looked this way and that. She needed to get inside quickly, before anybody saw her. If a single person told her parents where she was, she was certain she would be locked up for good.

The door was unlocked, and the second it opened, Miley shoved her way in frantically.

“What the hell?” Lauren demanded, trying to push the door closed on her, but Miley's adrenaline was pumping, and she easily overcame her friend.

“Lauren, Lauren! It’s me!” Miley hissed under her breath, trying to pin her friend's arms to her sides to stop her from panicking and attacking her.

“Christ, Miley!” Lauren cursed. “What the hell are you doing barging in here like that?” she demanded as she began to calm, kicking the door shut the rest of the way with her slippered foot.

“I…I'm running away,” Miley gulped, trembling. Her arm was beginning to hurt now that she had noticed the wound and she felt queasy.

Lauren cocked her head, crossing her arms and raising her blonde brow. “You aren’t doing a very good job of it if you're planning to just run away and live here. Your parents will be here all over again, just like last time.”

Miley shook her head. “I was headed to Pine Valley through the woods, but I had an accident.”

She held up her arm and watched her friend's face grow pale.

“Is your mom in?” Miley asked, glancing down the hall. She half-expected the woman to appear from the kitchen or even the den.

“She's at work,” Lauren responded, and Miley wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Lauren's mother was a nurse at the local, very small hospital just down the road from Nightstar, and she would have been the perfect person to take a look at her arm.

“Don't look so worried,” Lauren grumbled. “She taught me the ways of the first aid box.”

With that, Lauren gripped Miley’s good arm and started to drag her down the hall to the kitchen.

“You'd better take off your shirt. I'll throw it in the wash for you,” Lauren said as she reached up to the top of the cupboard for the little red first aid kit. It had been up there since they were small kids, and yet every time it was opened there were fresh supplies, unlike the ones at her house or in the back room of the hardware store. Those always seemed to have something missing.

Lauren laid the kit on the breakfast bar before helping Miley out of her favorite purple hoodie. She only hoped the blood would wash out as Lauren took it to the laundry room just to the side of the kitchen and threw it in the washing machine before returning to inspect Miley's wound.

“How the hell did you do this?” Lauren asked, turning Miley's arm over to examine it. It wasn't bleeding nearly as badly as Miley had anticipated, but it was enough for Lauren to grab a clean kitchen towel and say, “Hold this on there while I wash my hands.”

Miley did as she instructed, wincing at the pain of putting pressure on the wound.

At her friend's question, she remembered with unwelcome clarity how she had received the wound. Perhaps pain and terror had scrubbed the experience from her memory, or maybe she had actually hit her head during the altercation, but it came rushing back to her now.

The meeting with the man in the woods and how two wolves had come rushing at her with a click of his fingers. How she had tried to get away only for those very wolves to knock her down and pin her to the ground.

The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she quivered terribly as she remembered the hot, stinking breath on the back of her neck. It had been all too easy to imagine them sinking their teeth deep into her flesh, snapping her neck like a pitiful baby rabbit's.

Just like the wolf she had seen in the clearing that night of the bonfire party, these wolves were twice the size of any she had ever seen on the nature channel. And she had been certain she was going to die.

But then, just as she felt the wolf's teeth sinking into her forearm, a miracle had occurred.

A third wolf had appeared, little more than a flash of black fur. And her terror had turned to brief relief as it knocked both of the other wolves away from her.

That had been about the time her adrenaline took over and she started to run, never looking back. She almost felt sorry for the wolf that had saved her. Why he had done it, she did not know, but he had, and she was alive because of him. She only hoped he had made it out of the altercation safely also. Not that she would ever know, but she wasn't sure she could live with herself knowing such a beautiful and heroic creature had lost its life for her.

I wish I could ask it why it saved me, she thought with a deep sigh. But that was foolish, and she shoved the idea away.

Lauren pulling the towel off her wound, now wearing a pair of latex gloves, gave her the pain she needed to end her thought process.

“How did you say you did this, Miley?” Lauren asked again, peeling back plastic wrapping to expose terrifying-looking alcohol wipes.

“I'm not sure those are going to cut it,” Miley gulped, ignoring her friend's question. How could she say she had been attacked by damn wolves at the command of a man? Hell, how could she say a third had rescued her? She barely even believed it herself.

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