Page 13 of A Bloom in Winter

The wolf lowered its head, and with its eyes still on Apex, it picked up the carcass. Then the predator trotted off, disappearing into the storm, leaving a trail of blood behind.

As Apex reholstered his gun under his arm, he did his best to hide the fact that his hands were shaking. Meanwhile, Mayhem jumped forward to the female, who was slumping in her gray-and-red parka and ski pants. Things were said between the pair of them, but there was no tracking any of that and not because of the wind.

All that white fur blended perfectly into the snow. Then again, that male was a ghost no matter what form he was in.

Forcing himself to engage, Apex went over to where Mayhem was all but praying on his knees. “How badly are you—”

He stopped as the dark-haired female looked up at him. For a split second, he didn’t trust what he was seeing. What the hell was his boss’s daughter doing here?

Shit, this just got complicated, he thought as she stayed mute.

“We need to get you back to the house,” he said with exhaustion. “Can you walk?”

Mahrci, a.k.a Mahricelle, blooded daughter of Whestmorel the Elder, looked away from him. Snow was gathering in her messy hair and flakes clung to her face where her fear tears had streaked down her cheeks. She was too pale, and shaking as if she were naked in the cold.

“I can carry her,” Mayhem said roughly. “You take that gun back out.”

Had he put it away, Apex thought numbly.

As he rearmed himself, the other male leaned down and spoke in a quiet way that went against everything he was as a vampire. Mayhem was a marching band that had bad rhythm and horns that hadn’t been tuned right. Suddenly, he was something out of an ASMR channel?

“Our SUV is just out on the lane,” the guy said gently. “We can drive you in that way, okay?”

After a moment, Mahrci nodded and put her blood-dripping glove out. “I cut myself.”

“It’s all right.” Mayhem took her arm and positioned it over his shoulders. “We’ll deal with it when we’re home.”

Annnnd now he’s a candy striper, Apex thought.

There was some more quiet conversation, and then the female gasped as Mayhem carefully picked her up in a cradle.

“You go first,” Apex ordered.

“Where’s your gun?” Mayhem demanded.

“Right here. I got this.”

Bullshit, he had anything. As he trudged in the wake of Mayhem the Good Samaritan and the teeth-chattering, bleeding,in-shock daughter of his fucking employer, Apex’s mind was sucked back thirty years into the past. To that prison in the sanatorium. And the private quarters of that head of the guards.

So that he was once again standing over that empty bed with the white flowers in the little beakers.

Every blink brought him another image of Callum—but at least not all of them were from the end of things. Some of the mental pictures were from the beginning, from that crazy escape from Willow Hills, where the wolven had stood with members of his clan, and those predators had changed from one form into another.

Apex had never seen anything like it. There had been none of that ancient movie shit, noAmerican Werewolf in Londonrough cuts, noThe Howlingcracks and snaps.

Smooth, like water, as if every cell were two things at the same time, and as a train changed tracks without a hitch given proper rerouting, so too did the wolven switch between one incarnation and the other.

Yet—as unforgettable as Callum was—Apex wasn’t sure he would have recognized the wolven just now if he hadn’t first scented the male in that truck cab.

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay . . .”

The reassuring words were coming out of Mayhem’s mouth, drifting back over his shoulder on clouds of breath that dissipated in the storm. Yet the syllables fed into Apex’s brain as something he himself had spoken—because he had. At the end, at that bedding platform . . . he had said those exact words, over and over, to Callum as the male lay on his back like a corpse, his bruises and internal injuries healing as his soul and spirit had remained mortally injured—

“Apex’ll get the door. Won’t he.Apex.”

As his name was repeated sharply, he jumped to attention. How the hell had the SUV come up so fast?

“Yeah, I got it.”

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