Page 36 of Hunted

It’s been ten minutes since I called Adela, and the wound has healed completely now. Only a thin line is evidence of it, and that cut, in the next five or ten minutes, will have disappeared as well.

I swing open the door before Adela can knock.

“Is she conscious yet?” Adela asks, tucking her car keys into the pocket of her long floral skirt as she walks inside.

I shake my head as I close the door behind her. “Not yet. She’s breathing fine and she had a small cut on her head, but it’s nearly healed now. I don’t know if the baby is hurt. She fell and I?—”

Adela grips my arm and squeezes as she gives me a reassuring smile. “She’ll be fine.”

“You haven’t seen her yet.”

“Aerin is resilient, as are all shifters. She will be fine. If you want to be helpful, you can make some herbal tea. Peppermint or chamomile.”

“For you?”

“No,” she says, still smiling. “For you, so you can relax.”

I don’t return her smile. “If I hadn’t sent Aerin back to the house on her own, this wouldn’t have happened. She’d have been fine.”

When she first came to Winter Lake, I pushed her out of the path of a semi that she hadn’t seen. And because of that push, she broke her leg so badly that she needed to wear a brace to keep it straight while the bones healed.

Now this.

“You were trying to protect her. Not something you should feel guilty about.” She eyes me for a beat, then nods. “Chamomile tea. You can drink it while I check Aerin.”

There’s not enough chamomile tea in the world to relax me. Only knowing Aerin is fine will do that. “I ask myself daily why you’re not the Alpha.”

Her eyes sparkle with amusement. “I have better things to do with my time. Is she upstairs?”

I nod.

“Then I’ll get started while you make yourself some tea. I won’t need one. This won’t take long.”

Her complete confidence that this is just a small hiccup rather than the disaster I thought it was does more to relax me than any tea would. As she walks upstairs to check on Aerin, I head for the kitchen to make tea.

Adela is examining Aerin as I place a mug of hot chamomile tea on the bedside table.

I stand back from the bed so I’m not in Adela’s way, stuffing my hands in my pockets as I watch. “How is she?”

Adela continues gently probing Aerin’s head and neck. “As I thought. She’s okay. The head impact is probably the only reason she’s still unconscious. There are no lumps or swellings, which is a good sign.”

I nod. “Do you think she needs to go to the hospital?”

We stay away from hospitals in general. All shifters do. We heal too fast and can do altogether too many miraculous things that a sharp-eyed doctor doesn’t need to know. But if Aerin needs medical intervention, and it will save her and the baby, the risk will be worth it.

“She’ll be fine, Mack,” Adela says firmly.

“I know. I just…”

“Worry.” She pulls the cover back over Aerin and turns to smile at me. “Which is perfectly natural when the person we love is hurt. Tell me what happened.”

I’d already given her a quick rundown of everything that had happened, but I give her a more thorough explanation now. Including me losing my head when I saw the bear.

She perches on the edge of the bed, her expression thoughtful as she listens.

Like most things, Adela takes it all in her stride. “Hmm. I hadn’t seen one around here for some time. And it didn’t immediately run?”

I shake my head. “I know what to do and what not to do. Except this time, all I could think was to get Aerin as far away from the bear as possible, even though I knew the chance of it attacking was low.”

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