Page 43 of Redeemed Wolf

Silas slipped his arms under me, lifting me with ease. I buried my face against his chest and closed my eyes. “Isaac,” Silas called. “You lead. Head for the gate.”

I was jostled as we ran. I felt the sun on my skin, the breeze. The air around us was filled with gunfire, an explosion from off to the right. It felt like a warzone, and I dug my fingers into Silas’s shirt, my breath hitching.

“Let’s go!” someone shouted. “Into the trucks, hurry!”

I felt someone else’s hands on me, trying to lift me from Silas’s arms, but I felt the rumble of a growl through his chest. “No, I’ve got him,” he snapped. “You drive.” He climbed into a vehicle, resting me in his lap, while someone closed the car door behind us, doing little to muffle the sharp reports of automatic gunfire.

The engine was already running, and someone jumped into the front seat and hit the gas, sending us bounding down the road. I peeled my eyes open enough to confirm that we were in a truck as we barreled through the gate, left wide open. It was a small comfort to see Pacey behind the wheel.

When I glanced over Silas’s shoulder, I saw three others crammed into the back seat—Isaac was holding hands with the woman wearing my lab coat, and in her arms, she was cradling the young boy I’d carried. He wasn’t crying or whining, just staring blankly off into the distance, and that was somehow worse than being afraid. He was nothing more than an empty shell. It made me want to be braver for him.

The truck lurched as Pacey spun the wheel, turning sharply to the right. Away from the city. The tires squealed as they grippedthe pavement, the vehicle hurtling down the highway at top speed.

“Home?” Pacey asked, glancing at Silas.

Silas looked over at him and shook his head. “They don’t belong at Overlands,” he said. “They need a pack that will let them heal. They need family.”

Pacey nodded. “Grim Wilds it is,” he said.

Silas reached around me to dig his phone out of his pocket, rolled down the window, and tossed it out. “I guess that’s that.”

Pacey kept his eyes on the road, but he fidgeted, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Safe to assume they’ll come after us. Will he call the cops?”

“I doubt it. He’s not exactly performing legal experiments in there.”

Silas’s words needled at me. All those people kept in cells,a child, mistreated. Illegal experiments… Was this where the tissue samples were coming from? Bile crawled up my throat, my stomach threatening to purge its contents.

I squirmed on Silas’s lap, trying to get a look out the window, then I gasped, struggling to climb off him. His arms clamped down around me, and he made a soft shushing sound. “Hey, Carter, you’re okay. Calm down. We’re taking you somewhere safe.”

“No, I don’t care about me! Your leg, you were shot!” He let me wiggle off his lap as much as I could in the cramped space, until I found myself kneeling on the floor between his legs. My brain was rapid-fire flipping through my first-aid training. I needed something to use as a tourniquet. Alcohol to disinfect. Was the bullet still lodged in his leg? We needed to get to a hospital.

I whined when I saw the bullet hole in his pantleg, the fabric tacky with drying blood, but when I tore the fabric, expecting to see a gushing wound, I was shocked into silence. The bullet had hit him square in the thigh, but it had already stopped bleeding.I coasted my finger over the wound, noticing the way the edges had begun to heal. “Silas…” I looked up at him. He wore a placid expression, almost apologetic. “This wound looks days old, not minutes.”

“Would you believe the bullet just grazed me?” He winced. “No, obviously not. If you can be patient, we’ll be somewhere safe soon, and I will answer all your questions. Is that fair?”

The list of questions I had was doubling by the minute, but I nodded wordlessly. Silas took my hand and drew me back up into his lap. He seemed desperate to keep his hands on me, and I was happy to oblige.

He was the only place I felt safe.

Chapter 19

Silas

I didn’t like howquiet Carter was for the rest of the drive. Even if I could force him to talk, what would I say? He deserved to know the whole story, but this was neither the time nor the place for hard truths.

I could feel a trace of his emotions through the half-formed mating link, but it was only the vaguest sense of what he might’ve been feeling. Confusion, fear… but when I held him tighter and stroked his hair back from his forehead, trailing my fingers down his back, there was a definite sense of relief from him. No matter what happened from here on out, I could at least take comfort in knowing he still trusted me.

Carter didn’t remember who he was yet, that much was clear, but he’d shifted.Shifted!My life had been in danger, and listening to his instincts like I’d asked, he saved me. It hadn’t been a complete shift, but his wolf… the brief glimpse I’d had of him, oh, he wasmagnificent. I couldn’t wait to run with him through the woods, his fur bathed in moonlight.

The road home was familiar, and I felt immeasurable relief when the trees grew thicker the farther we traveled from the city. The forest grew denser, the air tasted sweeter, and traffic thinned. Finally, Pacey turned off the highway, zigzagging through the back roads, eventually taking the last turn onto a narrow, unmarked track.

Carter perked up, picking up on the sense of anticipation that had filled the truck. “Are we there?” he asked, shifting in my lap to look out the front window where a break in the trees could be seen ahead.

“Yeah. Welcome to Grim Wilds.” I ignored the lingering sting of the healing gunshot wound, focusing instead on the way his heart fluttered in excitement.

The clearing expanded around us as we broke through the tree line, the dying sunlight bright in comparison to the shadows beneath the canopy. The grass was lush, perfect for the kids to play in, and the leaves on the deciduous trees had already begun to change color, hints of red and gold, in preparation for an early fall.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the back of the clearing, now expanded with a row of brand-new cabins, the pine still clean and bright. Through the truck’s open window, I picked up the scent of sawdust.

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