Page 80 of Secret Shifters Next Door

I applied pressure, and blood immediately soaked through the towel. This was not good. It was a lot of blood. Who knew what a shifter could survive, but he needed help as soon as possible. The fact that Tate had a secret doctor on speed dial told me that they must not use regular hospitals. Maybe there was something about their physiology that would tip off humans? But wasn’t that better than death?

Miles was gasping for air, like he’d run a marathon. He put a hand on Tate’s shoulder and murmured, “Tate, man, I don’t wanna die.”

Tate looked at him, his eyes full of rage. “You aren’t gonna die. You’re too fucking stubborn to die, dammit. Now shut up.”

Miles laughed weakly, then went serious. Tears spilled over his cheeks, mixing with the smears of blood. “I’m… I’m really scared, brother.”

I felt like I was intruding on something intimate, so I kept my head down. My own eyes were burning, tears threatening. Everything was moving incredibly fast, and I was helpless.

Tate’s voice grew calm. “I know, Miles. I know. Doc will be here soon.”

Five minutes later, I heard the thump as a car door slammed, and a man burst through my front door. He moved so fast that I barely saw his face. He and Tate lifted Miles and ran him upstairs to my bedroom, slamming the door behind them. I stood in my kitchen, staring at the blood on my hands for several long seconds before I ran to the sink and vomited. After I cleaned my face, I rinsed the sink out and spent a full three minutes washing my hands, trying to get the blood out from under my nails.

I’d just turned off the water when Blayne and Steff ran inside. Both of them slid to a stop and gaped at the puddle of blood on the floor. Their faces went ghostly white. Steff looked at me, and for a second, he didn’t look like the big badass who had intimidated Luis in the grocery store parking lot. He looked like a little boy, desperate to hear that the worst hadn’t happened.

I gestured weakly toward the stairs. “They’re in my room. He’s… he’s still alive… I think.”

Before they could move, the most bloodcurdling scream erupted from the top of the stairs. It was like nothing I’d ever heard in my life. If someone died and went to hell to be eternally tormented, that was the sound I could imagine them making. Gooseflesh erupted across my arms and back. Without another word, the two men pounded up the stairs and disappeared. Again, I was left alone. I thanked God the girls were at school.

I grabbed a roll of paper towels and attempted to clean the blood off the floor. I was half way through an entire roll when another scream echoed from upstairs. I tensed. The scream was inhuman, excruciating, and soul-rending. Then, almost seamlessly, it changed from the scream of a man to the howl of a wolf. The baby was kicking like crazy, no doubt he could hear the sound as well.

Just as quickly as it came, the sound cut off. It didn’t slowly fade out, it stopped completely, leaving me in silence. Dread filled me. I sat there, my hands once again bloody, the mess on the floor only half cleaned, and stared at the dark hallway at the top of the stairs.

When no one came out, I busied myself with cleaning. It seemed so silly and unimportant. A man I knew and was becoming friends with was upstairs in my bedroom. He was bleeding out and possibly dying. Cleaning was trivial, but I had to keep my mind off whatever was happening up there.

Once the main puddle of blood was cleaned up, everything else was easy. Five minutes later, the tile floor in front of the door looked like nothing had happened. There was some staining in the grout, but I would worry about that later. I was washing my hands again when the bedroom door opened. I dried my hands and walked to the foot of the stairs, dreading the worst.

Tate was walking down the stairs, slow and almost shambling. He looked like he was in a daze, and his eyes gazed out, unfocused and almost dead. His hands were covered in blood. The way he looked gave me the impression that things had gone badly. I put a hand to my mouth and breathed in a gasp.

Tate’s eyes moved to me, and he saw the look on my face and shook his head slightly. “He’s asleep. He’s not dead.”

‘Oh, Jesus,” I said, breathing out in relief.

“Uh, Doc got the silver bullets out. Blayne and Steff held his arms, I held his legs. It was… it was bad.”

“I heard,” I murmured.

“He gave him a drug that will stop the silver from spreading through his body, but he’ll be in pretty excruciating pain until what’s already in him works its way out.”

Tate stepped down and looked at the stains in the grout. He really was like a zombie. I wasn’t sure how to interact with him. Would he fly off the handle and start screaming? Break down in tears? I didn’t know. Cautiously, I stepped forward and took his hand. He wrapped his fingers around mine absently, then followed as I led him toward the guest bathroom.

He let me undress him and help him into the shower. I cleaned his hands and arms, washed the blood from his face, and then helped him get out and dried off. The whole time he didn’t say anything. He was in shock. Once he was dry, I wrapped my arms around him and held him, not sure what else to do. After a few seconds, he hugged me back, squeezing me tight.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?” I asked.

“Men bleeding out on your floor, magic curses, shifter babies? I know this isn’t what you signed up for. I’ve turned your entire life upside down. I should have just paid for your drink that night in New York and let you be. You’d be better off without me. I’ll have to buy a new mattress, by the way.”

I kissed his chest and looked into his eyes. “Tate, none of that matters. Even now, after everything, I’d choose you.”

He looked at me for a long moment. The look on his face slowly faded from surprise to something softer. “I love you so much, Harley. I promise you, I’m going to put an end to this.”

Not long after Tate got redressed, Miles called out for him from upstairs. Doc came down while Tate was in and spoke with Blayne and Steff before leaving. The man was as much of amystery as he’d been when he arrived. I wondered who he was and whether he was also a shifter.

Tate came down twenty minutes later and sat with me, across from Blayne and Steff to finally relay what had happened.

“Miles was on watch duty today. He said he was doing a patrol around Harley’s place. Totally normal as far as he could tell. He was in his wolf form to cover more ground faster. He was about a hundred yards from the back porch, out in the woods, when he got shot. The hunters saw him and jumped him. He never knew they were there.”

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