Page 9 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part Two

“I always said I was gonna burn that place down, and I always keep my word.”

I stared at him in confusion, then a memory triggered. Right, he’d been there when I’d first been captured. I’d caused such a ruckus and so much damage then that about ten experiments had escaped their cages. He had to have been one of those who got free.

And he came back for me.

Well, he came back for all of us.

I was touched. I had spent so much of my life taking care of others and had largely considered myself expendable, but Ven, Ricky, and a stranger had risked everything to save me.

Even though I’d forced Ven to abandon me.

Yeah, I’d have to face the consequences of that, but it could wait. Everything could wait. For the moment, I just wanted to close my eyes and enjoy my freedom.

3

VANESSA

“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked, trying to sound casual as I poked my head into my own room. It was hard not to believe I was dreaming as my eyes settled on Leo’s worn figure.

He’d only been a prisoner for a week and five days, but the effects of the experiments on his body were visceral. He’d lostsomuch weight in that time I couldn’t help but wonder if they ever fed him. I had hypothesized before that starvation was a pretty good weapon against shifters, and it definitely looked like I was right. Most of Leo’s muscle was gone. His cheeks were gaunt and hollow, and his eyes looked sunken in. What would have happened if it had taken us another few days or a week to rescue him?

I didn’t need to go down that rabbit hole. He was safe. He was here. In my bed. Hopefully, his body was quickly burning through the remnants of the drugs they had given him.

“Do you have more of that iced tea you made a week ago?”

The tea he was talking about was something I’d made him a month earlier, but I didn’t correct him. I figured being a littleconfused about the timing of things was perfectly justifiable given everything he’d gone through.

“The hibiscus ginger tea for nausea?” I asked.

While his smile was sallow, it was so damn sweet as it spread across his features. He was still handsome. Still my Leo. Sometimes it was hard not to see the way his body had been ravaged and feel entirely responsible.

It had been incredibly reckless and stupid to think the three of us could waltz into some secret lab and come out unscathed. We’d only managed to do that with the party at Chadwicke’s estate because I had a special skill, there were lots of other people to blend in with, and a whole bunch of other mitigating circumstances lined up at once. Leo had quite literally paid for my hubris, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

It embarrassed me that it took until Ricky and I had the honest-to-God agreement to come up with a plan for me to come up with the oh-so-brilliant idea of “let’s find help”. Yeah, a real Einstein moment there.

Both Ricky and I had gotten used to being on our own, although in very different ways, and we’d forgotten that we didn’t have to do everything within our own little bubble. That night I had reached out to America while Ricky went on runs to see if he could find any other allies. He’d ended up running into one of the escapees that Leo had somehow managed to free when he was captured. According to them, after we’d escaped, almost the entire lockdown staff had been focused on trying to contain Leo. And of course, the alpha being who he was, he’d used every opportunity to damage or break cages. Apparently, nearly a dozen different experiments managed to get out of their holding area, but only the one Ricky found, and another, had managed to go the full distance.

They were starving and still very weak when Ricky brought them to me, but I did my best to fill their bellies and treat themhowever I could. A difficult thing to do considering I didn’t know everything that had happened to them, but I figured I could help with the headaches, the nausea, the pain, and the bone-crushing fatigue.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Leo said, still smiling, although his eyelids were beginning to flutter. He’d pretty much been asleep since we brought him back, but that was fine with me. Sleep meant he was healing, and it gave me time to adjust to him being back.

For so long I’d been terrified that he’d never come home. I’d spent so many nights lying in bed, replaying everything that had gone wrong, worrying that would be the last time I’d ever see him. Thankfully, I’d been given a second chance.

I wasn’t going to take it for granted.

“I’ll get that ready for you right now. And perhaps some toast?” Although I would have loved to fill him up with some roasted rabbit or even fresh greens from the garden, I was pretty sure those would be a little harsh on his stomach. After all, he’d only been back for a little less than a day. He still needed some time on the B.R.A.T diet before I moved him onto richer solids, but that would happen soon enough. He was a shifter, after all, and I had no doubt the more calories we got into him, the faster he would heal.

“Sure, I can take a slice.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I hurried downstairs, stepping over the two shifters who had made makeshift beds for themselves on my living room floor. I felt bad that I didn’t have more room to accommodate them, but they seemed more than happy with the arrangement. It was likely a marked improvement from their cells at the facility or the forest floor.

If my presence bothered them, they didn’t so much as stir. Like Leo, they needed a lot of rest so their bodies could heal properly. When I entered the kitchen, I wasn’t surprised to seeRicky washing dishes from the night before. Normally, it was no problem for me to keep up with my own stuff, except when my depression got really bad, but with all the guests I currently had, I really appreciated his help.

“I’m going to make some tea and toast for Leo. Do you want some?”

“Nah,” he said, wearing the same grin he’d had on ever since we’d gotten home safely. It hadn’t been a straight shot from the lab. We’d driven quite far on the highway before getting off at a random exit, hopping onto another highway, then going through back roads until we reached the interstate. I’d held onto Leo the entire time, even when my eyes fluttered closed somewhere around two in the morning. We’d arrived at America’s soon after that. The rest of the rescue vehicles had beaten us there. As far as I could tell, we’d all managed to get away without being followed. Pretty impressive, if I had to say so myself.

I wasn’t a shifter, but even I could tell that shifters had pack rivalries and inner tensions, so they didn’t often work with each other, and that sort of assumed separation was the best thing we could take advantage of. Eventually the brothers would catch on that we were all uniting, but the longer we could stop that from happening, the more likely it was that our plans would work. Because as much as I would have loved for all the drama to end, we still had a whole lot of pack numbers to recover.

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