Page 53 of Primal Bonds

“What?” he rapped out without taking his gaze from his prisoner.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live.” But now the adrenaline had worn off, he was feeling every single one of the bites and cuts Corban and Nika had torn out of his hide. Shifting had caused most of them to scab over, but a gash on his thigh was oozing blood. The worst was his abdomen, where it felt like the deeper of the knife wounds had torn open again.

“This is getting to be a bad habit.” Evie’s tone was dry. “You bleeding in my kitchen.”

He barked out a laugh and glanced up in time to see her lopsided grin. The hollow feeling eased. “Clean it up then,” he grumbled. But his cat twitched its tail in delight.

Evie dampened a clean washcloth and used it to dab at the cuts on his face and shoulder. When she got to the gash on his thigh, she sucked in a breath.

“Just clean it,” he said. “I can heal it.”

“Sure you can.”

When she was finished, he ran his quartz over his thigh. The wound tingled and started closing up. The knife wound was trickier, but he sent a burst of energy into it and hoped it would hold until Suha could work her magic.

Nika watched, the ice pack to her head.

Evie sent him a look from where she was washing her hands in the sink. He could practically hear her urging him to help the injured woman as well. With a sigh, he rose to his feet and ran his quartz over the gashes on Nika’s face and head. Just a few quick pulses, but it would ease her pain as well as speed up her healing. Without her quartz, her ability to heal herself was even worse than the average human’s, since all her energy was now being directed to merely staying alive.

Kyler took a seat on the other side of the table, while Evie remained standing. The kid raised a shaggy brown brow. “So we’re waiting for Lord Adric?”

“Yeah. Tell me,” Jace said, “what did that guy say to you, anyway? The one who was outside?”

Kyler glanced at his sister.

She cocked a hip against the counter. “Tell him, Kyler.”

“He said that you were just fucking with Evie. That you eat little girls like her for breakfast.”

Chapter 16

Evie rubbed her hands over her arms. Kyler had told her the whole thing while they waited for Jace to return. If it wasn’t so serious, she would’ve laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “I know you guys are shifters, but does he have to go all Big Bad Wolf? Besides, you’re a cat.”

Jace’s mouth twitched. Score a point for Evie. She had a feeling Jace didn’t smile much. She liked that she could make him laugh, if only inside.

Then he replied, “Actually, he is a wolf,” and she gulped.

Because she’d only been joking to hide her fear, and now it was creepy. How long had the other man been outside? And what if he’d gone after Kyler?

Her brother folded his arms. “Fuck this wolf-and-cat thing. Is it true?”

“Kyler,” she hissed, but Jace calmly met his eyes.

“What happens between me and your sister is our business. But I would never hurt her. He was just trying to pull your chain.”

“So where’s the wolf-man now?”

“I don’t know.” Jace jerked his head at the woman wrapped in the towel. “We’ll talk when the alpha gets here.”

Evie nodded. The woman hadn’t moved from her slumped position, but of course, she could hear every word. Evie didn’t know exactly what had happened, but it was clear the woman and the missing man had attacked Jace. That was why she’d let Jace back in her house, and allowed him to hold the woman until his alpha arrived—but that was as far as it went.

What the hell was going on? Evie fingered the quartz in her pocket. She’d been so damn worried. Each minute with Jace gone had seemed like an eternity. She’d hated that the only thing she could do was to call Adric and then wait for him to drive the fifty minutes up from Baltimore.

Jace trained his gaze on his prisoner. He appeared relaxed, long legs stretched before him and an elbow resting on the chair back, but it was the coiled energy of an animal prepared to spring.

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