Page 2 of Piece You Saved

My sometimes wavy, sometimes straight long brown hair—which at twenty-one, still hasn’t decided what it wants to be—brushes the scars on my throat. The visible signs that my monster is monstrous in so many ways. The internal scars are the worst.

Kade’s gray eyes flicker, and an animal intelligence peers back at me. Awolfstares back at me. I don’t startle or run, because Kade would never hurt me. Neither would his wolf.

“So am I. Sit, before you fall down.”

He tugs. Shifter strength means I couldn’t stop him even if I wanted to. I let him guide me back to the line of five hard plastic chairs, where harsh artificial lights illuminate every scratch and dent. I avoid looking to my left at the still figure standing with his back against the same wall as a peeling poster.

I try not to think about how we must look. Me with bloodstained gray sweats, a white t-shirt, and bare feet. Kade with his bloodstained sweatpants and nothing else. Dariel…

He was in sweatpants in the attic. Maybe he stopped to pull on a shirt before we followed the ambulance to the hospital hours before. I’m not eager to confirm it.

I remember the agony in his eyes when Aden wasn’t breathing. I remember the bloody hands that made me think he’d been doing CPR to get Aden’s heart to start, and I don’t want to see pain like it again. It reminds me too much of my own. So I focus my full attention on my toes, curling them to protect them from the freezing floor.

“Tell us.” Dariel’s voice is as cold as the plastic digging into the back of my thighs. “Tell us what happened in the attic.”

I have a vague memory of him asking me, and then demanding, in his car on the way to the hospital. His questions bounced right off me then. I stared out of the car window at an inky sky with misty clouds promising rain they never delivered.

And I cried.

I cried so much the front of my shirt stuck to me.

“Saige?” Impatience creeps into Dariel’s voice, hardening it. “Tell us.”

Kade’s frustration brushes my skin a bare second before he snaps, “For fuck’s sake, Dariel. She’s fucking—”

“So you can blame me?” I interrupt, still numb as I count my toes.

Did I think Dariel’s voice was cold before? Because I was wrong. Utterly wrong.

When he speaks, it’s a blast of ice aimed my way. “Would you rather we waited until Rylan followed us to the hospital and finished Aden off?”

I flinch. Can’t help it.

Dariel delivers his rebuke crisply.

But itisa rebuke.

It’sexactlywhat I need to rip me from the sticky, syrupy numbness drowning me.

I stop counting my toes, lift my head, and meet his emerald gaze. Just because his wolf isn’t staring me down, it doesn’t mean I’m not wary. His wolf has lunged at me too many times for me not to be.

“I need facts, not emotion,” he bites out.

Being the focus of his attention makes me want to press my back to the hard plastic or crawl beneath it. I don’t. He may terrify the shit out of me more times than not, but I willneverlet him see how much.

“Says the guy who needs to lock himself away for fear of what his wolf will do.” Kade lifts my hand, brushes a kiss across my knuckle, then places it gently on the top of my right thigh.

I brace myself, because I can guess what’s coming.

“We don’t have time for this, Kade. Drop it.” Dariel doesn’t take his eyes off me. “What happened?”

“And if I don’t?” Kade’s voice is a silky threat, reminding me that something is broken between them. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this fracture, but this time, the break seems more jagged.

If things get physical in a hospital waiting room, God help any doctor or nurse who makes the fatal mistake of stepping in the middle of a fight between two shifters.

Reaching over, I grab Kade’s larger hand and squeeze, ignoring the flare of hot fire that stabs my belly as I meet Dariel’s unblinking stare.

“He’s right, Kade. We don’t have time to fight or argue about this. As long as Rylan is alive, he’s a threat to you all, especially to Aden.”

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