CAINE
Grace’s limp body fuels a new feeling, something old and unfamiliar. It’s an emotion I haven’t felt since I was a young pup, long before I came into strength and power.
Terror.
What is it? Fenris asks. He’s been silent, politely blocking himself off from our intimacy, even when that rainbow-haired chit was banging on the door.
She’s unconscious.
"Grace."
I shake her shoulder, the skin under my palm cool to the touch. Too cool.
"Grace, wake up."
Her head lolls as I jostle her, hair splaying across the pillow in bleached golden waves. Not a flutter of eyelashes, not a twitch. My stomach drops with dread.
"Grace!" My voice sharpens with command, an alpha’s order.
Nothing. Just her pale face, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
What’s wrong with her? Why isn’t she waking?
Fenris explodes into panic, his howl ripping through my mind and air both. Strange voices join in, but they’re the least of my worries.
You killed her. You killed our mate!
"Shut up," I growl, placing two fingers against the pulse in her throat. It flutters weakly beneath my touch. "She’s alive."
The sudden crash of the door flying open makes me whip around, a snarl building in my throat as I storm around the corner and into the hall, Grace still limp on the daybed. Just moments ago, she’d been so alive, so vibrant, with the scent of her climax filling the air.
Now...
"Your dick better be put awa—" The rainbow-haired nuisance halts as soon as she sees my face, and her eyes flick behind me.
"Call a human ambulance," I order, trying to contain the panic edging into my voice. A Lycan King doesn’t panic. We’re calm and composed at every moment.
Fenris howls again, a wild, uncontrolled yodel of pain.
Lyre blinks at me. Something shifts in her strange eyes, until her pupils become slitted. It’s exactly what Jack-Eye had mentioned before, but the mystery of her identity is no longer a priority. Grace needs help.
"You idiot," she growls, rushing forward to shove past me with surprising strength for her diminutive, humanoid size. "You couldn’t hold back?"
My chest aches with the accusation. Did I demand too much of her fragile human body?
I stumble against the wall as she rushes to Grace, pushing me aside as if I’m not the most dangerous predator she’ll ever encounter. As if I haven’t killed for less.
The floor sways with all of our movement.
The woman Grace calls Lyre doesn’t look at me again, her focus entirely on Grace. She presses two fingers to my mate’s wrist, then leans close to her face, watching her breathe.
Under normal circumstances, it would bother me she can see Grace’s naked torso.
Under this circumstance, it... still bothers me. I dash past Lyre to yank a corner of the comforter over Grace, protecting her from the other woman’s view.
"What happened?" she demands, her voice as sharp as any Lycan’s. The command within it is no less than an alpha’s.
"We were—" The words stick in my throat.
"Having sex, I got that part." Her fingers press gently along Grace’s throat, examining the skin with a scowl. There’s no mark there. Not yet. "When did she pass out? Before, during, after?"
"After." I rake a hand through my hair, hating how dependent I am on this strange woman to care for my Grace. "She was fine. Then she just... went limp."
"Ambulance. Right." Lyre mutters, fishing a phone from her pocket. "This far out, it’ll take thirty minutes minimum."
Thirty minutes. My chest squeezes painfully. "That’s too long."
"No shit." She punches in numbers, holds the phone to her ear. "We could drive her, but moving her might—"
She breaks off, attention shifting to the call. "Yes, medical emergency. My friend, a young woman, is unconscious and unresponsive after..." A quick glance at Grace’s shorts, still on. She frowns at me. "After intercourse."
There’s a volley of questions, and Lyre answers them decisively as I pull Grace’s limp body into my arms, fighting a growl when she reaches out to check her pulse.
"No, no visible trauma," Lyre says, and I flinch.
Do they think I...? No. It wasn’t like that.
I stroke Grace’s hair, noticing Fenris behind Lyre. He’s flat on the ground, his eyes never leaving Grace.
Will she be okay?
My heart constricts at the question. I’d just accepted this tiny, frail little human as mine. And now...
It’s only proof humans can never be mates with a wolf.
No, Fenris murmurs. Our bond would never hurt her.
And yet it has.
Lyre sits beside me, rubbing her hand down Grace’s back. Her phone’s on the couch across the room; she must have hung up.
She’s not panicked. Angry, yes. The acrid scent of fury radiates from her. But she’s not afraid.
"She’ll be okay," Lyre says confidently. "Probably going to need some fluids to help stabilize, though."
My eyes narrow. She knows something. "What’s wrong with her?"
Lyre’s multi-colored hair falls forward as she leans closer to Grace, and I fight back the growl trying to escape my chest. "Her energy is... depleted. Dangerously so."
"What does that mean?" I demand.
"It means you took too much." She shoots me a venomous look. "You didn’t hold back. Just took everything she had to give, you brainless sack of muscle."
"I didn’t—"
"You did," she cuts me off. Then she pauses. "Maybe not intentionally. But you did."
She places a hand on Grace’s forehead, then over her heart. The touch, though clearly medical, makes Fenris snarl. I swallow the sound before it can escape.
"Why didn’t you warn me?" I snap. Better to be angry with someone. It’s easier to handle anger.
Lyre laughs—a harsh, humorless sound. "Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to give the terrifying Lycan King sex education before he fucked her senseless? My bad."
My temper flares hot and dangerous. "You left us alone, but you knew this could happen, didn’t you?"
Lyre meets my rage with a flat, unblinking stare. Those cat-slitted eyes don’t waver, don’t flinch. Something in her gaze—the absolute absence of fear—makes my anger shrivel like a flame doused with ice water.
It isn’t from backing down.
It’s from the blame her stare lays on my shoulders. Blame rightfully placed.
I did this, somehow.
"I never expected the big, bad Lycan King to be so fucking useless he’d drain his own mate," she says, her voice low and deliberate. "Guess that’s on me for assuming basic competence."