I couldn't tell how long I had sat there with Ethan.
All I knew was that I couldn't move, because if I did, it would break whatever fragile thread held us together.
As fear and shock ebbed, the aches of my injuries returned with a vengeance. Pain and strain locked my wounded shoulder into place. My head still throbbed, though more quietly now. As far as I could tell, I wasn't bleeding anymore, so that had to count for something.
I allowed myself a glance at Ethan, checking for fresh blood. And although his body was painted in bruises and wounds, the only blood I could see was dried.
As the moon climbed higher and the night wrapped more tightly around us, the cold began to seep through my jacket and into my bones. I looked at Ethan's bare skin and briefly wondered whether hypothermia was even a lupine thing. His body burned hot beside mine, and without conscious thought, I found myself inching closer to him.
He noticed immediately.
His throat worked, and then, just as I was considering pulling away, his hand lifted and closed around mine while his other arm still braced him upright. He raised his head and looked at me, really looked this time, with clear human eyes.
"You're shivering," he whispered, as if it had only just fully registered. His gaze moved over my face, then caught on my temple. "And you're hurt."
Alarm sharpened his expression. His fingers tightened around mine.
"What happened?" he asked, frowning as if he were trying to remember through fog. "You said something about a car accident?"
With a sigh, I told him.
About the nails on the road. About their plans. Everything.
I watched his expression darken as I spoke. Then his pupils flashed once in the dark, and his hands curled into fists at his sides.
He didn't have to say it out loud.
I should've killed them all.
"Ethan," I said quickly. "I'm alive. You're alive. That's what matters most right now. Everything else... we'll deal with later. Okay?"
He didn't look convinced, but he didn't seem to tip over the edge either. Instead, he studied me more carefully. More closely.
His hand lifted and moved slowly toward my temple, then stopped just short, waiting. When I didn't pull away, his fingers gently brushed a strand of hair back from my forehead, exposing the injured skin.
I watched his nostrils flare. His chest rose too hard. His entire body tensed.
"How?"
I saw it in his face, the search for a reason. Anything that would justify going back after Matt, Ryan, and the others. Anything that would let him disappear into that violence again.
And I was so grateful I didn't have to lie.
"The car," I said quickly. "Everything happened in the car. They didn't hurt me. You came before they could." I paused, letting it settle. "You saved me."
That seemed to pull him a little back from the edge. The muscle in his jaw still twitched.
"It's still their fault. They threw the nails on the road. You could've..."
I grabbed his hand before he could work himself up again.
"But I'm not. That's what's important, alright?"
I watched his throat work. Then he blinked once, let out a heavy sigh, and let his hand fall away.
"I hate that you're hurt."
A bitter laugh got stuck behind my teeth.
"Said the pot to the kettle," I muttered, nodding toward the wounds carved across him.
He looked down as if only half aware of them. "It's nothing," he said. "It'll heal. We heal fast."
I didn't argue.
His eyes darkened. "But they won't."
My breath hitched.
There was something venomous in the way he said it.
I leaned away an inch before I could stop myself, my shoulder protesting with a sharp pulse of pain.
"What do you mean?"
His jaw tensed. "There are things even we can't heal from." Amber eyes met mine and held. "What they did to you..." His voice dropped lower. "I made sure they carry it forever."
A cold shiver slid down my spine.
I didn't ask any further. My thoughts went to Matt's missing leg, Ryan's limp.
I swallowed, hating that some dark part of me felt better. I just wasn't sure whether it came from the lupine blood in me, or from the plain human satisfaction of knowing I had been avenged.
Instead of digging into that, I asked the first other thing that came to mind.
"Does it hurt? The change, I mean. It seems..." I swallowed. "Painful."
I asked because I needed to know. Some part of me was worried that it hurt him.
That it hurt Dad, Jack, Elise. People I... cared about.
Ethan let out a surprised breath.
"Huh?" It was only then that it seemed to dawn on him that I'd seen him and the others shift. Or that it was something I wasn't all that familiar with. "Uh... no? Not in the way you probably imagine."
I frowned.
"It's a good pain," he clarified. "Like scratching a painful itch." He shrugged, wincing a bit when the motion pulled at his injured shoulder. His gaze held mine. "But I get why you might find it unsettling."
I huffed. Unsettling was an understatement, but I wasn't going to say that. Instead, I asked, "What happens now?"
He gave the smallest shrug.
"Whatever needs to."
Then he turned more fully toward me. He took my hand again with the care one might use touching something made of glass, as if he thought even now he might still break me.
"What you said before," he asked quietly, "about not leaving. Did you mean it?"
I blinked.
I was cold, in pain, shivering in the aftermath of fear, sitting beside a boy who wasn't only a boy but an elemental danger.
And still, I didn't want to leave.
So I nodded.
Something in his face softened by a fraction.
"Good." His warm fingers tightened around mine almost imperceptibly. "Because I'm not leaving either. No matter what anyone says. No matter the rules."
God.
His words felt like a warm bath and scalding steam all at once.
"Ethan..."
His gaze hardened.
"We'll find a way. We won't be stupid. We—"
He broke off, his head snapping to the side so fast it almost struck me.
He was on his feet before I had even fully registered the movement, not rising so much as springing, his body recoiling in one sharp, almost violent motion. He landed two strides away in a low crouch, shoulders forward, every line of him gone taut again. Moonlight caught in his eyes, and for one terrible second they flashed wrong, too bright, too reflective.
Then I saw it, the hitch. The fraction of delay.
The instinct had leapt first. His mind came after, slamming into it half a second late, trying to pull him back into himself. I watched the effort ripple through him. His fingers curled into the dirt. His jaw locked hard enough to show in the muscles of his face. He stayed where he was, but barely.
Then I heard it too.
A soft disturbance in the underbrush to our right. Slow, deliberate, heavy enough not to be a rabbit or the wind.
I twisted toward the sound, my shoulder scraping bark.
A dark shape moved between the trees, flooding me with a fresh wave of terror.
We were not alone.