Chapter 3 The Wound That Won't Heal

MORENA POV

My knees hit the wet gravel of the creek bank, my stomach heaving as I stare at the blood on Bass's shirt.

I bit him.

I survived two brutal rounds in the ring with Cole without letting my wolf slip once, only to lose my head for three seconds in the dark and sink my teeth into my best friend's throat.

"Morena." Bass drops to one knee in front of me, his left hand clamped over his neck while his right grabs my shoulder. "Hey. Look at me."

"Get back!" I choke out, scrambling backward until my spine hits the rear tire of his truck. My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I can barely breathe. "Bass, I tore your neck open! We have to get you to the clan infirmary-"

"Are you insane?" Bass grips the front of my jacket and gives me a single, sharp shake. "You walk me into River Ash with your bite mark on my neck, and your mother will take your head off before sunrise."

"I don't care what Grace does to me if you bleed out!" "I'm not bleeding out." Bass pulls his hand away from his collar and tilts his chin up in the dim light. "Look."

I freeze.

Beneath the smear of drying red on his tan skin, the deep puncture wounds where my fangs sank in are gone. The torn flesh has already knitted itself shut, leaving nothing behind except a faint, dark crescent scar.

"That's not possible," I whisper, the air rushing out of my lungs. Even an Elder wolf takes two days to heal a throat wound. Humans don't heal at all. "Bass, what the hell just happened to your skin?"

"We can figure that out when we aren't standing next to a dead wolf," Bass says grimly, glancing toward the mangled rogue lying ten feet away. "How long until the next perimeter patrol passes this sector?"

My boxer's brain automatically checks the clock. "Ten minutes. Cole's cousin has the northern loop. If the wind shifts, he'll smell the blood."

Bass doesn't waste a second. He walks over, grabs the two-hundred-pound dead rogue by the scruff of its neck with one hand, and hurls the carcass six feet into the hollowed-out roots under the bank.

I blink. That wolf weighs as much as a heavyweight fighter, and Bass just tossed it like an empty gym bag.

Before I can ask how the hell he just did that, Bass stumbles, catching himself against the side of the truck bed as a violent shudder rips through his broad frame.  Sweat is pouring down his temples despite the cold night air.

"Keys are in the ignition," he rasps, yanking the passenger door open. "Take the back dirt road to my house. My mom's at her sewing circle until nine."

I don't argue. I jump behind the wheel, kill the headlights, and spin the tires out onto the logging trail.

Across the cab, Bass is burning up. I can feel the heat radiating off his body from two feet away, like sitting next to a furnace. He squeezes his eyes shut, his right hand white-knuckling the plastic grab-handle above the passenger door.

"Bass, talk to me," I say, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

"The turn fever isn't supposed to start for hours-"

"It's not a fever," he grits out through clenched teeth.

"Everything is just-too loud-"

Crack.

The heavy molded plastic of the grab-handle snaps clean in half inside his fist.

Bass stares at the broken piece of plastic in his palm, then drops it to the floorboard. Neither of us says a word. My stomach plummets straight into my boots.

I cut the engine behind the apple trees at the back of the Monroe property, jump out, and help Bass stumble into his old wooden tool shed.

The second I slide the iron bolt shut and pull the chain on the overhead bulb, Bass doubles over against the oak workbench.

"Take your shirt off," I ordered, grabbing a canteen of water and a clean rag from the shelf. "Let me see where that rogue clawed your shoulder."

Bass strips the ruined blue flannel over his head and tosses it aside.

I stop dead, the wet rag dripping onto my boots.

Four deep claw trenches should be carved across his right shoulder. Instead, his muscular back and chest are completely unbroken. Not a cut. Not even a pink scratch.

Except something else is moving under his skin.

Right over his collarbone, climbing up toward the crescent scar of my bite mark, his veins are bulging-black as tar and shot through with streaks of burning, molten gold.

"Bass..." I step forward, fear tightening my throat.

A low, agonizing groan rips out of his chest. His knees buckle, and he slams both hands down onto the two-inch-thick oak workbench. The solid wood splinters beneath his fingertips like dry twigs.

"Make it stop," Bass gasps, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a dark, heavy tremor that makes the saws on the wall rattle against their hooks. He presses the heels of his hands against his temples, his chest heaving. "Morena, my head-I can hear every car on the highway three miles out. I can hear dogs barking across town. And I'm seeing-God, I'm seeing fire."

"What fire?" I drop the rag and grab his forearms, trying to pull his hands away from his head. Touching him is like grabbing live electrical wire.

"A battlefield," he chokes out, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth grind. "Snow covered in blood. Wolves the size of horses tearing through a stone wall-and someone is screaming my name!"

Memories. He's seeing memories that don't belong to the twenty-one years he's lived in this town.

"Bass, listen to me!" I step right between his knees as he slumps against the workbench, cupping his burning face in both of my scarred, calloused hands. When I'm panicking between rounds in the ring, there's only one thing that brings my heart rate down, and I use it on him now. "Look at your corner. Eyes on me. Come on, sixty seconds on the clock. Breathe with me."

Bass's eyelids fly open.

My heart stops.

The warm, steady brown eyes I've loved since we were fourteen are gone. Blazing back at me is a ring of ancient, predatory gold and when his hands shoot up to grip my wrists, his fingers clamp down like iron shackles.

For two terrifying seconds, he doesn't look like he recognizes me. The thing staring out from behind his eyes isn't human, and it isn't a normal werewolf, either. It's older. Colder. Built for war.

"It's me," I whisper, refusing to flinch even as his grip bruises my bones. "It's Morena. Come back to me, Bass."

Slowly, painfully, his chest heaves. The violent gold in his eyes flickers, receding just a fraction as my Bass fights his way back to the surface, shoving the instinct down by sheer willpower.

He looks down at his large hands wrapped around my bruised wrists and snatches them back as if he's the one who got burned.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice breaks, raw with horror as he backs up against the tool wall, staring at his own trembling hands.

"Morena, what the hell is happening to me? Why am I seeing people getting slaughtered? Why did I want to-" He swallows hard, unable to finish the sentence.

"You didn't hurt me," I lie quickly, rubbing my aching wrists. "Whatever my bite did, it didn't turn you. It woke something up."

Before Bass can answer, tires crunch on the gravel driveway up by the main house.

Both of us freeze.

I don't need Bass's terrifying new hearing to recognize the heavy, measured thud of the second car door shutting, or the familiar voice talking to Betty Monroe on the front steps.

Grace. My mother is here.

"Bass? Honey, are you out back?" Betty's cheerful voice floats across the yard as the back porch light clicks on.

"Your truck's in the orchard! Grace walked me home from the market-she says they found a dead wolf down by the southern creek, so we're locking up early tonight!"

My blood turns to solid ice.

Through the dusty crack of the shed window, I see my mother standing on Betty's back porch, fifty feet away, wearing her black enforcer uniform with her hand resting on the silver executioner's blade at her belt.

Her head tilts slightly into the wind, her nostrils flaring as she scents the night air.

"Grace?" Betty asks innocently from the doorway. "Is something wrong?"

"No," my mother says softly, her storm-gray eyes locking straight onto the closed door of the tool shed. "Just thought I smelled blood."