“They all work off the same key?” Aria said.
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s obviously cheating.”
He smiled, but as he put the key in the lock, he could already feel his attention sharpening and honing in on the world around him. His awareness of his own pain fell away, and his wolf came to the fore. He breathed in, letting his shifter senses have full control.
Not everyone was lucky enough to have some of their animal’s traits still present in their human form, but werewolves almost always kept their heightened sense of smell. Colby was no exception.
And right now he couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary: grass (freshly sprayed with pest control), warm brick, clean carpet, and slightly stale air.
No human or wolf had been in the immediate vicinity for at least a few days.
“Safe,” Colby said.
He unlocked the door and led Aria inside.
“First things first,” Aria said, the moment the door was shut—and securely double-locked—behind them. “We need to take a look at where you’re hurt. I packed the first aid kit from home. If there’s anything we can’t handle with that, we’ll have to take you to the ER, no matter what it does for our cover.”
He couldn’t help but smile at how determined she was to make sure he was okay.
“Hospitals are a no-go,” he said. “And not just because we’re trying to lie low. Like I said, I heal too quickly to go in for most injuries. The last thing a doctor wants is a guy in their exam room whose wounds are more or less healing up right in front of her.”
“But you can’t just always count on not getting hurt.”
“No, it’s a dangerous job. But we have a couple of shifter doctors we can use.”
“Then if there’s anything I can’t handle, we’ll get you to a shifter doctor,” Aria said authoritatively. “Now come into the bathroom.”
Colby grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
As with the car, he was happy enough to let her take the lead for a while.
Most of the injuries were on his upper body, which was good—he didn’t want Aria’s main association with him taking his pants off to be disinfecting a werewolf bite on his thigh. He stripped his shirt off and sat on the edge of the tub, letting her poke at him.
“You weren’t kidding. You do heal fast.”
She traced the unmarked skin to one side of a long set of slash-marks on his shoulder, where Weston Hebbert’s teeth had raked against him. An hour ago, they’d been fresh and bloody. By now, while they still throbbed, they had at least closed. They were ugly, but they weren’t life-threatening.
And when she was touching him, he couldn’t concentrate on the pain at all.
“It’s an asset,” he said.
“You were biting the hell out of each other.”
He winced as she started delicately applying hydrogen peroxide to the bullet graze on his stomach. He didn’t want to be melodramatic about getting fixed up, but why was it that the disinfecting always hurt worse than the actual injury?
“Yeah. Sorry about that. It’s really the only way wolves have to fight, and I’d already tried firing on him. It didn’t even slow him down.”
“I didn’t really have silver bullets,” she said. “I meant to tell you that before. I mean, it’s not like I’m a secret werewolf-killer who was trying to lure you out here. This hasn’t all been an elaborate ruse.”
“That’s good to know.”
She looked ruefully at the brown hydrogen peroxide bottle.
“Even if it probably feels like I’m trying to kill you right now. I know this stuff stings.”
“It does, but you’re distracting me.”