Warrior Wolf (Protection, Inc 4)

“Who have you seen do that?” The man seemed appalled at the idea.

“This sleazy guy who treated gangsters out of his apartment.”

“Oh. Well, let’s see if I can improve on that standard.”

The man lifted Nick’s right arm. Raluca braced herself for him to do something painful, and she could feel Nick doing the same. But though the man began moving and rotating Nick’s arm and hand, he did it slowly and carefully. Finally, he folded Nick’s arm across his chest, then turned his palm over. There was a sharp pop, and Nick yelped in pain. But an instant later, he heaved a sigh of relief, and some of his tension eased.

“Nice job,” came a voice from beside them.

Raluca almost jumped out of her skin. Nick tried to, but the man put a hand against his chest, holding him in place. Shane had somehow appeared without either of them noticing him, and was standing next to them with a gun in one hand and a first-aid kit in the other, and several blankets draped over his arm.

“About time,” said the dark-eyed man. “I thought I’d have to use what’s left of his clothes.”

“Nah. I came prepared.” Shane knelt beside Nick and opened the kit.

“Wait.” Urgently, Nick asked him, “Do you have heartsease? Raluca needs it.”

Shane’s hard face creased in concern. He instantly reached into his pocket and handed Raluca a vial. She gulped it down. The pain in her arm vanished, and the chill that had invaded her body eased. She wished Nick could be healed so easily.

Her dragon, whom she’d been unable to reach since her fall, stirred within her, wings rustling. We must fly to protect our mate!

He needs us right here, Raluca sent back.

Her dragon subsided, but Raluca felt her simmering frustration.

Now that her pain was gone and her worry for Nick had eased, she began to notice things that she’d missed earlier. Shane wore jeans and a T-shirt, with a bulletproof vest and a holster strapped over his clothes. But when Raluca took a closer look, she noticed that he’d put his shirt on backwards. The entire team had obviously come in great haste.

The stranger also wore jeans and a T-shirt, but no armor. If he had any weapons, they weren’t visible. His clothes didn’t fit well; either they were too big for him, or he’d recently lost weight. He wasn’t just lean, like Shane, but too thin for his frame; when he leaned over, his collarbones stood out sharply. His eyes really were black, not dark brown; she couldn’t tell the irises from the pupils. Beneath his eyes, his pale skin was smudged with shadows dark as bruises.

Something about the man reminded her of Lucas when he’d walked into the throne room after he’d been poisoned with dragonsbane, or of Nick when he’d taken her hand to pull the trigger: as if he was performing a task with sheer willpower, and would collapse the instant he was done. But she wasn’t sure what had given her that idea. Shane’s friend was too thin and looked tired, but nothing in his movements or expression betrayed illness or injury.

Who was he, anyway? Nick obviously didn’t know anything about him other than that Shane trusted him.

Shane filled a syringe. Nick eyed it with alarm. “I can’t —”

“It won’t put you to sleep,” Shane said. “Believe me, you don’t want us to splint your leg without something for the pain.”

“Yeah, okay.” Nick let Shane give him the injection.

Shane and the dark-eyed man set to work bandaging Nick, then put a sling on his arm. By then the injection had taken effect. The lines of pain in Nick’s face had smoothed out, and he didn’t even wince as the men gently straightened his leg, then bound on a splint. Finally, they wrapped him in the blankets. The way Shane and his friend worked together, passing each other instruments without having to be asked, reminded Raluca of how Ellie and Catalina had examined her after the ball.

“Hal and the team are mopping up,” Shane said to his friend. “They’ll be here in a minute. Come back to the office with us, and you can meet everyone.”

The man hurriedly stood up. “No. No. I have to get going.”

Shane got up as well. “What do you mean? You’re here. I thought you’d come to stay.”

“No, I came because a couple days ago, I had a sense that you were in danger,” his friend replied. “There were some problems, it’s not important, but I couldn’t get here right away. By the time I arrived, the sense of danger was gone. But I tracked you here to make sure. You seemed to be doing just fine on your own, but your buddy was hurt. So I went to him.”

“You can sense if I’m in danger?” Shane sounded surprised.

His friend shrugged. “Got me. This was the first time. Actually, I wasn’t sure it was you. I could just feel that someone in this direction was in trouble, and I figured it had to be you or Catalina. You’re the only people here who I can track. It wasn’t her, was it?”

Shane shook his head. “She’s fine. She’s still in training.”

“Then it was you. What was going on three days ago?”

“Nothing.” Shane’s face was hard to read, but he seemed troubled. “I wasn’t in any danger. I wasn’t even on a job.”