The room smelled of mildew, but it was dark and quiet, and it would do. Desperately, she ripped open the first-aid kit and downed the four pain pills that came stock, then made her way to the bathroom, stripped out of her clothes, and hit the warm tap.
She smelled like a crime scene, and the scent of copper was so thick it was riling up her already frightened animal. She couldn’t add the pain of a Change, so right now she was in keep-the-skin mode.
She sobbed the second the water hit the claw marks that ran from her chest across her arm. She didn’t want to look, but she needed to. Her healing was working, but the injuries were bone deep and would take a few hours to stop bleeding.
The bathroom filled with steam, and still she sat in the tub, heart feeling like it was just as shredded as her arm. All she’d wanted was to forget about Brody for a while, but now she would have these scars for always. Every time she looked in the mirror, she would remember today. Remember this time in her life.
She was missing the group interviews for this, but she couldn’t go back to Kane’s. Not right now. Not until she was strong again and wouldn’t set off those other predator shifters. They would sense her injury, sense her weakness, and attack. It was instinct.
But that wasn’t the biggest reason she was hiding in a hotel instead of participating in another interview. There was one much bigger reason that took up most of her headspace right now. She was protecting Logan. If Kane and Rowan saw how far gone he was, how easy it was for his bear to attack, they would put him down on the spot. She shouldn’t care, but there was something about Logan. Some mighty strength that battled with a deep break in the make-up of his being that called to her protective instincts.
Even if he couldn’t be saved, she didn’t feel done with getting to know the human half of him.
The front door clicked and opened in the other room. Winter froze, terrified like a little field mouse with no cover. She could smell him—Logan.
With trembling fingers, she moved the shower curtain aside, and there he stood, looking as wrecked as she felt.
His hair was mussed, his skin pale as a phantom, and the clothes he wore didn’t fit well, as if he’d stolen them off some line of laundry somewhere. It was his eyes that held her, though. They looked a hundred years old, and exhausted.
He dipped his gaze to her arm and grimaced. Hooking his hands on his hips, he stared at the floor, swallowed over and over. “I can’t have intimacy. The bear… I don’t know what to do with it anymore. But you smell so fucking good, you’re so soft, and you make me forget things. I lost my head, and it got you hurt. I can’t…” Logan ran his hands down the dark scruff on his face and heaved a sigh. “You smell scared again, and I hate it. Hate this. Hate the way I am. If I could go back and change everything, I would. I would be settled in a crew. An alpha maybe. Someone good. Someone people could look up to. I wouldn’t be here begging an honorable death from people who don’t know me and don’t owe me anything. I wouldn’t be here hurting your chances at a new beginning, and you…you wouldn’t be crying because of me. Do you need me to leave?”
Winter couldn’t even sense his bear anymore, as though he’d tucked the monster so deep inside of him, he barely existed. Just like when she’d first walked into the circle of shifters today, and he’d been invisible. She shouldn’t, but she felt safe again. She slowly shook her head, inviting him to stay.
And then he did something that shocked her to her bones. He peeled off his shirt. She’d expected scars all over his body from the problem shifters he’d fought, but his skin was smooth and void of any damage. That was telling enough. Logan was very good at battle. Something about that made her so sad. She’d heard his admission. His alpha had forced him into that first mercenary job at the tender age of seventeen. Dominant brawlers like him wielded a huge instinct to protect. It’s why the dominants made such good alphas. But instead of protecting, his alpha had hired him out to kill.
Logan’s bear had never stood a chance.
He kicked out of his pants and stood up straight, locking eyes with her, daring her to look. His shoulders were more defined than she’d imagined. He had a tattoo of a cross on his ribs, and another abstract tattoo covered one pec and flowed up to his shoulder and down his arm in a full sleeve. He was cupping his dick, covering it as her eyes dragged down his chiseled chest and the hard mounds of his abs, but when she reached his hips, he pulled his hand away and strode toward her.
Logan stepped into the tub, slid in behind her, hugged her tightly against his chest, and buried his face in her neck. Winter sat there frozen in disbelief that this giant, complicated man had just exposed himself physically and emotionally to her.
For a while, he didn’t say a word, but this was his apology. She knew without a shadow of a doubt he didn’t give affection freely, or perhaps ever.
“Why?” she asked thickly. “Why did he hurt me?”
“Because he’s broken. I broke him. He was good, and I made him kill, and now I’m the one who needs the mercenary.”
“Rowan is your mercenary?”
He nodded against her neck. “I want to go fighting, with honor, but you’ve seen me. Who can beat him?”
“Only dragons.” No other shifter on earth was as big or dominant or bloodthirsty as Logan’s bear.
Winter turned sideways in his arms to face the wall, curled her knees up and rested her head on his bare chest, stared at the lines of grout between the bathroom tiles. “I’m angry at you.”