I didn’t fully wake up again until I was in the bed, under a mountain of covers, but there was a hazy recollection of being carried in a pair of strong, familiar arms.

“Do you ever get tired of that?” I asked, although my mouth felt like it was full of glue.

Liam’s face slowly came into focus. “Scout? Are you okay?”

“How many times have you carried my unconscious body now? Three times? Four?” Talk about your Damsel in Distress routine. I had it down pat. “It’s got to get old after a while.”

He sat down beside me on the bed, his hands sliding along my face and neck. “What I’m tired of is you almost getting dead. I swear, I’m going to lock you in a padded room if you don’t stop all this stupid, life-threatening crap.”

“Irony, thy name is Liam,” I said, sitting up. As the covers started to slide down I realized I wasn’t wearing clothes. Luckily, Liam was on top the situation, grabbing the sheet so my boobs stayed under wraps, although I suppose it was kind of pointless since he had to have seen them while he was carrying me back. Still, I was grateful for his quick hands. It’s one thing to be exposed when you’re unconscious, and something completely different and more embarrassing to be aware someone can see you naked.

I took over the burden of holding up the sheet, which allowed Liam to start waving a finger in front of my face in slow motion.

“Ummm… Whatcha doin’?”

“Testing for brain damage.” His finger glided to the top of my nose and then pulled back. “Quit looking at me like that and follow my finger with your eyes.”

To anyone else, including me a few months ago, his voice and abrupt manner would reek of annoyance and anger, but I knew better. Just as I had learned to read the tiny quirks of his face, I was now an expert in the various gruff tones Liam used on a daily basis. This one didn’t say, “I can’t believe you’re such an idiot and have inconvenienced me so,” as much as, “You scared me to death you stupid, stupid girl.” Maybe a minor difference, but an important one.

“I’m fine. I know it was touch-and-go there for a while, but…” I took a deep breath. It was supposed to be an attempt to gather my thoughts and decide how to word the whole almost-dying-and-deciding-to-stay episode, but that plan was cut short by the smell of blood. Some of it was mine, but not much. Nowhere close to most. “You’re hurt!” Of course he was. Wasn’t that why I came back to the Land of the Living in the first place?

“What happened?” I leaned towards him and caught the sheet just in time. “Where are you injured?”

“It’s nothing--”

My eyelids snapped together in my own version of a Liam Cole glare. “Don’t mess me right now. I’m having a really bad day.”

“It’s just some scratches along my side and on my arm.” When I didn’t ease up on the death look, he let out a sigh of defeat. It wasn’t until he started to take if off that I noticed he was only wearing a t-shirt, exposing his arms to the cold. Of course, I couldn’t exactly lecture him on it since I wasn’t wearing anything but a sheet.

“Holy crap! They attacked you after you Changed?” The markings along his side and up his arm were vicious, and obviously the work of a wolf.

Liam didn’t look at me as he replaced the shirt. “It was an accident.”

“A wolf accidentally clawed…” Apparently the trauma of almost dying was making my brain work a little slower than normal. “I did that?” It had to have been me. Anything the other wolves had done would have healed during the Change, and he wouldn’t have been able to Change in the first place if they all hadn’t been killed or ran off. “Oh God, Liam. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

It looked awful. The cuts weren’t life-threateningly deep, but they weren’t exactly tiny scrapes either. I knew first hand how much being clawed up hurt. And I knew how hard it was to forgive the one who did it.

Liam was exhausted and in pain. I was certain because there was no other way he would have curled up on his good side beside me on the bed, his hand resting on my out-stretched leg. It was a pose of familiarity and submission, neither things Liam showed willingly.

“My fault,” he said, his words muffled with weariness. “I know better than to stay so close to a Shifter when they’re Changing. I wasn’t thinking. You had been laying there so long, barely breathing. I thought you were gone once there in the night, but I could still hear your heart, and then, finally, your breaths.” His hand did this absent-minded rub/squeeze thing on my leg. “When you finally started Changing this morning I tried to help, like there was really anything I could do. I was stupid, and got these nice parting gifts to show for it.”

“Last night…?” I looked out the window. The sun was just starting to set. I thought I had been out for an hour, maybe two max, but… “How long was I unconscious?”

“Just a day.”

Just a day? A whole day?

Something else was wrong. Alex had said Liam needed me, and I knew he was right looking into Liam’s eyes. Whatever it was, I knew I would move heaven and earth - or at least leave heaven for earth - to ease whatever pain it was lurking in their depths.

“You can’t do it,” he said. “You can’t fight her. You’ve got to keep hiding.”

I would do anything except that.

“Someone has to fight for all those lost little girls and the ones who haven’t been born, Liam.”

“We’ll find another way.”

“There isn’t another way,” I said. “At least not a better way. I’ve got to do this.”

“No.” The rub/squeeze thing turned into a just plain old squeeze, and a somewhat painful one at that.

“I promised Nicole. I have to do this.”

“You can’t.” It wasn’t a command, but a plea. “I can’t lose you, too. You can’t leave me like they did.” He was shaking. Hands, arms, and lips trembled. “Please, Scout. Please don’t leave me.”

In that moment all the confusion over what I felt melted away. Human Scout saw things with Wolf Scout’s clarity. Liam needed me. As I leaned down, he rose up to meet me. And when the sheet started to fall, neither of us reached out to stop it.

***