Chapter 8: Night Shift

On Monday night, Rafe let me ride in the ambulance for my practical hours.

He said it was a program requirement.

I suspected he had invented it, and I did not argue.

The call came at nine.

A hiker was caught in a trap on the old logging road north of campus.

"Silver snare," Rafe said, and pulled out of the lot with the lights on.

The road turned to gravel, and the trees closed in.

I sat in the passenger seat with my hands on my knees, and my wolf was a small quiet weight in my chest.

"Are you scared?" he asked.

"A little."

"Good. Scared people check twice."

We found the hiker sitting against a tree, white in the face, with a steel cable looped around his ankle.

It was cinched tight, and the skin under the wire had gone black.

"I tried to pull it off," he said through his teeth. "It burns."

"Stop pulling," I said, and knelt in front of him. "I'm Ivy."

"Okay," he said.

"I'm going to cut this and it's going to hurt. Look at me, not at it."

Rafe handed me the cutters without a word.

He held the light.

I slid a strip of gauze under the cable, braced the skin, and cut the wire in one pass.

The hiker shouted.

The cable fell away, and the wound underneath it bled in a thick dark line.

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