Chapter 22: Ask Me Again

Cade's POV

I carried her down the ridge myself.

Hattie said not to, and Rhys said he would, and I said no to both of them.

My wolf was back.

It had come back all at once, loud and hot, and it wanted one thing.

It wanted her safe.

She weighed more than I remembered, and she gripped my shirt in both fists whenever a pain came.

"Left at the cedar," she said between her teeth. "Hattie's clinic's closer. Left."

"I know the way."

"You walked me up here to drown me."

"I know."

"Good. Keep knowing it."

I almost laughed.

The pack went ahead of us with torches and cleared the path.

Nobody spoke to me.

A woman I had known all my life took my sleeve as I passed and pressed it, once.

I did not deserve that, and I did not say so.

The clinic was lit when we got there, with every lamp turned up.

Hattie put Carys on the bed in the back room, and washed her hands to the elbow, and looked at me.

"You can stay," she said, "if you shut up and do what I say."

"Yes."

"If you faint, I'll step over you."

"Understood."

Carys looked at me from the pillow.

Her hair was stuck to her forehead.

"Hold my hand," she said. "And don't make that face."

"What face?"

"The one that says you'd trade places."

"I would."

"I know," she said. "Shut up."

It went on a long time.

I had thought I understood strength.

I had stood in front of two hundred wolves and given orders for five years.