I’m so focused on Sinclair, I don’t even see the car until it’s almost upon me. I’m too stunned to move, and there’s no time to get out of the way. All I can do is try to turn my body away from the vehicle, shielding my unborn child from the inevitable crash.
Time seems to slow down, and a dull roar fills my ears. My thoughts race, and I’m amazed by the logical clarity I find in that split second. I tell myself to go limp—the impact won’t be as terrible if my body isn’t tense with fear. Isn’t that why drunk people often survive car accidents that would otherwise be fatal?
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to relax my muscles. As soon as I have the thought, a huge weight collides with my back, slamming into me with such force that the breath is knocked from my lungs. I’m spinning, twisting as the wall of iron surrounds me, lifting my feet off the ground. A deafening crash fills the air, though it seems delayed. Hadn’t I already been hit?
Then I’m being thrust forward—or is it backward? I’m moving, flying through the air, yet my limbs are completely constrained. My eyes are clenched shut, and the sound of rending metal and shattering glass explodes around me. It’s all so sudden; I don’t have time to be afraid, to say prayers for my baby, or even for myself.
I wait for the pain, but it doesn’t come. After a few moments of holding my breath, I realize I’m not moving anymore. Am I dead? Was it so sudden that I didn’t feel it?
I peek open one eye, and sunlight blinds me. Is there a sun in the afterlife? I know shifters have a version of heaven, but I didn’t imagine humans got to go there.
There’s a click, like a car door opening, and then the sound of racing footsteps. “Catch them!” Sinclair’s deep voice snarls, so loud that I think he must be yelling in my ear.
Hope surges through my veins. If he’s here, then I must not be dead. And why am I so warm? I wonder belatedly, imagining myself sprawled on the hood of a vehicle, too shocked to feel the impact on my broken body. Shouldn’t a car sitting in the snow be cold?
“Ella—Ella, are you alright?” Sinclair is talking again, and I open my other eye, anxious to see him. Instead, I see the empty street in front of me. “Please say something,” he begs, his gentle hands moving over my body from behind. “Are you hurt? Talk to me, baby.”
Behind me. I think dazedly. But that means… I sit up, truly looking around for the first time. We’re sitting on the hood of the car—or what used to be the hood. Sinclair’s huge body has completely totaled the vehicle. Slowly—infuriatingly slowly—my brain pieces together what must have happened. Sinclair had been fast enough to reach me, but he hadn’t had time to push me out of the way. Instead, he’d turned me away from the car and wrapped his own body around me, shielding me from the impact. He’d taken the full force of the crash, and his back had crumpled the bumper and hood beyond recognition, shattering the windshield into a thousand pieces.
Nausea washes over me, and my body shakes with fear and adrenaline. “I… I…” I clamber off the crumpled metal, my knees giving way as soon as my feet hit the ground. I vomit into the pristine white snow, feeling Sinclair follow me at a pace much too slow for his supernatural strength. I’m afraid to look at him, but he’s hovering beside me, surreptitiously running his hands over my body, searching for injuries but trying not to disturb me. “Stop,” I choke. “I’m alright… it’s you—” I finally turn to face him, horror and guilt washing over me as I take in the damage.
Sinclair is bleeding, and his body must be covered in bruises. The impact would have killed me, and his shifter strength might have kept him alive, but not even an Alpha wolf can walk away from such an accident unharmed. His handsome face is a tight grimace of pain, but I’m not sure he’s even registering the sensations. His attention is focused on me, his green eyes scouring my body for signs of harm.
“Oh, Dominic,” I choke, my voice thick with emotion as I reach toward his battered body. His shirt is torn to shreds by glass from the windshield, and I can only imagine how mangled his flesh is underneath.
Before I can touch him, I’m distracted by sounds of a struggle in the distance. I follow the sound with my eyes, catching our chauffeur wrestling the homicidal driver to the ground a few meters down the road. He must have tried to flee when the car stalled, unable to simply plow through Sinclair’s body as it would have mine. I immediately recognize the driver as one of the rogues who attacked me in the alley, and suddenly my vision turns completely red.
I forget my concern for myself and the baby; I even forget my worry for Dominic. I feel only a flood of vengeful fury, more violent and feral than any I’ve known before. That rogue hurt Sinclair. He wanted to end my baby’s life and would have taken mine, but he did hurt Sinclair. He might have taken my baby’s father from us both—from the pack that needs him.
“I’ll kill him!” I snarl, pushing myself up on shaky legs and lunging toward the rogue.
A steely arm catches me around the waist, pulling me back. “Whoa, Ella, come here, let me look at you.”
“No, I want to kill him!” I insist, not recognizing this bloodthirsty woman I’ve apparently become.
“I do too, trouble, but right now you’re more important,” Sinclair murmurs in my ear. I can already hear sirens in the distance, loud, shrill, and drawing closer with every passing moment.
“I’m fine!” I cry, tears spilling from my overflowing lashes. “He hurt you! Let me go so I can make him pay.”
Sinclair is purring, but the sound keeps stuttering in his chest, as if the internal engine that fuels his rumbles and growls has been damaged. “I know, little one, we’ll make him pay, just take it easy.”
Sniffling, I stop fighting, turning to face him once he sets me back on my feet. “You’re all bloody,” I observe pitifully, wishing I knew how to heal his wounds. “I want to make him bloody too.”
I sound like a petulant toddler, albeit a very violent one. Still, Sinclair isn’t listening; the stubborn man has his palm pressed to my belly, his eyes scouring me for the hundredth time. “The baby’s okay,” he sighs, “but I need you to tell me where you’re hurt, Ella.”
Before I can answer, an ambulance screeches to a halt behind the wreckage, and EMTs leap from the back, sprinting toward us. They slow as they approach, warily approaching us as Sinclair holds me tightly and begins to growl protectively. “Alpha,” one of the EMTs says, hands up to show he means no harm. Belatedly, I realize the Moon Valley pack’s symbol blazes on the side of the ambulance, marking it as part of a shifter institution.
Of course the shifters got here faster than the humans. I think with relief. And thank goodness; Sinclair’s animalistic aggression would have terrified a human—it terrifies other wolves already.
“It’s okay,” the EMT continues. “We just want to help; we won’t hurt her.”
Sinclair scents the air, determining them friendly. Gradually, he loosens his hold on me, though I can sense how difficult it is for him. Eventually, he offers me up for their examination, delivering a menacing warning in the process: “I’m watching you, Beta. One wrong move, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
The EMT approaches me, still keeping his hands up. Sinclair paces behind us like an enraged bear, and I try to get my breathing under control. “Luna, where are you bleeding?”
“I’m not!” I exclaim, half-sobbing. “It’s all his blood. I’m fine; he’s the one who was hit.”
The EMT looks up at Sinclair, searching for confirmation and starting to approach him instead.
“No! Look at her first,” he growls, putting all his Alpha authority into the words, making us all shiver.
“Dominic, please!” I beg, moving back toward him. “I’m not hurt because you protected me.” I press my palms to his chest, gazing up at him with a pleading expression. “You did your job; we’re safe.” I continue, praying he’ll listen to reason, or at least be triggered into action by my words. “Rafe and I need you to be okay so you can continue keeping us safe. So we need you to go to the hospital now. We need you to let them help you.”
Sinclair gazes down at me with glowing, uncertain eyes, and I ask one final time, “Please, Dominic.”