Mated Girl (Wolf Girl Series Book 4)

She went limp in my arms and every rational thought left me. This wasn’t happening. Not like this. “Demi!” I shook her lightly, but her head just lolled onto my lap.

No, no, no. Fuck no. Not her, not the love of my life…

“Take off the cuffs!” Sage half sobbed as those of us who knew her best lost our collective minds. Walsh ripped her cuffs off and I once again cursed myself for making them. These things hurt her more times than they helped her.

“With the cuffs off, will she heal?” I asked my best friend. My voice sounded hollow, and even I knew that there was no healing from this, not without a trauma team and top-notch hospital, which we didn’t have anymore. It had been bombed by the fucking vampires.

My heart thundered in my chest as I gripped my dying wife’s blood-soaked t-shirt.

Think. Breathe. Fucking hell.

“Astra.” Walsh’s voice was barely a whisper. We were flying on a fucking dragon over the entire city of Light Fey and no one looked at us, which made me think the dragon had some type of cloaking ability.

“What?” I couldn’t concentrate. All of my medical schooling was trying to take up residence in my brain at the same time as my grief and it was short-circuiting my brain. Demi wasn’t someone I could fathom living without. I tried in prison and almost committed suicide. I’d never loved a creature so much as I adored and worshiped this woman in my arms. She couldn’t die. Not like this. Not after everything we’d been through.

“Astra! Is that chick still alive?” Walsh screamed at Sage.

Sage’s face brightened, which gave me hope as I remembered the story of the Paladin priestess healing Walsh when he was injured … near death.

I looked up at the troll girl who seemed to be in charge of the dragon. “Take us to Astra.”

She looked confused. Fuck. Why did she look confused?

“Paladin Village, in the Wild Lands, I’ll show you the way,” Sage barked. The troll nodded and her named popped into my mind. Marmal. This must be Marmal from Demi’s time stuck in the Magic Lands.

There was so much blood. Even with Walsh and I plugging holes, they bled through to her back. My gaze flicked up to Luka, whose eyes were practically glowing with hunger. Her blood, it would be nearly impossible to resist for him, especially since they half-starved him in prison. “You good, bro?” I asked.

He swallowed hard and nodded, looking away from Demi. I trusted him with my life, we knew everything about each other, the last year had brought us closer than brothers. If he felt himself losing control, he’d jump off this dragon before harming my wife. He knew what she meant to me.

If I had a surgical kit and operating room, I might be able to do something. Right now I was utterly fucking useless … about to put all of my faith in a teenage girl with supposed healing powers…

My mind calculated any other option. We could fly into downtown Light Fey City and take Demi to their hospital, but odds are they wouldn’t treat her once they found out she was responsible for the prison break. We were already over Dark Fey Territory, coming up on Troll Village. There was no turning back now.

My fingers plugged holes inside of the tiny stomach that once held my son I’d never met. I had an out-of-body experience then. How was this real? Everything was going fine. Demi was in my arms. We’d almost had her wolf. How was this happening?

Walsh ripped his shirt into strips as he tried in vain to stop the bleeding. How could someone so small bleed so much?

God, please don’t take her. I reached out to the universe. I was a man of science, not one of spirituality, but I could be persuaded to believe in anything right now.

Anything for Demi.

Reaching up with my free hand, I did something I’d been scared to do since she lost consciousness. I felt for a pulse at her neck.

‘Hold on, my love.’ I tried to find her through our bond, like maybe there I could save her, hold her somehow … but she was all dark, gone. It left me feeling empty, and the desperation I’d initially felt when I first landed in prison fell over me like a thick fog.

Thumps lightly beat against my finger. Thump. Thump. I froze. It was faint, but she had a pulse.

“Please go faster!” I growled at the female troll. She peered back at Demi limp in my arms and soaked in blood and all the color drained from her face. Tears lined her eyes, rolling down her cheeks, and she nodded.

I had yet to meet a person who truly knew Demi and didn’t absolutely love her. Even the troll woman did, you could see it in her eyes. If Demi died, the devastation that it would leave behind would be felt by every single person who knew her.

I can’t think like that right now.

Sage was fumbling with a cell phone. Why, I didn’t know. There was no one to call. We had no hospital and I was assuming the medical ward in Paladin Village wasn’t equipped for this.

“Eugene, Demi’s been shot. Tell Astra to prepare to heal her,” Sage said quickly into the phone, and a flicker of hope surged inside of me.

If Astra really could heal someone near death, if she was waiting and ready when we landed … maybe Demi would make it…

As we flew over the tall gothic buildings of Vampire City, my face turned into a scowl. The vampires were responsible for nearly every recent problem in my life. Looking back, I glanced at Luka, the only decent bloodsucker I knew. He wore a mask of pain; it danced across his face before slipping away into a cold hard stare. After what Luka had been through, what it must be like right now to look down on his old home … I couldn’t imagine it. He met my gaze and I nodded once.

He returned it.

That was that. An unspoken bond. I would take his story to the grave with me, but he knew I knew, and that meant he wasn’t alone. Sometimes grief needed to be shared or it would suffocate you under the weight of it. Luka had shared his grief with me, and now I carried a little bit of it so that he could breathe. Hypothetically, since vampires didn’t actually breathe.

Demi’s pulse fluttered under my index finger and I whimpered, my focus back on her. She had to make it, she just had to.

The dragon started to descend over the Wild Lands as Sage barked directions from her place behind me. I’d never been to Paladin Village. I’d grown up hating their people, and when I’d finally wanted to go there, to be with Demi and support her, I’d had that damn ankle monitor on.

“Come on!” I shouted, knowing that yelling wouldn’t help anything, but it made me feel slightly better anyway.

If the medical ward there had an IV kit, I could at the very least transfer some of my blood to Demi. My mind raced with medical knowledge and procedures I could try if only I had the right tools. Next year I would have started medical school, but I did enough in my training that I knew how to suture and do an intravenous vein puncture.

I wondered if Dr. Pearson had survived the past year and if he was in the village right now. He was the top surgeon we had, but without the right tools or a proper operating room…

“There!” Sage pointed to a thicket of trees, and I looked just past them at what I assumed was Paladin Village.

Pearl descended and I gleaned a closer look.

Whoa. Shock ripped through me as my gaze fell on the wooden fence, tips sharpened to points. Inside was not the rough and tumble encampment I assumed it would be. I mean, it clearly had taken a beating, with some buildings looking like they were shelled out by bombs, but most of them were intact, and made fully of brick. Thousands of tents and makeshift huts dotted the roadways and open areas, and my heart swelled with hope that some of those people were my pack.

I looked down at Demi.

Our pack.

There was no them or us anymore. It was we. Paladin, city wolf, we needed to unite if we wanted to end this war, and that started right here with Demi and I. Together. I looked back up at the farmlands in the distance and was surprised to see the rolling green hills dotted with row upon row of food. It looked like corn and lettuce and other edible things. I realized then that the Paladins had something that the city wolves didn’t: a knowledge they could teach us so that we might just survive the next few months.

The dragon tried to find a spot to land, but there were people everywhere. Children running and playing. Tents and backpacks littered the roads.

Demi’s heartbeat suddenly stopped and panic surged so quickly inside of me that my wolf nearly lurched out of my body.

“She’s crashing!” I shouted, as alpha power slapped out of me and pressed in on everyone riding the dragon.

Sage pointed to an open spot where the small girl with mousy brown hair waved us over. I remembered her from the one time we met, but somehow she looked even smaller now, younger too. She wore some kind of feathered headdress and bone-carved necklace, but she looked like a kid trying to play chief.

This was her? The great healer?

My head snapped to Walsh: “The second we hit the ground, I need you to find Dr. Pearson … if he’s still alive. If not, any of the city wolf surgeons will do.”

Walsh nodded, and then the dragon’s talons hit the earth.

It was like time had stopped or slowed down; the next few moments felt so long. I felt out of my body trying to understand what to do and how I could help Demi. Luka assisted me in carrying her to the ground, but that just made Demi lose more blood, and I wasn’t even sure she was still alive at this point.

No pulse … why can’t I feel a pulse?

So much blood.

Astra, all of maybe seventeen, walked over to Demi and her eyes flashed a glowing blue.

“Heal her please. I beg of you.” I looked up at the girl, my fingers still plugging holes in my lifeless wife as tears lined my eyes, and I nearly lost my shit in front of all these people. My heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest, like someone had reached in and squeezed it so hard it might pop like a balloon at any moment.

Astra looked over at me with such strength and confidence then, I wondered if I had underestimated her.

With a simple nod, she fell to her knees and clasped her hands in prayer.

“Father, we need a miracle. Use me, make me your vessel of light and healing.” The girl raised her clasped hands to the sky.

Demi said that the Paladins were super spiritual, but I hadn’t experienced it firsthand. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t here to judge, and if it saved my wife I would pray to the fucking Father every night for the rest of my life.

A scream rang out from behind me, raising the hairs on my arms and I spun. Demi’s mom stood directly behind me, face stricken as she stared down at her unconscious daughter. A small baby boy with dark hair and blue eyes was in her arms, and my heart shattered. I swallowed down a sob as I reached for my son with my free hand. A crowd of people had started to gather around, and Eugene was pushing them back, but I didn’t care about any of that. Nothing mattered to me in that moment except holding this beautiful boy that Demi and I made. Demi’s mom reached out and deposited Creek in my arms before she fell into a puddle of tears, her husband pulling her into a tight hug.

Her grief killed me, but all my pain washed away the moment I looked down at my son. His round, wide eyes looked up at me with an innocence that I clung to and hoped he would always have. Knowing that Demi carried him and birthed him all on her own out in the wild, it made me love and respect her ten times more than I had before she left for her alpha trial. Demi was the strongest woman I knew. I’d seen the fire and strength of an alpha that first day I’d met her at Delphi. To be honest, it scared me sometimes, because I wasn’t sure in what world two alphas could co-exist, but now I knew. This world. If anyone could come back from death, it was her. We would remake the world together with our son. Born of both tribes and cultures. A symbol of our love and unification. I could smell his wolf inside of him, still young but strong, and I was grateful for that.

Holding his tiny body to my chest, I turned back around just in time to see a blue mist fall from the sky, coating Astra like a magical rain.

The crowd gasped in awe, but all I could do was hope. Hope that this young girl was powerful enough to save the love of my life.

Reaching out, I grabbed Demi’s cold, limp hand, and tucked Creek up against my chest between his mother and me.

“He needs you. I need you,” I begged her, as if she had a choice, as if my words could somehow bring her back from wherever her spirit had wandered. The blue sparkle raining down on Astra became so bright then that I had to close my eyes and shield Creek’s face with my chest.

As I held my wife’s hand, our newborn son cradled between us, I prayed to every god imaginable that she would heal and wake up so that we could be a family again, because no woman compared to her.

“Get back!” Astra shouted, but her voice was not her own. It was deep, barely human, and full of power. The force of that power slapped against me, as if trying to push me back. I jerked Creek away, yanking my fingers out of Demi’s abdomen, and rolled onto my side just as the blue mist exploded out of Astra’s body. It rose up slightly into the air and then shot down into Demi with the force of a million tiny bullets.

Holy shifter.

Demi’s body seized and jerked wildly as the blue light pelted into her like hail dropping from the sky. Astra arched her back, letting loose with a wail of pain and I frowned. Was this normal? I should have asked more about the healing with Walsh. I should have asked more about the Paladins. I’d been so dismissive of them, and Demi never talked about them, probably for fear of upsetting me. I was going to do better after this, take an interest in her people.

Our people.

I would care for them as if they were my own, as she had clearly done for the city wolves in my absence.

Astra’s wail grew in intensity and I backed up, getting to my feet and handing Creek off to Sage.

Something wasn’t right. This didn’t feel normal. Why was the healer in pain?

“Are you okay?” I asked Astra, looking from her to Demi with a frown.

Demi had stopped convulsing, and I shook my head in disbelief when my gaze narrowed to her shredded and bleeding stomach—or what had been her torn open and bleeding stomach. Now it was … healed. Five metal shell casings littered the floor underneath her ribcage as if they’d been magically pushed out.

What the hell kind of healer was this girl?

I looked up in absolute joy to thank her, then I noticed blood blooming in Astra’s abdomen. That’s when she started to fall.

Moving quickly, I rushed forward, leaping over Demi to catch Astra. She collapsed into my arms as the crowd broke into sobs. I gathered from the headdress and amazing healing abilities that she was important to these people, and now I was at a loss of what to do.

I knew she was their priestess, but I didn’t know culturally what that equated to. President? Pastor? Mother Teresa?

“Get a doctor!” I shouted, moving Astra to her back so that I could start plugging holes in her stomach just as I’d done for Demi. She had bullet holes in the same place that Demi had.

What the hell kind of sorcery is this?

Chills ran up my arms when I realized what Astra had done. She’d taken Demi’s injury, not healed it. She took it into herself. A small, innocent seventeen-year-old girl.

“Fuck. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” I told the girl, reliving the nightmare I’d just went through with Demi, but now with a stranger that I somehow felt responsible for.

Astra reached up, grabbing the sides of my face, and smiled sweetly. “Take care of Demi. She’s special.” Her voice was weak, too weak.

Shit. No.

I looked over at Demi just in time to see her chest rise with a giant breath as she gulped in lungfuls of air.

Oh thank God! She was alive, and I’d killed her most cherished pack member.

She is going to kill me.