“Daniel?” I cried out. “Where are you?”
I took a few steps in the direction we’d been heading.
Then I heard it from behind me. A raspy voice, barely audible in the roar of the rain. A voice I feared I’d never hear again … And when I did, it made my heart almost seize up in my chest.
“Gracie?” he rasped.
I turned around, almost slipping in the mud with my haste.
Someone was there. Through the rain, I could make out the white silhouette of a person clutching the trunk of tree for support, his lower half obscured by branches.
I took a hesitant step in his direction, too shocked to believe my eyes. Then another step. And another—feeling like a whole lifetime could have passed in the time it took to make my body move.
He was so close now I could almost reach out and touch him. His blond hair, drenched from the storm, looked almost brown as it hung down on his forehead—still shaggy even when wet. I watched in awe as rainwater ran from his hair down his chiseled cheekbones, arched over his cleft chin, and down his neck. It pooled momentarily in his hollow of his collarbone, and then carved paths down his bare chest.
“Daniel,” I whispered, afraid I was dreaming again.
“Gracie.” He held a shaking arm out toward me.
I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me closer to him. He cupped my chin with both of his hands, and then our lips were together, melting in a fierce kiss—wet with rain and tears. He kissed me like he’d feared that he’d never be able to kiss me again.
I wrapped my arms around his naked chest, shuddering against his hot skin. Never wanting to let go.
But then he cried out in pain and pulled away. I noticed a bright red, blistering welt against the taut muscles of his left shoulder—where the silver bullet had pierced his flesh. He shuddered, his body convulsing, and he cried so sharply, I knew he suffered from a pain much greater than just that of the bullet wound. As if his insides were under threat of being torn apart. More shouts sounded in the background. Coming closer. Was someone on our trail? I reached out to steady Daniel’s shaking body, but he slipped through my grasp and collapsed to the ground.
It took every ounce of my will not to howl a scream as I stared down at Daniel, lying in the mud so still, as if he were dead.
Chapter Eighteen
FEVER
A FEW MINUTES PASSED
He was hot. So very, very hot. Even in the cool rain, the heat radiating off his skin against my body made me sweat as I propelled him toward home. It felt like he was burning up in a fever of nuclear proportions. His shallow breathing scared me, and his body quaked with a seizurelike shudder every few minutes. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but I knew I had to get him to safety. He’d regained himself only enough to stand. With his arms draped around my shoulders, leaning his weight into my side, I was able to walk, drag, and carry him—depending on his ability to put one foot in front of the other—through the rest of the forest. I wanted to pass out with exhaustion by the time I reached the back fence of our yard. I don’t know how I mustered up any more supernatural strength to hoist him over it.
I stashed the two rifles under my back porch—I’d been too afraid to leave them in the forest for those hunters to find—then carried Daniel into the house. His body was slick with mud and still just as burning hot. He moaned softly and slid out of my grasp onto the linoleum kitchen floor.
How could he withstand a fever this high?
Suddenly, I wished my mother, the nurse, was here. Not that she’d be too keen about my naked boyfriend lying on her kitchen floor—but she’d know better than I did what to do for someone so sick. I had to bring down his temperature as quickly as possible, but I doubted a couple of ibuprofen were going to help.
I grunted from exertion as I picked him up again and carried him to the upstairs bathroom. I sat him in the tub and draped a hand towel over his … um, middle … and then turned on the faucet. I let a rush of cold water pour down on his legs. I tested the temperature. Colder than the rain outside when it left the faucet, but it warmed up quickly as it came into contact with his hot skin. I ran downstairs and grabbed the entire bucket of ice from the freezer’s ice maker and brought it back upstairs.
“Don’t hate me for this,” I said to Daniel as I dumped the ice on top of him. He groaned and his eyes half opened for a moment—at least he was still conscious. Steam curled up in wisps from his skin.
The blistered welt on his shoulder was caked with mud. I didn’t want it to get infected, so I washed my own hands and arms and then scooped up handfuls of the now-cooler water and drizzled it over his shoulder. Then I grabbed the bar of soap and lathered it up. As gently as I could, I carefully scrubbed his shoulder. He winced with pain as my fingers brushed over the tender wound. As I washed away the grime, I found a second welt on the back side of his shoulder. An exit wound—the bullet had passed clean through his arm. Both wounds looked like they’d been cauterized by the burning reaction of silver meeting werewolf flesh. It looked painful as hell, but at least I didn’t have to worry about his bleeding to death.
I worked the soap down both of his arms and then across his back and then down his chest—trying all the time not to linger on the thought of how much bigger everything about his body was now. Daniel had always been well cut, but with a slighter build. However, his muscles were larger now than I remembered, firmer. Even his jaw and cheekbones were better defined. Everything about him was perfectly shaped, like Adonis himself lay in my bathtub.
After I finished washing his body, I lathered shampoo into his hair and washed away what was left of the week he’d lived in the woods. As I leaned over him to brush his now clean, wet, hair off his forehead, he lifted his hand and touched my arm.
He opened his deep dark eyes and stared into mine for a moment. “Thank you,” he said quietly through chattering teeth. He closed his eyes again, convulsing with a shiver.
I clasped my hand over his forehead and realized his skin felt positively frigid now, even though the ice in the water had long melted away.
Had I done something wrong?
I took a moment to change into clean yoga pants and a cami, and threw my dirty clothes into the washer with a heaping scoop of detergent to destroy the muddy evidence. Then I fetched a pair of pajamas from Jude’s unused room for Daniel. He let me help him into the flannel pajama pants, but he refused the flannel shirt. “Don’t want to overheat again,” he said through his pale blue lips. I wondered if kissing them would help him warm up. Instead, I draped a dry towel over his shoulders and led him to my bed. He barely made it before his legs gave out from under him.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I said as I tucked him under my bedspread. “Maybe I should go for help.” Leaving him was the last thing I wanted to do, but if he needed more help…
“No,” he said, grasping my hand tight. “Please stay with me.”
I nodded and crawled into the bed next to him. I pressed myself against his side to help warm him with my body heat. But it wasn’t long until he was burning up again, and I had to bring ice packs from the freezer to press against his forehead. At one point he shook and screamed, clutching at the sheets, as if some sort of invisible force was trying to drag him away.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go for help,” I called desperately over his cries. “Maybe Dr. Connors would—”
“Don’t go.” Daniel shook his head. He grabbed me in his arms and held me to his bare chest—clutching on to me like a drowning swimmer to a lifesaver. “I need you here with me tonight. So I don’t go away again…”
And then I realized what was happening—Daniel wasn’t suffering from some sort of illness, and not from a reaction to silver. There was an internal battle raging inside his body.
Daniel was fighting to stay human.
I wrapped my arms around him and clung to him with all my strength—it was up to me to ensure he survived this fight.
Chapter Nineteen
ANGEL
WEDNESDAY MORNING
I didn’t let go of Daniel. I held him through fits of burning hot and freezing cold. Through screams of pain, and low wolflike whimpers that barely passed his bluish lips. Finally, well after three in the morning, he gave a great sigh and his grasp on me loosened. His skin felt neither hot nor cold, and his labored breaths eased into a normal rhythm. The tension in his taut muscles slipped away, and everything about him became heavy with sleep.
I watched him for a long while. Smoothed his golden blond hair off his face, and caressed my fingers lightly along his perfect cheek and jawbone. Careful not to wake him, I brushed kisses against his forehead. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to drink in everything about him. It felt as if I’d been stuck in some sort of hell-like limbo, with the week he’d been gone seeming more like a century.
But he was here with me now, and that’s all that mattered.
At some point I must have drifted off to sleep in his arms because I was awoken several hours later to the sensation of someone’s fingers brushing my hair off my forehead, and then tender lips pressed against mine in a kiss.
I slowly opened my eyes to find Daniel gazing at me as he lay beside me in my bed. A weak smile curved on his lips, but it was a smile, nonetheless.
“Hey,” I said, and pushed myself up on my elbows. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than last night.” His deep, dark eyes were locked on my face, as if it had been years since he’d seen me. “Thank you for staying with me.” He leaned closer and gently kissed my lips. I gripped him around his neck and pulled him in for a harder kiss.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?” Daniel asked. “I had dreams so realistic they were cruel.”
“Better the hell not be.” I laughed softly against his skin. “But it is hard to believe you’re actually here, isn’t it?”
“Then maybe we need to convince ourselves a little longer.”
We kissed again, longer and deeper. Quite some time passed before our mouths broke apart, short of breath.
“Remind me to wake up in your bed more often,” Daniel said with a heartier, devious smile.
“Not allowed. Never. Ever. Again.” I pushed him away with a playful slap to the arm.
“Ow,” he said, grasping his injured shoulder just below the red, blistered wound caused by the silver bullet.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you think you can heal that?”
He shook his head. “Already tried. Must have been caused by pure silver,” he said. “Not much I can do but hope it keeps healing on its own. Hurts like hell, but at least I can still use my arm. Do you know how this happened?” he asked about the wound.
I scrunched my eyebrows, concerned. “You don’t remember?”
He shook his head.
“You were shot. A couple of hunters in the woods. There was a whole hunting party out there looking for you—equipped with silver bullets, courtesy of Mr. Day.” I touched the reddened skin just under the wound on the front of his shoulder. “I’m glad it passed clean through. I don’t know if I’d have had the nerve to dig out a bullet. You seriously don’t remember getting shot?”
“It’s all patchy. I’ve got images here and there … Did you hit someone in the head with a rifle?”
“Yes. But he was one of the hunters who was trying to shoot you, so it was totally justified.”
“Totally,” he said with a smirk.
“Do you remember how we got out of the warehouse?” I asked, wondering just how much of his memory was affected.
“Partially. I remember watching you trying to fight off those wolves. And I remember jumping from the balcony and going all superwolf. But before and after that are really foggy. It’s like I remember feelings more than I do events. Like how I remember feeling like I’d do anything to save you…” He gave me a look, and I knew he was pained by the sudden memory of my almost dying. “And then when I was the wolf, it was like I could feel this undeniable force pulling me away. Pulling me to do something. Go somewhere. Find something. But no matter how far I went, I couldn’t find it. I kept running through the forest trying to get to it, even though I knew I couldn’t. And even though I didn’t want to go, it still pulled me away. I still don’t know what it was I was looking for.”
“I’m just glad you’re back now—and that you never felt the urge to kill anyone.”
“No, I never did. All that time I never felt the urge to kill, like when I was the black wolf. Protecting you was definitely one of my impulses, though. But I never felt any malice toward you or anyone else—I still don’t. It’s like I’m not actually werewolf. Like I’m a completely different species or something.”
Daniel pulled me closer, and I rested my head against his chest, listening to the thrumming of his single heartbeat. I touched his arm. Silver could still burn him like a werewolf, but I got what he meant about feeling like he was something different altogether. “Then what are you?” I wondered out loud, but as I said the words, a realization dawned on me.
Daniel had died that night in the parish when I’d plunged that knife into his chest to cure him—to kill the demon wolf who had his soul in its clutches. Daniel had died along with the demon. But Daniel had come back—cured. No, more than cured…
The way his powers had returned after several months—but without the evil side effects … and the transformation he’d gone through. Turning into the white wolf when his greatest desire was to help me—save me—rather than the black wolf he used to be before he was cured. And the way his body looked now. Like everything about him had been … perfected.
Gabriel had told me to think of the Urbat as fallen angels. So what was Daniel now that he was no longer fallen? “I think you’re a perfected Urbat,” I said. “You’re what the original Hounds of Heaven were intended to be. I think you’re like … an angel.”
“An angel?” Daniel gave a slight laugh.
“I think so.”
“Does that mean you think I’m … dead?”
“No. Just perfected.”
Daniel gave a great sigh and rolled over onto his side. “I don’t know about that.…”
I stared at his exposed pecs and the muscles that rippled over his shoulders and down his arms. “You should see yourself.” I felt my cheeks blush with heat.
He looked up at me with his deep, dark eyes. A mischievous smile curled on his lips. He picked at my coral-colored sheets. “So I can never ever wake up in your bed again, huh?”
I laughed. The sound came out as a girlish giggle that made my cheeks flush even hotter. “Maybe someday, if the conditions are right.”
He wrapped his hand around the back of my head and pulled me toward him. His lips brushed over mine and then melted into a delicious kiss. I could feel his other hand on my waist, his fingers lingering on the hem of my shirt. Then they were on my skin as his warm fingertips drifted up the side of my stomach. His kiss grew more urgent. I could feel his need for me. My hands caressed his bare back as I pulled him closer. I needed him just as much. His hand cupped against my rib cage under my shirt. I could feel his strumming pulse in his fingers against my skin.…
Daniel pulled his hands away. He sat up in my bed and scooted farther away still. He sat so his back was to me, his legs draped over the end of the bed.
The tingle of anticipation still lingered in my skin. “Are you okay?” I asked. I sat up behind him, hesitating to touch my fingers against the back of his uninjured shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I got carried away. I don’t want my need for you to get in the way of what we decided.” I knew what he was talking about—we’d decided months ago that we wanted to wait. Deep down, beyond the yearning I felt at the moment, where I wanted to place his hands, what I wanted to do, I knew I still wanted to keep the promise we’d made to each other, even if it was almost impossible to remember why at that moment.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips against one of his shoulder blades as I traced my fingers against
the muscles underneath it. “Thank you,” I whispered against his spine.
He sighed and stood up, stepping away from the bed as if one more touch from me would make him lose total control. I knew exactly how he felt. “I guess I should find a shirt or something. What time is it?”
I glanced at the clock. “Wow. It’s almost nine. Guess we’re not making it to school on time this morning.” I laughed. As if.
Daniel laughed, too. “I guess we could do the walk of shame together into the cafeteria around lunchtime.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I pulled off the sheet covering my legs and scooted to the edge of my bed, closer to where Daniel stood. I bit my lip, not quite sure I was ready to address the issue that played on my mind. “The conditions I mentioned earlier … ? That night in the warehouse, when we were locked in Caleb’s dungeon. What do you remember happening?”
“Only bits and pieces. My memory is so fragmented. Like I’ve got a puzzle in my head that needs to be put together, but I’m missing half the pieces.”
“Do you remember asking me … ?”
To marry you? I couldn’t finish the question out loud. What if he hadn’t really meant to ask? What if he’d done it only out of panic, to try to keep me from losing hope for the future? What if he didn’t remember asking in the first place? What if he thought I was completely crazy for claiming he had?
Daniel stepped closer. Leaning in, he pressed his hands against the sides of my legs. My skin tingled uncontrollably in response.
“Do I remember what?” he asked.
My heart sank in my chest, realizing I was engaged to someone who didn’t even remember asking. Who maybe hadn’t even really wanted to ask. Maybe his memory had blocked it out on purpose.
“Nothing,” I said, and started to pull away.
“No, Gracie.” Daniel grabbed my arms. An expression of pain crossed his face as he pulled me up so I was standing in front of him, gripping me tightly so I couldn’t run away. “Whatever it is you wanted to ask me is important. I can see it on your face. Don’t hide anything from me. That’s not how we work. Not anymore. We’re in this together. No matter what.”