ZAC'S POV
The afternoon sun hangs high in the sky. Its heat spreads warmth through the thick line of trees as we move through the forest on patrol.
I walk in front. My boots crunch lightly on the dry leaves shed on the ground while my eyes scan the woods. Rowan walks behind me, and the warriors spread out behind us.
I stop walking. Rowan almost walked into my back. "Alpha?"
I smell warm and fresh human blood.
"Hold." I raise my fist, and every man behind me freezes instantly.
"Fan out." I lower my voice. "Stay close."
The warriors spread around me without uttering a word.
I move towards the direction where the scent pulls me to until I push through a low curtain of branches and stop dead. I see a human lying on the ground. A female, naked and curled into herself like a fetus in the womb. Her long dark brown hair spreads around her on the ground, tangled with dirt and dried leaves. Her skin is pale from having lost much blood. A wound on her side still bleeds through her fingers even though she is too weak to press it.
I drop to one knee beside her.
An enormous wave suddenly slams into my chest from inside of my rib so hard that I nearly lose my balance. I press my hand flat against the ground to keep myself steady. My wolf rises up inside me.
Mate. She is our mate.
"Easy," I whisper to him. "Easy."
She looks fragile. My hands move on their own. I brush the hair away from her face, carefully, afraid that she would wake up. Her lips are slightly open and her breathing is shallow. She is breathing.
I reach down and lift her gently into my arms.
She is warm. Too warm for someone lying outside for such a long time especially after being exposed to the cold in the open. She weighs almost nothing, and that alone makes my jaw tighten. She has not been eating. She curls slightly towards my chest even in her unconscious state, as if some part of her recognizes the warmth and moves towards it.
I hold her closer and turn back to the others. "Let's go back."
Rowan is watching me already. His face gives me the I-have-something-to-say-and-you-won't-like-it expression. The same look he used when he was about to say something I didn't want to hear.
"Don't," I say.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're making that face."
"Alpha." He lowers his voice. "This is risky"
"I'm taking her to the pack."
"You are taking a complete stranger into our territory?"
"Yes."
"We don't know who she is or where she is from. She could be a criminal or…"
"She was shot." I adjust her in my arms as I pull her closer instinctively.
"We don't know that for sure."
"The wound in her side...you have seen enough wounds to know what an arrow does."
He pauses. "Possibly."
He steps in front of me, not blocking my path exactly, but close enough to make his point. "That still doesn't…"
"Rowan.." I squint at him. "She is not a threat. Look at her. I cannot leave here here alone"
"Alpha, be reasonable. We cannot just bring an unknown woman into White Fang territory. What if something goes wrong…?"
"Be reasonable? I cut him short. "Are you tired of living?"
Rowan presses his lips together and bows his head in apology. He tries again.
She looks like she might already be…" He searches for the right words to use. "...not long for this world. Her people might be tracking her scent. If we leave her here, they will find her and take her home then we will avoid problems." He spread his hands. "We know nothing about her besides, we already have enough problems without…"
"Look at the wound, Rowan."
He looks again. He gnashes his teeth. "That still doesn't…"
"She is not a threat."
"You don't know that Alpha." He lowered his voice further, glancing at the warriors who were very carefully pretending not to listen.
"I know a threat when I see one Rowan. She is not one of them."
"The Council will not like this. They have opinions, they always have opinions, and if this somehow becomes a…"
"Rowan."
He opens his mouth.
I look at him steadily. "Say one more word and, I will have you cleaning out the stables for a month at least you'd put that energy of yours into good use.
He stops, blinks then closes his mouth.
Rowan stares at me, then at the woman in my arms, then back at me. He moves aside.
"Fine," he raises his hands in surrender. "But I want it noted that I had concerns."
"Noted," I say, already walking.
"Serious concerns."
"Also noted."
***
The pack healer, Maren, is a small, grey-haired woman who had seen enough blood in fifty years of her work to be completely shocked by anything. She shoos me out of my chamber the moment she arrives.
"Out."
I do not move.
She points again. "Out, Alpha. You are too big and you are blocking my light."
Rowan appears at my elbow and physically steer me out the door.
"She'll be fine," he says. "Maren is the best."
"She's still bleeding."
"Maren will fix it."
"She looks malnourished. She might have been without food and water for…"
"Maren will fix it." He plants himself between me and the door with the look of a man who had accepted his fate. "Go somewhere else Alpha."
I leave.
I had just returned about fifteen minutes later when Maren walked out of the chamber with her bag of medicine on her shoulders. She raises her head up at me without flinching. Thirty years of dealing with alphas had cured her of being impressed by them.
"She will live.
I release the breath I did not realize I was holding.
"How bad?"
For now, she is unconscious but will wake up soon. I've been able to treat and cover her wounds" she pauses. "The wound on her side is from an arrow." Maren's voice was flat. "It grazed her which means it missed any vital organ in her body, but she lost a lot of blood. She also burns and bruises on her wrists as well. From the pattern of the marks, I can tell she's been bound with a silver lace chain." Her eyes sharpen slightly. Her wolf was weak and malnourished. She was forced to shift when she had no strength for it but she will recover."
I thought about the weight of her in my arms. No wonder she was unconscious. She had been bound, starved and shot. Maybe that's why she was trying to escape. What was she running from?
I turned to Rowan, who had been watching me.
"Double the border watch tonight." I say.
He nods. "And if someone crosses?"
I look back at the closed door.
"Then we have a conversation," I said quietly, "about what happens to people who put arrows in things that belong to me."
Rowan opens his mouth, then closes it.