She thought that Theodore would be the first to notice them, but as they neared, a tanned arm shot out from somewhere beside Margot, claws digging into the sand as Viktor fought to sit up. His agonized bellow echoed off of the sandstone cliffs. “Cammie!”
She sucked in a jagged breath, her sight blurring as tears of relief came.
“She’s here!” Kaz called back, his arms tightening. His heart beat fast against her side.
Theodore took off like a shot. It didn’t seem to matter that he was dressed in a suit and dress shoes. He loped over the sand with the ease of a deadly predator, every movement well-oiled and perfectly timed. He was by Kaz’s side in seconds.
His expression was hard, his eyes dark with barely restrained rage when he looked down at her. “Is she hurt?”
“Yes.” Kaz answered at the same time that Camille replied, “No.”
Kaz and Theodore shared a look. “She is. I didn’t get a good look at it, but the shifter got her side pretty bad, and I think she might have broken some bones in her hand.”
That was news to her. Camille flexed both of her hands and was surprised by the sharp bite of pain that radiated from the delicate bones in the palm of her right hand. It took a moment to recall that the shifter had, at one point in their struggle, bitten her.
Huh, she thought, strangely impressed, I didn’t know shifters had the strength to break elvish bones.
Theodore swore. Both men picked up their pace until they were nearly jogging through the sand, bringing Camille closer to where she needed to be. The pain in her side was growing, as was the new, terrible ache of crushed bones in her hand, but when they were near enough to Viktor, she clawed for a final reserve of strength and threw herself out of Kaz’s grip.
Both he and Theodore reached for her as she stumbled in the stand. “Cammie, what are you doing? Stop!”
But she didn’t stop. Panting through the pain, she lurched forward, the toes of her shoes digging into the sand, until she was close enough to reach him. She dropped to her knees and crawled.
“Cam,” Viktor rasped, his coyote eyes locked on her as she crossed the remaining distance between them. Someone had laid him on the blanket he’d brought. It bunched under his palm as he struggled to sit up, the muscles of his arms and chest straining hard against his golden skin.
On his other side, Margot didn’t even look up as she firmly pressed him back down. Her eyes were down, her expression one of honed focus, as she rested her hands on the skin around his wounded chest. Magic hummed in the air around her.
Camille didn’t realize she was crying until she pressed her face into his cool neck. Viktor fell back, freeing up his uninjured arm to wrap around the back of her neck in a crushing, possessive hold. He buried his face in her hair as he sucked in great, gasping breaths.
“Can’t believe you ran toward a shooter. Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again,” he grated against her ear. She felt his breath hitch, then wheeze with an awful, rattling finish. “Don’t you leave me, Cam. Not again.”
Camille shuddered. “I won’t. I swear, I won’t.”
“Thank you,” he gasped, arm slackening. “Thank you. I’m— Love you so much—”
His arm fell away to fall limply into the sand.
Camille raised herself up just enough to peer into his face. His eyes were closed, his lips parted. Her ears rang when she whispered, “Vik? Vik.”
She didn’t hear any rustling of clothing, the soft sound of sand moving beneath shoes, nor conversation before strong hands grabbed her upper arms and pried her away from him. Panic stole the last of her strength. She strained against the hold, but couldn’t break it as she demanded he wake back up, that he open his eyes and look at her.
She kept yelling even as Margot changed her position, moving to place her hands directly over his heart.
Some small part of her recognized that it was Theodore who held her up, that shifters were filling up the beach, that she was losing blood. The world outside of Viktor existed, moving around her in a sluggish current, but she could not acknowledge it.
All she saw was Viktor’s chest as it rose and fell, rose and fell and… stopped.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Viktor woke to the sound of birds outside his window and his mate in his bed.
For a moment, he drifted in a golden haze of sleepy contentment. His mind was fuzzy, his senses dulled by the drugging pleasure of Camille’s nearness. He stared up at the familiar ceiling of his bedroom with a slow, drowsy smile.
Camille was a soft weight against his side. Her back was pressed against him, and she’d commandeered one of his arms to use as something of a body pillow. He felt the grip of her fingers, unyielding even in sleep, around his bicep. Her breaths were a gentle rhythm in the quiet of the early morning. Her feet, bare and cold, were pressed against his shin.
Careful not to wake her, he slowly turned on his side and curled his body around hers, drawing her into his chest. A deep, animalistic sound of contentment rattled out of his throat.
Sweet like honey, he thought, drawing in a deep breath of her scent as he buried his nose in her hair. She never smelled sweeter than she did in his bed, covered in his deeper, muskier scent. A perfect fit.
Viktor slid his hand down, over her hip and across her stomach. Her skin was bare and silky smooth, her muscles lithe and gracefully molded to her willowy frame. Desire was a steady heat in his gut as he traced the dip of her belly button with the pad of his thumb.
So soft.
Like hot silk, her skin tantalized the coyote in him, who loved soft things and warm, lush sensuality. He wanted nothing more than to learn every curve of his mate’s body. He wanted to taste her, to discover what made her go soft and pliant for him. Drunk on the feel of her in his arms, Viktor lowered his head to kiss the gentle swell of her shoulder. He scraped his teeth against that delicate skin and felt his longing for her expand in a heady rush.
His jaw ached. Magic, the wild kind that overtook him in the glorious seconds it took to change into his other form, burned hot and fizzy under his skin. It begged for an outlet — for her.
Want to bite her, he thought, man and coyote melding into one seamless, hungry being. Want to sink my teeth into her and make her mine forever.
Why hadn’t he done that already, anyway? She was in his den, in his arms. He’d felt her softening toward him, knew that he was on the way to winning her completely. The fact that she was in his bed was a triumph he couldn’t have imagined only a month ago. His mate was his.
Viktor’s breath quickened with raw excitement. His cock hardened against the sweet curve of her backside, aching for release, for all that luscious, slick heat he’d known so briefly. His jaw cramped, flexing hard with the desire to extend his fangs and—
His questing fingers met the edge of something strange on her side. It was filmy, almost rubbery, like one of those special m-bandages hospitals used to quickly stop blood loss. He ran his thumb over the edge again, his mind stalling. A budding sense of dread began to burn away the delicious arousal coursing through his veins.
Brows furrowing, he reluctantly lifted his head to peer down at Camille’s body.
It was a bandage. A big one.
Awareness spread like ice through his mind, pricking him until it felt like his insides were nothing more than a frozen mass of thorns.