Page 36 of Shifter's Homecoming

Trent looked back down. He wound gauze around his leg and secured it.

He opened his mouth. He closed it again. He couldn’t even ask his brother,because, really, how would that conversation go? Unless… Trent again considered pleading amnesia, but decided it was a last resort. There had to be another way.

Trent looked up again, staring at his mate, refusing to be beaten. Hewouldfigure out what she was so upset with him for, and he wouldmake it right.And then he would claim her, and then he would take her home. In that order.

A loud twanging noise from outside caught both of their attention.

“Not again,” Rowan muttered, dropping her clipboard and rushing out of the tiny space, toward the back of the room.

Trent went into superhero mode, whipping off the robe with one hand, while he pulled on his pants with the other, then grabbed his shirt and his boots. He scrambled behind Rowan, pulling on first one boot, then the other, intending to pull his shirt on.

Rowan stopped at one of the floor-to-ceiling back windows and looked out. She didn’t say a word, she didn’t react at all. Instead, she just dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Trent could sense no danger, no reason for what had happened, but he knew she was unconscious.

“Rowan!” Trent shouted, abandoning his shirt and racing for her. He dropped to his knees and slid in next to her, cradling her head in his hands, searching her face and skin for injury.

She was breathing. She had no cuts or even bruises.

“Rowan,” he whispered, his chest feeling on fire with heat and fear. The twanging noise came again. Trent looked out the window and saw a large Whitetail deer trying to force its way through the wire fence below to get at the water in the pool. It had recently been in a fight or almost been someone’s lunch. Bright red blood flowed freely from two long wounds on its side.

Trent dismissed it and turned back to his mate. “Rowan,” he whispered again, petting her cheek, smoothing her hair back, reveling in getting to touch her, even as fear for her soared inside him.

She didn’t stir. He sat on the floor, his mate’s head in his lap, feeling more helpless than he’d ever felt in his life. There was nothing he coulddo. There was no one he couldcall.

A strong feeling of déjà vu washed over him and his focus was drawn to the tiny silver bottle on her neck. Trent quickly figured out how it worked. He unscrewed the stopper and smelled the contents—strong and mentholated.

Trent was about to put some of it to his own lips and tongue to be sure it didn’t burn, when his mate’s eyes fluttered.

“Serum,” she whispered.

Trent knew he was on the right track. He tipped the contents into her mouth. She responded immediately. Her hand raised and she took the vial from him, spilling the rest of the liquid into her mouth, then her hand dropped to the floor and the vial spun away. Trent noted where it had fallen, knowing she would want it later.

She sat and breathed for a few minutes, and then her eyes fluttered open.

His mate fainted at the sight of blood, he realized, and this concoction was something she made in her very own lab, just for herself, and it kept her from passing out. Trent thought fast, weighing and measuring all the things he could say, wanting to ask a thousand questions, but settling on one that seemed like something he might not already know.

“How long does it last for?”

Rowan wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Trent could not help but track the movement, settling on her lips, and staring, not meaning to.

“8 hours, give or take,” she said. “But I had to take it a few days ago, so it might only last 4 today.” She pushed herself to her feet and looked out the window. This time she did not faint.

She winced, then headed to a sliding glass door. “Stay here,” she told Trent. “You’ll frighten him.”

Uh, no, that wasn’t happening. His mate was going outside — he was going outside. He followed her out the door, across the porch, down the steps, to the pool.

The deer was still there. It was a buck and his horns were caught in the wire. He pulled and twisted wildly, ramming his own flank into wire and poles. He twisted more when Rowan approached.

She held up her hands. “It’s ok big guy,” she told him. He calmed a little and she kept talking, getting in close to him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Drops of blood fell from the buck’s side onto the wood platform below him.

She stood and stared as if trying to figure out how best to free him, and Trent did the same. He saw a way that might get him free. Rowan must have also. She moved in close, talking softly, but the buck reared back. Each time she got too close, he raised his head and snorted and kicked, opening the wounds in his side again and again.

Rowan winced, then backed up, right into Trent. She turned and gave him a look. “You’re frightening him. He knows what you are. If you go inside he’ll calm down.”

Trent didn’t want his female too close to anything that could hurt her. “Let me try,” he said, keeping his voice low.

She seemed about to protest, but then she lowered her head and stepped aside, waving him to it.

Trent approached the animal with his head lowered, his predator’s instinct in abeyance. The buck let him get close. He lifted one wire. He twisted another, he stepped on a third. The buck pulled back hard, and then was gone with a flick of his tail, drops of blood marking his path.

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