Page 166 of Shifting Hearts 1
I rose slowly, blood pounding behind my eyes, every instinct screaming: don’t answer.
But I did, of course I did.
The cottage door creaked open on hinges crusted with rust. Cold air spilled inside, sharp as knives, but there was no one standing on the threshold, only a lump, a crumpled heap on the ground, near the purple heather. I’d planted it deliberately by the threshold for protection. Threaded it with rosemary and lavender, like I knew I’d need it one day.
I stepped outside barefoot. The night bit hard, but I barely felt it. The threads had pulled tight, dragging me forward.
He lay sprawled on his side, shirt torn and blood soaking his ribs. Silver glinted at the edge of the wound — a sliver of cursed iron.
His hand curled around something.
I knelt beside him, gently prying his fingers open.
A tooth. One of mine.
A milk molar I’d lost when I was six, long before I knew what I was. Long before I began trading in the currency of enamel and sorrow.
One I hadn’t seen it in so long that I’d honestly thought it lost.
But here it was.
In his hand.
Still warm… still pulsing.
I reached for him before I could think better of it. My fingers brushed his jaw — stubble-rough, blood-slick — and his eyes snapped open.
Bright. Gold. Glowing with something not quite human.
“Found you,” he rasped.
And then he passed out.
Dragging a full-grown wolf-shifter inside was no easy task. Especially one laced with iron and dripping with fate.
I laid him out on the stone floor beside the hearth, lit every candle I had left, and began the work of undoing the damage.
The iron had gone deep. Whoever did it had meant him to die slowly.
I muttered spells between clenched teeth, grinding dried rowan bark with wolf’s milk and ash. I cleansed the wound with smoke and saltwater, poured powdered antler over the puncture, and bound it with thread made from my own hair — bone-coloured and sharp where the ends had calcified.
The pain should’ve killed him, but he didn’t even stir. Not until I reached for the fang again.
The second I held it to the wound, the hum sharpened — like a tuning fork struck hard.
His body arched.
His mouth parted in a snarl — teeth sharper than normal, just enough to catch the light.
And his hand clamped around my wrist.
“You,” he growled, voice ragged. “I dreamed of you.”
I didn’t so much as flinch.
“So did I.”
When he finally came to, hours later, he sat up too fast and vomited blood into one of my offering bowls.
