Saige’s [POV]

I feel his gaze skate down my back, linger on my ass, and then move away again. “Have her back tomorrow night.”

Rylan’s voice is as frigid as it always is. What emotion he has is never for me. But that’s okay, I don’t have any left for him. Not anymore.

I stand beside the white couch in my five-inch red stilettos and the tight black dress he orders me to wear, my long dark hair, still wet, is slicked back from my face. Other than a swipe of deep red lipstick, I didn’t bother with any makeup.

What does a girl need with mascara on the day she’s going to die?

Felix rises from the couch with catlike grace. Never taking his gaze from me, he places his whiskey on the glass coffee table and prowls toward me, ropy muscles bunching and releasing under his white shirt.

Most girls would take one look at him and spend the next month masturbating themselves raw because he’s just that pretty to look at. All honey-gold skin, hooded dark eyes, a wicked grin, and thick chestnut hair that you just know is as soft as it looks. The designer clothes and impeccable dress sense don’t hurt either. Even his scent—rich sandalwood, musk, and vanilla—is delicious. Edible.

But I’m not like most girls. I know Felix.

His wolf is in his eyes the way it is with all of Rylan’s pack, but I don’t react to the feral intensity of a predator staring back at me the way I would have two years ago.

Back then, they used to terrify me so much that I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. You could cut through my fear with a knife. It hung that thick in the air.

It didn’t take me long to learn that these other kinds of humans could shift from wolf to man and back again in seconds. Not on a full moon, but whenever they wanted. They would also rip out your throat if you stared at them too long.

Or just because they could.

I never realized how fast it could happen until Rylan caught me in a cab after I ran the first time.

You’d have been hard-pressed to tell the cab driver had been a man at all once Rylan was finished with him. Strips of flesh, hot blood splashing over the cab… and me. The scent of my terror in the cold sweat. And the prickle of Rylan’s rage brushing against my skin for trying to deprive him of something that belongs to him and will always be his.

Me.

Sometimes I still remember the smell.

Blood and piss.

Although the warm fingers grazing my cheek are light, Felix’s wolf stare burns me right to the bone. “I’d like to keep her this time.” The hard ridge of his cock nudges me. “We had so much fun last time.”

It’s easy now to keep my expression placid when inside I’m still screaming from the lash of his whip.

“She’s mine.” Rylan’s voice is bored.

I can’t see him from the angle I’m facing but he’ll be on his phone, scrolling through his messages, tapping away responses to his banker’s questions about his investments.

“How much do you want for her?” Felix moves closer, his cock a hot brand against my belly. “I’ll pay any price.”

I meet his gaze without blinking.

“She’s not for sale.” Rylan’s voice is a little less boring. “She’s mine.”

Felix isn’t dropping this, and the spark of rebellion in his eye combined with the possessive grip of his hand on my hip warns me he’s about to make a misstep. One he might not survive.

I can’t let that happen.

If Felix pushes Rylan too far, he’ll change his mind about me going with him, and who knows when I’ll get my next opportunity?

My mind flashes to last week. I relive the moment often because it’s the fuel I’m going to need to get through the next few hours.

Not many people can pinpoint the exact moment love turns to hate, but I can.

Of him, myself, the world.

All of it.

No more.

Whatever it takes, Saige. This has to end. Today.

I place my hand on Felix’s lean, muscled chest and stroke down, raking him lightly with my nails. When I’ve reached my destination, I close my palm around his cock, a pulsing, hard length, and gently squeeze him through his soft cotton pants.

His eyes go half-lidded with pleasure. When they do, I step forward and touch my lips against his throat, kissing lightly as I stroke him with the firmness I know he likes.

“You want my cock, kitten?” he groans as his hands glide up and down my back, gathering me close to his body.

“I want it,” I breathe against his skin, hiding my gaze because if Felix were to peer into them, he’d see the deadness in them and know there’s nothing in this world I want. “Give it to me.”

A half-human, half-wolf snarl snakes around me, and tension stiffens Felix’s body. I feel it happen, but I don’t take my hand from his cock, and I don’t stop kissing his throat.

Rylan doesn’t like it when the men in his pack touch me in his presence. He likes it even less when I touch them. No, that isn’t right. It’s the wolf that doesn’t like it, which is why I do it every opportunity I can. There aren’t many ways a human girl can fight back against a shifter, but this is one of mine.

I grasp Felix harder and nip at his throat. His groan of desperate need provokes another snarl from the couch, this one wetter—an animal poised to attack.

Felix rips himself away from me, and when I’m sure I’ve buried the deadness in my eyes, I open them and turn to the couch.

Rylan is half on his feet, cell phone on the floor, his hands gripping the sides of the couch as if to stop himself from flinging himself at me—or at Felix—and his wolf is in his eyes. The expensively attired businessman always perfectly in control is no more.

An animal stares at me with furious possession and I stare back.

I try not to look at his face anymore. Even after everything he’s done to me, he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life.

His beauty tricks me into believing that being chained naked to a bedroom wall isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a person. Or that one day soon he’ll change back into the man who loved me like no one ever had before.

It never takes him long to wrestle his wolf back inside him, and this time is no different. He blinks and his eyes are once again like the facet of a blue stone. As if nothing happened, he sinks back into the couch and reaches for his phone.

“Have her back tomorrow night. By midnight. Showered.”

Because I’m his. Just as he can’t stand to have men touch me in his presence, he can’t stand their scent clinging to me. How he has no problem giving me to his packmates for them to fuck me as a reward for whatever thing they’ve done right is a mystery I’ve never been able to work out. Maybe it’s his human side trying to assert dominance over the wolf half that hates to share me?

I don’t know. I no longer care.

Felix snags my hand and tugs me across the white minimalist living area toward the front door. He’s just reaching for the handle when Rylan’s voice stops him. “And Felix, bring up the subject of keeping what’s mine again and you’ll be dead before your body hits the ground.”

Felix pauses. “Yes, Alpha.”

We leave the room in silence, the door closing soundlessly behind us. My heels click on the highly polished marble in the hallway outside Rylan’s penthouse apartment in the very center of the city, a building so expensive it’s full of billionaires who can afford to buy apartments and never set foot inside them.

I know because Rylan once joked about having the building to himself.

So you’re a billionaire? I asked him, as we lay wrapped in each other's arms on a lazy Sunday afternoon, the sun streaming over us from the wall of glass. His finger stroked the side of my face as a smile creased the corners of his eyes.

Not a billionaire, but if I were, I’d give you everything.

He gave me everything all right, even the things I didn’t want.

The elevator slides open just as soundlessly as the front door closed, the sight jerking me back from the distant past. Without a word, Felix draws me inside the spacious, thickly carpeted stainless-steel space.

“Now, kitten,” he murmurs as the doors slide closed behind us and he backs us to one corner, his hands in my hair already pressing me down, “You know what I want.”

I do.

It’s what he always wants.

All of Rylan’s packmates have their wants and needs. Their quirks and cruelties. I’ve had nearly two years to get them all straight in my head. Felix has simple ones. A blowjob in the elevator, a fuck in his car, a harder fuck against his apartment door with his hand wrapped around my throat, and when he’s nice and relaxed, he reaches for his toys. That’s when the pain starts.

I draw his zipper down as I sink to my knees. His hands fist in my hair to hold me there because he never cared if I needed air. I learned that the hard way when I blacked out after choking on his cock. Now I remember to breathe through my nose.

Like I said, I know Felix.

And as the elevator makes its way down, I swallow him deep in my throat, letting my mind drift.

The drive to Felix’s townhouse north of the city usually takes thirty minutes. Fifty if there’s traffic.

By that time, the backs of my thighs are cold from the leather seats, and the front hot from straddling Felix.

Along the way, we cross a bridge over a river. The name isn’t important. Or it never has been to me. A bridge is a bridge, after all.

On it, he likes for me to climb into his lap. As he lets cruise control take over, he pounds into me, fucking me hard and fast because the bridge isn’t long, so we only have minutes before we hit the busy streets on the other side.

I don’t know if a regular human would ever want to attempt such a thing, but I guess with Felix’s fast-shifter healing, the possibility of dying in a car crash must not rank too high in his mind. Or maybe that’s where his thrill of fucking in a moving car comes from. I’ve never cared enough to ask.

One glance at his Porsche and the people on the sidewalks would instantly know what we were doing. While Felix likes to live a little dangerously, that’s not the kind of public sex he’s into.

Just as the name of the bridge isn’t important, the time isn’t either. But it is pretty.

The day is drifting into the night, dark purple hues and twinkling bright lights in the distance as he drives, one hand lightly clasping the wheel, the other strokes the skin high on my thigh.

Traffic, as always, is a joke, especially on a Friday night, so I feel the impatience building inside Felix at the slow crawl of cars. The moment we hit the bridge, the tension along his jaw melts away and he darts a glance my way.

“Kitten.”

I unbuckle my seatbelt. As he reaches for cruise control, I take his hand and squeeze.

He turns to me with his eyebrow raised in question.

I don’t respond, just crawl over the console and straddle him before lowering my lips to his. He holds still because I never kiss him on his lips. He kisses mine, but only after he’s tied me to his bed and I can’t dodge him.

When he demanded to know why I did it, I told him Rylan doesn’t want anyone to kiss me on the lips when, in reality, the person who doesn’t want it is me. I guess that’s the other reason Felix steals kisses from me. To get back at Rylan in his petty way.

But this time, I frame his face with both hands and press a soft kiss on his lips before lifting my head an inch, my eyes locked on his. I pretend I’m looking at Rylan from two years ago, back when I loved him so much I agreed to let him turn me into a wolf shifter.

If I’d known his love came with conditions, or that not all humans can be turned, I’d have looked at him as less of a hero and more of a villain. And run.

I’d have run.

Felix’s eyes burn, and his cock twitches against my inner thigh. I lower my head again and give him another kiss; soft, sweet, achingly tender. I make him believe I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. That there is no one else in the world for me but him.

Groaning, his hands grasp me by my hips and drag me closer.

When he’s nicely distracted and responding with urgent need, I reach my right hand behind me, grip the wheel, and wrench it hard to the left.

A squeal of tires, car alarms blare, and Felix rips me away.

Then one stare, his dark eyes wide with surprise.

He’s grabbing for the wheel when my head smashes hard against something. Glass shatters. Cold air stings my face.

And then we’re falling.

Saige’s [POV]

“Witnesses reported seeing the red Porsche before. She was always in his lap on that bridge, having sex, most likely because what else would she be doing there?”

My eyelids flicker.

“You’d think the guy would at least remember to turn on cruise control or, you know, wait until he had her in a bed.”

A male snort is the only response.

I sense movement drift toward me, bringing with it a hotdog and onions scent strong enough for the person to have eaten minutes before. “Guess he just couldn’t wait.” A gaze sweeps my face. It’s so intensely penetrating that I want to lean away. “Not that I can blame him. If I had a girl who looked like that, I’d fuck her six ways from Sunday.”

“That’s hardly the professionalism I’d expect from a cop,” an amused voice says.

“She’s out cold, and as if I didn’t catch you staring at her tits. Just what the hell did they teach you at the Academy?”

“Fuck off, Bradley.”

Whoever tucked me in this bed did it so tightly I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. And I want to.

Bitter antiseptic, harsh soap, and that unidentifiable scent that tells me I’m in a hospital aren’t nearly enough to calm the sickness churning in my belly.

From further away, unhurried and deliberate footsteps approach my room. A door creaks open, letting in a cool wind. “Officers? Is there anything I can help you with? I’m Dr. Simon Trevor, the attending physician today.”

When the cooked meat and onion scent move away from me, I relax for the first time. “Just stopped by to question her.”

“Well,” the new voice says, “there’s been no change since the last time. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

This doctor doesn’t like these men. Maybe he heard what they said, or maybe he just doesn’t like cops in general. After what I just overheard, and from how little the cops I’ve known before have given a shit about people, I don’t like them either.

“Any idea when that might happen?” the one who smells of onions asks. Or is it the one who was staring at my tits?

“It could be tomorrow, it could be a week,” the doctor responds in that same cool tone.

“We need a name. A man is dead, and we need to know how that came to be.”

Felix.

My heart spikes and a sharp beeping machine silences all voices. Footsteps approach my right side and stop. Someone leans over me. It isn’t either of the cops because food smells or male sweat aren’t threatening to choke me. Just a woodsy cologne too faint to identify. Not overpowering. Nice.

“Is she waking up?” one cop asks, sounding like he’s moving closer.

“There’s no sign that she is,” the doctor murmurs as if distracted.

What is he doing? Reading the machine? What?

“But the machine. It—”

“Can often be triggered by unexplained brain activity. We see the same thing in our long-term coma patients. The machine sounds an alarm, but the patient sleeps on.”

A cool finger peels back the lid of my right eye and I stare up at a man in a white coat, a black stethoscope draped around his neck. Dark red hair, small brown eyes, and a pale face. Younger than I was expecting. He must be in his late twenties or early thirties. That’s all I see before the same finger drags my eyelid closed again.

“As I thought, she’s not ready to wake.”

He’s lying.

I feel lucid—aware enough—that one glimpse in my eye should have made that clear. And he didn’t shine the light that doctors like to blind you with. He didn’t check my pulse or do anything that I would expect a doctor to do.

He doesn’t want the cops to know I’m awake.

But why?

“Now, I have my rounds to make. Did you need me to show you the way out?” The doctor's voice is pleasant, friendly even, but I know he doesn’t mean it.

“No need.” The officer's voice is less pleasant because he knows he’s not wanted either. “We can find it. We’ll be back.”

Three sets of footsteps move toward the door and out of it. A soft click announces their departure and alone, at least for the time being, I let myself think about something I couldn’t before.

I’m still alive.

Felix is dead, but somehow, I’m still alive.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

A flare of hot pain stabs my right side. Gasping, my eyes fly open. White walls, white sheets, and a hard bed. Those are the things I noticed first.

Bent over me is the same brown-eyed, red-haired doctor from before.

For several seconds he gazes down at me without expression before he lifts his hand from my ribs and takes a step back. “Still tender?”

I don’t say a word.

“I’m Dr. Trevor.”

My eyes dart to the door and find it closed. The sheet pinning me to the bed has been peeled back, so that’s one less thing trapping me. It’s just the needle in the back of my hand that I’d need to deal with and I can make my escape.

“They’ve gone. You don’t have to worry about seeing any cops until you’re well.”

From the dim light which cast deep shadows around him, it’s later than it was before. It must have been the morning, or maybe lunchtime if the cop smelled like hotdogs and onions. Which means I must have fallen asleep or passed out.

I lick my dry, cracked lips. “What time is it?”

“Six. Dinner time.” He nods at the table beside my bed. I glance at it. Something rich and savory drifts from a white plastic-covered dome on a tray.

“Can I have a name?” He plucks a silver clipboard from lower down on my bed and waves it at me. “I won’t use it if you don’t want to, but we’ve got three Jane Does at the hospital this weekend and it can get a little confusing,” he says, a playful smile curving his lips.

His joke barely registers in my mind.

My stomach rumbles as if it’s only now waking up, but I don’t have time to eat. Even if I was starving, it still wouldn’t be my priority.

I’m alive when I should be dead, which means I’m going to have to move fast if I want to stay that way. And if Rylan isn’t here already, he soon will be.

The doctor clears his throat. “You’re a miracle.”

I dart a glance at him before shifting my attention to the white ceiling.

In a blue hospital gown, I’ll attract attention as I make my escape, but maybe I can sneak into the staff changing room, or steal another patient’s clothes since I doubt my dress and heels survived the crash. If I have to, I won’t bother with the change of clothes at all.

“Few people would survive a car crash like the one you did with so few injuries.” After a brief pause as if waiting for a response, he continues. “The fire department pulled you from the water. Between the shattered window and you floating free, it looks like you might’ve been flung from the car before it hit the river.”

Every part of my body aches, but it doesn’t hurt the way I’d expect a car crashing into a river with me inside or out of it should hurt. My gaze darts to the tube in the back of my hand that leads to a bag half-filled with a clear liquid. Morphine. Or some other drug.

As much as I want to stay silent until the doctor goes away, I need to know the extent of my injuries and I need to know how long I’ve been here.

“What other injuries?” I ask, my voice husky.

“You had a pretty nasty laceration on your head.” I glance over at him.

He lifts a hand to touch his right temple. “Required stitches. Eight in total. Several smaller cuts on your face and body, but those weren’t serious enough to require stitches. From the shattered glass, most likely.” His hand moves to his right shoulder. “Dislocated shoulder. Bruised ribs. Fractured wrist. The left one. But that’s healing up nicely. Bruises which have mostly faded.”

That doesn’t sound bad. “And my legs?”

He shakes his head. “No injuries there.”

Good. Means there’s nothing to stop me from running.

“And a concussion. How is your vision?” he asks.

I glance at a little torch tucked in the front of his white coat, and his stethoscope hanging from around his neck. Surely, he’s supposed to check those things for himself instead of just asking me. Isn’t he?

“It’s okay.”

“No double vision, blurriness, or—”

“No. Nothing.”

“Then you’re even luckier than I thought before. Not everyone recovers from that severe of a concussion. Especially in a week.”

Everything in me stills. “A week?”

My heart pounds so hard that I wince when it triggers a new sharp pain in my ribs.

He nods. “A week. That’s how long you’ve been unconscious.”

I return my gaze to the ceiling as panic surges. This isn’t good. At all. That Rylan hasn’t found me and dragged me back yet is in itself a miracle. A week is more than enough time for a wolf to hunt prey, as he was so fond of telling me back when I thought I could escape.

And the cab driver. He’d barely driven me two miles before Rylan was stepping in front of the car, forcing him to halt.

Blood and piss.

I swallow hard.

If I hadn’t run, maybe he wouldn’t have decided on the chain and the handcuffs beside his bed so he could always keep a close watch on me. Maybe he still would have done it anyway.

“Your friend wasn’t as lucky,” the doctor continues, “he—”

“He wasn’t my friend,” I interrupt, my voice cold.

Silence.

“Well, whoever he was, he didn’t make it. The car pinned him to the riverbed, and he drowned before anyone could get him out.”

Shifters can drown. Who knew?

From all the things I’ve seen Rylan and the others do, I’d have thought they were so invincible that they could live through a stabbing, drowning, a clubbing over the head, and get up with little more than a headache. Until one of his pack would do something that made Rylan rip out their throats. No one ever got up from that.

I’d get papercuts from flicking through the Sunday papers in bed, and my lips would crack in winter from the cold. When I’d stub my toe on the coffee table, sometimes I’d have a bruise for the rest of the day, but never Rylan. His skin was perfect, unmarked, and unscarred. Always. Being born a shifter had its benefits, he would tell me with a smile, and after he turned me, I’d know those benefits too.

Well, that never happened.

Would Rylan have lived because he was born a shifter instead of being turned like Felix? I don’t know.

But they’re still men, if only sometimes, Saige. And all men die.

I don’t respond to the doctor’s revelation. What else is there to say?

“Is there anyone you want me to call? We didn’t have a name, so—”

“No.” My eyes close. “There’s no one.” Well, there’s Dad, but since I have no cash to give him for booze, he won’t care.

Felix is dead.

The only thing Felix liked more than his pleasure was my pain. It wouldn’t matter how much I screamed or begged him to stop as my blood soaked through his white sheets. As long as he was having fun, the pain just went on and on.

Or until I passed out, which didn’t happen as often as I hoped it would.

Felix wasn’t the best of Rylan’s pack because there weren’t any, but he wasn’t the worst either. He was the only one who fed me. It didn’t happen all the times that I went with him, but sometimes he would untie me from the bed, sit me up, and feed me cut-up steak, eggs, and fries.

Once he even left a steak knife beside my hand. Just once. After that, he never fed me steak or anything ever again.

I shouldn’t care that he’s dead—that I killed him—after everything he did to me. Things I learned the hard way would only hurt worse if I didn’t do what I was supposed to with a smile and a moan.

I hated every last one of them. But you wouldn’t have known it to look in my eyes. My smiles were flawless, my moans so convincing no one could’ve guessed I was counting down the seconds till I could wash the stink of sex and stale sweat off my body in the shower.

Tears prickle my eyes and I will them not to fall because no shifter deserves my tears. Not a single fucking one of them.

I’m glad Felix is dead. I’m only sorry I wasn’t conscious to see it happen.

“I’ll be back to check on you later,” the doctor says, “so try to rest.”

His footsteps move away from me, and I hear him open the door and close it firmly behind him.

The second he’s gone, my eyes snap open and I force myself into a seated position. My world goes hazy with pain and I swallow my scream at the stabbing pain in my chest before it can emerge.

For several seconds I don’t move, just concentrate on breathing around the pain as I wait for it to fade. When it has, I turn my head to the side and spot a slim white remote that must control the small black screen on the wall opposite. I grabbed it because a remote means TV and a TV means news about what could be happening in the city.

I can’t imagine a Porsche being driven off a bridge and into a river wouldn’t have made the news.

The first channel is an old black-and-white movie. The second is a sports game. Baseball. But the third… the third I strike gold. The evening news.

Perfect.

I hold my breath as I wait, my hand clenched tight around the remote, for an image of my face to flash on TV with my name and the hospital the paramedics brought me to.

“In other news. The police are no closer to identifying the cause of the fatal car crash on the Lancaster Bridge north of the city last Friday night. Now, back to…”

I tune out the rest of the female reporter's words.

That’s it? That’s all you have to say?

I stop clutching the remote so tight as I wait for more news about the crash. But there’s nothing. Just muggings, burglaries, the usual bad things that happen in every major city, then the weather, and it’s over. So I clicked to the next channel, and then the next in case I missed a more detailed report while I was out cold.

An hour passes this way, and on no channel, and in no news report, is there any report other than a tragic fatal car crash on the bridge. There’s no mention even of how many people died.

Is that why Rylan hasn’t found me yet? Does he think I’m dead?

When the door swings open, I drop the remote in a panic. It bounces off my bed and clatters to the floor. A round-faced nurse in her forties, with her dark hair pulled tight back from her face, and exhaustion creasing her eyes, steps in. “Awake now?”

I nod.

Her gaze dips to the tray beside my bed. “You haven’t touched your meal.”

“I’m not hungry.”

When her lips tighten, I lift a hand and gesture toward my ribs. “My ribs hurt, so…” I let my voice trail off so she can fill in the rest with whatever she wants to think.

The tightness around her eyes and mouth melts away, and sympathy fills her eyes. “Ah, broken ribs are no fun. Well, I’ll make a note on your file and we’ll see if the doctor can do something about upping your pain medication so you can eat. You’re all skin and bones as it is.”

A diet of two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day will do that.

I nod. “I’d just like to sleep if that’s okay. Maybe tomorrow it won’t hurt so much that I can eat.”

Smiling now because I’m proving not to be a difficult patient when she’s likely coming to the end of her shift, she crosses over to me. After retrieving the remote from the floor, she flicks the TV off and returns it to the side table. With brutal efficiency, she tucks the sheets so firmly around me that I don’t have hope and a prayer of prying them loose without my bruised ribs screaming in agony.

Once she’s done that, she collects the tray and makes her way to the door.

It’s only when she’s gone that I let myself relax as I stare up at the ceiling.

They think I’m dead.

I let out a slow breath of relief.

Rylan once told me that a shifter has one mate. Just one.Ever. There’s no rejecting the bond, no walking away. No shifter will ever let what’s his go. And especially not an alpha so controlling that he would chain me to his bedroom wall to stop me from running.

Death is the only way to break that bond. Will Rylan’s wolf know it? Or will he watch the news, think what I just thought, and let the possessive wolf side of him curl up and die?

I don’t know, but a girl can hope.

Saige’s [POV]

“Bradley, would it kill you to eat something other than hotdogs for lunch and dinner?”

I’ve just set down the white plastic cover for my dinner on the bedside table when the familiar voice makes me freeze.

The cops.Shit.

My gaze darts to the tray in my lap placed there moments before by Nurse Amy.

Earlier in the morning, she helped me up so I could use the bathroom and the second my legs gave way under me, I realized running wasn’t going to be in my near future. If she hadn’t been there, I’d have been face down on the floor with no idea how to get back up again.

So, while I have no leg injuries, not moving for a week has made me feel as if I do.

Not only did she help me into the bathroom, she also got rid of the beeping machine. I still have the morphine drip needle stuck in the back of my hand, which isn’t a problem, but the cops are going to notice the beeping machine is no longer here, and they’ll know my condition has changed enough for them to stick around.

“They have ketchup on them, and everyone knows ketchup is a fruit.”

The footsteps move closer, and panic grips my heart. No one at the hospital has pushed to know my name or what happened on the bridge yet, but those are questions I can’t dodge from the cops.

“One squirt of ketchup does not—”

“Officers,” Dr. Trevor’s calm voice interrupts. “Back again, I see. Is there anything I can help you with?”

The footsteps stop and I breathe again. I start eyeing the distance between me and the window. My ribs still hurt, I’m almost positive I’m on at least the fifth floor since my only view is of tall buildings in the distance, and I still have the needle attached to the back of my hand that I’m going to have to yank out.

Still, none of that stops me from moving the tray to the side table as quietly as I can.

The steps move closer. “Doctor, just stopping by on the off chance she’s awake.”

I freeze. Shit, they’re just outside. What do I do? Throw the tray? Hide under the bed?

“I’m sorry, who?”

What?

“The Jane Doe from the Bridge.”

A long pause. “Um… give me a second…” Paper rustles and I hold my breath as it does.

Surely doctors don’t just forget their patients like that. And especially not this one who's already stopped by to increase my pain meds after the nurse left a message about me not eating because I was in too much pain.

“Oh, yes. The Jane Doe from the Bridge. Sorry, it’s been a long day. These twelve-hour shifts are a killer,” he says.

One cop chuckles. “Yeah, being a cop is no easy ride, either. So, the girl…” When a heavy tread moves in my direction, I remember the tray in my hand and resume getting rid of it.

“We’ve sent her to the neurologist for a brain scan.”

I forget about my tray and stare at my closed door.

He was just in here, and he said nothing about a neurologist.

Why is he lying to the cops for me?

“A neurologist. Sounds serious.”

“It can be. But a crash like that can do damage only a scan can reveal.”

“Any idea when you’ll know more?”

They believe him.

Of course, they believe him, Saige. He’s a doctor. What cop is going to think a doctor would lie to them?

“In a couple of days. You’re welcome to stop by again. Or if you have a card that I…”

Footsteps move away. “Oh, we’ll be back. A couple of days, you said?”

“A couple of days,” Dr. Trevor echoes. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about hotdogs. You must be talking about the Geller stand on Fifth, right? They have the best in town.”

“See, Ferdinand, I told you Gellers was the best. I’ve been trying to tell him that…” The voices move away from my room and I stare at the door, confused about what the hell just happened.

When I can’t hear them anymore, I still don’t move. I should make a run for it now, but Dr. Trevor has just bought me two days of recovery time, time I desperately need.

He’ll be back once he’s gotten rid of the cops, and I have a question for him, one that will eat me alive if I don’t ask it.

“You didn’t tell them I was awake,” I speak with my gaze on the plastic tray in front of me, much as I have since Dr. Trevor knocked on my door and entered my room minutes before.

The bread roll, the soup, and the small container of yogurt are easy enough to identify. The brown stew-like substance on the plate is less so.

“I grew up in New Jersey. Did my internship at a hospital in Atlantic City.”

I dart a surprised glance at him because I don’t see how where he grew up is in any way relevant to this conversation.

With his back against the wall beside the window and his arms folded over his chest, he looks relaxed. At ease. “In New Jersey, you have the Atlantic City Marina District. Have you ever been?”

I shake my head no.

He continues in that same casual tone. “Do you know how many people were pulled from it and brought to our hospital in an average week?”

Again, I shake my head no.

“Ten. Sometimes twenty, if it was a holiday.” He shakes his head with a wry smile. “Give people booze and time off work, suddenly they think they can swim even if they’ve never swum a day in their lives. I’ve been a resident here for five years. Do you know how many people paramedics bring in after they drive off the Lancaster Bridge in an average week?”

I understand where he’s going with this. I shake my head again.

“One. And it’s never by accident.”

My gaze returns to my plate. I pick at the brown stew and try to figure out whether it’s chicken, fish, pork, or something else.

“The malnutrition, and scars on your back, neck, and wrists tell me that you had a hard life.”

I tuck my left wrist under the sheet. The scar is mostly covered by a bandage that goes up almost to my forearm, but the need to hide it is automatic. I don’t think. I just do.

“The scar on your right wrist… that’s a little harder to identify. But I’d guess it was from a handcuff or some kind of restraint rubbing against bone over an extended period. Am I close?”

I don’t say a word.

After a moment, he continues in that same calm, unflappable tone. “So you might have a good reason to want to drive into the river, maybe a better one than I’ve seen from anyone who’s come in before. Especially if you were with someone who wasn’t a friend. But that doesn’t mean I agree with it. There are always other options. We have a great social worker here—a psychiatrist too. Maria. She’s also a friend who, I know from personal experience, is a great listener. I can send her up anytime you want.”

I’d love to know what he thought about those options if I told him there were wolf shifters in the world and once they’ve made up their mind to keep you, there’s only one way to escape them. And the therapist? She’d take one look at the wolf in Rylan’s eyes and run.

“You asked me why I didn’t tell the officers you were awake,” he says.

My head rises because I want to know why. He should be on their side, not mine.

His expression is impossible to read, but I’m almost positive there’s a hint of old pain creeping into his eyes. “Not all people in this world are good people. Regardless of what their jobs are or their title. You can find bad ones everywhere.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

“Even cops?” I hold my breath as I wait for his response.

He straightens from his lean.

I flinch back into my bed, just holding onto my fork before it can go the way my remote went the night before.

He stops moving. “Even cops. Doctors aren’t immune, either,” he says, his voice soft. “Salisbury steak.”

I blink. “What?”

He nods at my plate. “No one ever knows what it is because the chef always cooks it too long. But it’s Salisbury steak, and you’ll find mashed potatoes buried beneath it if you feel like going hunting for it. Looks terrible, but it’s not bad.”

And with that, he turns and heads for the door. At the entryway, he pauses his back to me. “But there are some good ones, too.”

He isn’t talking about the meal.

As he steps out, pulling the door closed behind him I stare after him, and try to work out which one this doctor is. The good kind or the bad.

I worry at the question until my stomach grumbles, reminding me I’ve gone far too long without a decent meal in my belly, and then I lower my head.

As he said, there’s a small pile of mashed potatoes buried under the gravy. I spoon up some of the meat and gravy and slip it into my mouth.

The steak is so soft I don’t even have to chew, and the gravy is a little salty, but it’s not bad, so I scoop another mouthful and then another, not stopping until my plate is empty.