Chapter 4: Rescuing Dane

Lilia POV

Lilia’s shout probably roused the people in the shops and homes and public houses, but she didn’t care. She crouched in the street beside Dane and put her hands on his snow-white fur, knowing with a grim certainty what she would touch when she felt the gaping wound in his side. It was as long as the distance from her wrist to her elbow.

The warmth of his blood touched her hands, and she nearly jerked her fingers away. Not in disgust, but because the blood BURNED.

Which meant only one thing.

Poison. Most likely wolfsbane, the only thing that prevented the knife slash in Dane’s side from healing instantly. And if the knife was silver, Dane could die in a matter of minutes. Already he lay with his breathing shallow, his heartbeat slowing beneath her fingers, his eyes closed.

A hand squeezed her chest until she thought she would faint from the pain. She pressed a hand to her right side, precisely the area where Dane was wounded. Her side felt on fire. She could barely stand. She willed herself to focus on Dane.

“Goddess Brigid, could he be right? Are we fated mates?” she asked aloud.

She did not expect a reply.

“Please, give me strength,” she shouted. At least they hadn’t bonded. She didn’t know what a bond between a witch and a shifter would do, for a start.

However, she did feel her torment subside. “Thank you, Goddess,” she murmured. “Now help me save Dane’s life.”

She didn’t see the thief he’d been chasing. The coward had fled. Lilia wasn’t a violent person, but at that moment, the thief could count himself fortunate Lilia couldn’t get her hands on him. Her smoky quartz didn’t reveal any evil person moving about.

She couldn’t worry about the thief. She had to get Dane back to the shop to save him. She had no option but to carry him, if she could lift him. She did not lack strength–after all, some of the floor-length amethyst crystals could be quite cumbersome.

Her muscles strained and she panted, trying to hoist him up and drape his paws around her neck. She willed her muscles to do the impossible, but she gave up and lowered the wolf to the ground.

A levitation spell was just the thing. She pulled out her rod, which paired with one of the crystals she carried to help channel her power. She waved the rod in a circular motion and Dane levitated several inches off the ground. Now all Lilia had to do was sustain this on the walk back to her shop.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin, breaking her concentration. Dane plummeted to the ground, then reversed course and rose up until he floated as high as Lilia’s waist.

The spell had to be another witch’s work, no doubt. Lilia breathed a sigh of relief and whirled around. A witch in a distinctive yellow robe stood with her wand raised. “What happened to this gorgeous wolf?”

Lilia smiled in relief, seeing Anneliese Chalice, her best friend in all the world besides her mother, but it was a short-lived smile. “The thief happened.”

Anneliese brushed aside the riotous pink hair that she couldn’t tame with either spells or hairstyling products. “The thief did this to a shifter? Come on! We must get him to your shop!”

* * * * *

Inside the darkened Bloodstone, Lilia surrounded Dane with amethysts while Anneliese ran upstairs to get Lilia’s mother Ravyn. Frankly, Lilia half expected her mother to follow her to find Lilia despite her frailty.

She knelt inside the circle of amethysts beside Dane, who lay in his wolf form, too wounded to shift back.

Anneliese was right. Dane’s wolf form was gorgeous…

She told herself to focus. Dane’s life ebbed away with each passing second. She must focus on the movements of her hands and connecting the amethysts. A glow shot through all of the amethysts, creating an unbroken circle. Violet energy flowed around them, surrounding her and Dane. She really didn’t need to be inside the circle, but she couldn’t make herself leave Dane’s side.

Especially since his eyes were open and milky with pain. He looked at her with pleading eyes. Goddess, he’d awakened when she brushed up against him while lowering him to the ground. He’d been unconscious, but her accidental touch had roused him. Just a touch, and he’d come back.

“You’ll be able to rest soon, I promise,” she said to him. “Deep sleep.”

He blinked, his eyes on her. Still pleading. His wound, still bleeding, filled the air with the scent of his blood. Overpowering.

She felt her heart pounding. She felt the pain shooting through her body and a burning sensation. She reached out and stroked Dane’s fur.

“Look,” Anneliese shouted behind her. “The poison is vanishing!”

Lilia turned to see her mother Ravyn and Anneliese staring at the shimmering healing field in wonder. “You shouldn’t be inside the field,” Ravyn said in a worried voice. “It could make it unbalanced…”

Anneliese nudged her. “Can you ever stop Lilia from doing what she wants to do?”

Ravyn’s lips turned up in a wry smile. “Not even the Goddess Brigid can do that.”

Lilia knelt beside Dane until her knees ached. She kept stroking his fur, and she could feel the life and strength returning to his body. The life force flowed under her fingers and through her hands, through her veins, into her heart.

Anneliese chattered on. “He is the most beautiful shifter I’ve ever seen. Look at that fur. It’s so white and pure that the winter snow would be jealous. Look at those muscles. He must be an alpha.”

“You cannot tell which wolf is an alpha from the way he looks,” Ravyn said in a serious tone.

“I can,” Anneliese replied. “I always can.”

“He is an alpha,” Lilia said. “Dane Cresta. The Alpha of the Evenhide Pack.”

Ravyn half smiled. “They are the most powerful pack in the realm, and their alphas are always great leaders and noble men.”

“Only the best for our Lilia,” Anneliese replied as both women added their energy in steady, bright streams to the healing field.

Lilia felt an instinct, and her fingers itched to touch the jagged knife wound. She placed her hands on it and let the crystal energy and her powers flow into the injury.

The violet energy seeped into the wound and the smell of blood. as well as the spurts of blood, stopped. The wound still looked fierce and red but Lilia’s side no longer felt like it was on fire.

Dane’s eyes cleared, becoming a sleepy blue, and his white fur changed to smooth skin. It had a bronze hue she hadn’t noticed before. He curled up, naked as the day he was born once again. His eyes remained on hers, and he murmured something that sounded like her name before he slipped into sleep.

“Lilia,” Ravyn said. “The energy field! Have you forgotten?”

Lilia blushed. She’d been distracted.

“I’d forget,” Anneliese said, her eyes on Dane. “He’s as good-looking as a man as he is a wolf, if that’s possible. And brave. And he’s in love with our Lilia.”

“Enough,” Lilia muttered, blushing even more.

She sealed the energy field, then said, “Thank you, Goddess Brigid, for the healing performed on this night.” She turned the crystals off, since she no longer needed the healing field.

Ravyn and Anneliese bound Dane’s wound, wrapping a bandage around his upper torso, right underneath his small brown nipples and powerful pectoral muscles. “His ribs will be sore from the beating he’s taken,” Lilia said.

Ravyn eyed Dane with a healer’s assessing gaze. “Yes, and he will be weak as a newborn lamb for a few days. Recovering from the poison will steal his strength. You did well, Lilia, but wolfsbane and silver are a fearsome combination that can leave even the most formidable shifter helpless. Fortunately, he’s in the most caring hands.”

Her strength depleted, Lilia nevertheless helped Anneliese lift Dane. Ravyn walked over to the front of the shop and gathered up Dane’s robe, then used what energy she had left to reset the magical wards and locks on the door.

The three women carried Dane through the door to the upstairs, up the staircase and into the second floor apartment proper.

By no means spacious, the apartment suited Lilia and Ravyn very well. The walls of the front parlor looked like a blue sky with splashes of sunlight. Multiple books, one of Lilia’s and Ravyn’s only indulgences, lined the shelves and sat in neat towers. Lilia and Anneliese carried Dane, with Ravyn guiding them to Lilia’s bedroom down the narrow hallway.

“You and I will have to share a room while we nurse him back to health,” Lilia said to Ravyn.

Her mother squeezed her shoulder in a loving way. “Just like when you were a little one.”

Anneliese struggled to pull Dane into the room. “He’s heavy when he’s sleeping. Quick, let’s get him into bed.”

Ravyn lit the lamp in Lilia’s room. In the dim glow, Lilia and Anneliese carried Dane to the bed, which Ravyn turned down. Lilia lowered Dane to the bed and pulled the homespun blue sheets over him. At least he wasn’t too big for her bed. With his long, rugged, muscular body, he looked out of place in her feminine sanctuary.

But somehow, he also seemed like he fit perfectly.

She felt his forehead. Burning up. She went to the small bathroom and soaked a cloth, then draped it over his forehead. “We need the fever elimination remedy from the Lady Fortune Sisters.”

Ravyn pulled a vial from her belt pouch. “Open his mouth.”

Lilia avoided Anneliese’s delighted smirk. She stroked Dane’s full, sensual lips, and they parted. Ravyn uncorked the vial and passed it to Lilia, who poured a few drops into Dane’s mouth. He swallowed, then lay there with his lips still parted. She wanted to…

No.

He was healing, he needed his sleep, and she didn’t know him.

“Will his pack come looking for him?” she asked.

“If he’s their alpha as he claims, they will,” Ravyn said. “They will be grateful you saved him.”

“I’m the reason he got injured,” Lilia muttered, stroking Dane’s hair.

“You and he did a noble thing, trying to stop a thief from getting crystals that could be dangerous to everyone in the wrong hands,” Anneliese told her.

Ravyn’s eyes lit up. “I know a few witch messengers who often carry messages to Evenhide territory. We can write a letter to them explaining the situation and reassuring them that we’re taking care of Dane. I will do that. The word of a witch from an old witching family should put them at ease.”

“Yes!” Lilia hugged her mother and Anneliese. “Let’s do that.”

“Then you should get some rest,” Ravyn said in a soft voice. “Dane will need you.”

“Yes, Mother. I’ll sit with him for a little while, but then I’m off to bed for the night.”

She pulled up a chair beside the bed, right next to the pillow, and sat gazing at Dane. At the rising and falling of his muscular chest. At his face, relaxed in sleep. At his lips, still too pale for her liking. Her mother’s nourishing broth would put color back in his face and restore more of that lovely bronze tone.

Mostly, though, she yearned to talk to him. To find out more about this bond, how he’d come here, and about his pack. And about him. And about the thief, whoever that might be.

“Get better, Dane Cresta,” she whispered. “We have a lot to do, and to talk about.”