He got something quite different." "Werewolves," said Ariana, then she turned her back to us, hunching her shoulders.
I saw that there were scars on her back, too.
"We attacked because we had to," Samuel said gently.
"But my father was stronger than we were, and resisted.
He killed her father.
We stopped, but she was so badly hurt.
A human would have died or been reborn as one of us.
She only suffered." "You doctored her," I said.
"You helped her heal.
You saved her." Ariana crumpled--and Samuel leaped over all of us and caught her before she hit the floor.
Her body was limp, her eyes closed, and the scars were hidden safely behind her glamour again.
"Did I?" Samuel asked, looking down at her with his heart in his eyes.
"The scar on the top of her shoulder was one I gave her." Hot damn,I thought, watching him.
Hot damn, Charles.
I found something for Samuel to live for.
Samuel had been upstairs with Adam when the fairy queen called to tell us what she was looking for.
Silver Borne.
The mention of the artifact alone was enough to make it impossible for him to yield to his wolf.
But it had been when Zee had called me and Ariana spoke that he'd come back to us.
"You saved her," I told him.
"And you loved her." "She didn't know, did she?" said Jesse, sounding as caught up in the story as Ariana had been.
"You doctored her up, and she fell for you--and you couldn't tell her what you were.
That's really romantic, Doc." "And tragic," said Zee sourly.
"How do you know it's tragic?" sputtered Jesse.
The old fae scowled and gestured toward Samuel.
"I'm not seeing a happy-ever-after ending here, are you?" Samuel pulled the fae woman against him.
It looked odd, a young man holding a woman who could have been his grandmother indeed.
But fae don't age, they fade.
Her grandmotherly appearance was a glamour.
The scars were real--but I saw his face and knew that he only cared about the pain they represented.