Savage Craving - Cecilia Lane Page 0,39

wound. Relief peppered his skin with goose bumps, but the itch returned far too quickly.

“Sure, sure. Let’s just see what’s under that bandage.”

“It’s fine,” he insisted, but his brother wrapped a hand around his arm and practically dragged him into the tack room. The smell of leather was usually a comfort, but not when he was bullied into taking a seat.

“Shirt up,” Dash ordered.

“Don’t you have to pay for that?” Seth grimaced, but complied. Mostly because he was certain Dash would pin him to the ground and trap him in his own clothes if he didn’t. And wouldn’t that be some brotherly bonding, he thought with a roll of his eyes.

Under a look better suited for a broody hen, he peeled off the tape around the outer edges, then pulled back the thick dressing.

“Ho-ly fuck,” Dash drawled.

Seth blinked, not believing his eyes for a solid three beats of his heart. Rusty red marred the gauze and the stitches Hailey placed were still visible, but only a thin wound and pink skin remained where he’d taken a claw deep to his gut.

“Maybe it wasn’t that bad.” Stupid words. Stupid idea. But he reached for any explanation at hand.

“Yeah, right. Because you need stitches for that little paper cut?” Dash shook his head and added, quieter, “I saw your eyes change.”

“Then you’re a blind idiot. They don’t change.”

Dash frowned. “I’ve definitely seen them change before when we fought.”

That gave Seth pause. A spark of hope lit the empty cavern of his chest before the flame sputtered out and left him in darkness. Fighting. That was all. If—big if—his eyes changed color, of course it happened in the ring. That was the closest he ever felt to having an inner animal.

And those flashes around Lilah.

He shook his head, still unwilling to believe Dash. “That’s just fighting—”

“This was about Lilah, not that little pustule who worked you over. They lit up as soon as you spotted her.” Dash grinned again, then flopped his mouth open and closed like a gasping fish. “You went all slack-jawed over her and got yourself pinned against the wall. Maybe she’s bringing out a new side of you.”

Lilah saw his eyes change, too. She’d also called out his fading bruises the morning after he picked her up. He’d just assumed it was his slightly faster healing at work. Hell, his ribs had still ached from being worked over by Zeke and his band of bungholes, so he hadn’t really thought about it. But this? This was fucking exceptional. This was real shifter healing at work.

“I’m just saying,” Dash said in the continued silence, “maybe you have a little more shifter in you than you think.”

Seth grunted. “All the more reason to stay away.”

“Or all the more reason to stay close.” His brother shrugged. “Trying to fight your instincts is a losing battle.”

“Fuck, if only it were that simple. Let me just grab a fistful of faeries and wring out some magic dust. I’ve never shifted, Dash. If it hasn’t happened by now, it ain’t happening ever.” He shoved to his feet and yanked his shirt back down. He stopped dead in his tracks when he felt a faint sensation brush against his mind.

Mate.

The word rang through his head like the damn starting bell of a match. He’d called her his mate when he fought to get to her.

“She can’t be my mate,” he muttered, mostly to convince himself.

The door creaked open and Lilah poked her head out. Immediately, that urge to rip himself apart for his denials calmed down to nothing.

Dash clapped him on the back. “Maybe you’re not the only one getting a little shifter in you,” his brother teased.

Seth punched him hard in the arm.

Chapter 15

“Are you sure this is safe?” Lilah asked, worrying at her lower lip. She scanned the crowd milling around the collection of tables and chairs set between houses. Any one of them could be incentivized to see her dead.

Not that she expected that from the Crowleys. But there were other faces from the ranch next door. She tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. Seth’s people likely wouldn’t associate with a bunch of murderers, but who knew what other curveballs waited to nail her in the face.

A bounty. A real life, murder for hire plot, and she was at the center. Never in a million years would she have expected the shy girl from small-town Oklahoma to feature so prominently in a story better suited for a movie.

She wished her