Page 14 of Slashed Bonds

His tongue works my temple like he’s trying to reboot me manually, and I have no idea how long that goes on before my phone buzzes on the counter above my head.

Then buzzes again.

“Okay.” I pat his ribs. “Okay, okay.”

He interprets that as an invitation and attempts to climb into my lap while I’m still horizontal, which is how I end up sitting bolt upright with an eighty-pound dog’s paws on my collarbones and my ears ringing.

“Easy, boy.” My voice comes out shredded. “Go play with your toy.”

He barks once. The sound bounces around the bathroom, out into the main room, and back, because this whole house could fit inside the Crowe family kitchen twice with room for the table.

Shed with plumbing. That’s the technical term.

Two rooms, a loft ladder I never use, a stove with one working element, and a wall of windows facing nothing but pine trees for eleven kilometers in every direction. It sits on Omega-protected land, which means no unbonded Alpha sets foot past the boundary markers without a warrant, a court order, or a strong appetite for felony charges.

It’s mine.

It’s the only thing that ever has been.

I got the keys the same week I got out of the hospital, and I still don’t know who paid for them.

Somebody moved me.

That’s the extent of what I’ve been able to establish in five years of asking. I was dropped at a district hospital in the small hours, unclaimed, no identification, three quarters dead, and forty-one hours later somebody had me transferred to a private facility that costs more per night than most people pay in rent.

Best trauma team in the region. Bond-severance specialists. A neurosurgeon flown in.

No name on any of it.

When I first understood what had happened, I assumed the morphine was writing me a bedtime story. Then the paperwork kept arriving, on time, correct, and a caseworker sat on the end of my bed and told me I could select any property on the approved registry.

Fully covered.

I picked the cheapest thing on the list that still had a door I could lock.

Secluded. Nobody around. Only me.

Because whoever was covering those bills didn’t need a burden attached, and salvation like that has to be a one-time transaction.

I’m never relying on another person again.

That’s not bitterness. It’s arithmetic. I did the math once, and it came out with my family gone, my career burned, and my arms opened up, so I don’t intend to run the equation twice.

The day I moved in was the day they brought Knox back to me.

A woman two towns over found him running the shoulder of a county road, ribs showing, one eye a mess. She had him treated out of pocket for six weeks before the microchip scan finally pinged a database that had my name in it.

The eye healed wrong. The X stayed.

Now we match. He carries his scar on his face, and I carry mine on my throat, and every morning we look at each other and confirm that yes, it did happen, and yes, we’re still here.

I get my legs under me on the third attempt.

Standing, I catch sight of them in the mirror over the sink. Long, muscled, ridiculous compared to the rest of me, and they hold my weight without argument.

The first thing I asked when I came out of the coma was whether they worked.

The nurse didn’t answer.