Page 10 of Untamed

Chapter Seven

Orion

The darts have been in my back too long. I know it before Arlo says a word because the skin around each shaft has gone from sore to hot, every movement dragging plastic through flesh that feels swollen tight around it. I stopped lying on my right side yesterday when the pressure started making my vision swim, and this morning the smell changes too, something sour and wrong settling beneath the fur where blood and antiseptic should have faded by now.

Arlo notices when I stop eating. He’s across the living room with a mug trapped between both hands and a book open in front of him, doing a poor job of pretending the page matters more than the bear watching him over the rim. I let him keep pretending until I get tired of it and turn my head enough to catch him staring.

“All right.” He closes the book over one finger. “You smell sick.”

My ears flatten at the words. Arlo grimaces at his own choice of words, then stays exactly where he is instead of trying to fix it by coming closer. “That came out wrong. Can I look?” When I don’t move, he glances at the distance between us and corrects himself. “From here?”

I turn enough to show him one side while keeping the injured flank clear of the wall. The movement pulls at the deepest dart and sends heat through my back, but I hold the position until he sees what the fur has been hiding. His expression changes as he takes in the swelling around each shaft and the wetness working through the coat.

I make a low questioning sound and angle my head toward him.

“Nothing you’re going to enjoy,” Arlo says.

I push upright because I’m still capable of standing and I need him to know it. My back leg folds as I try to get my weight under me. The deepest dart catches the edge of the doorframe when I stumble, jerking sideways through infected tissue, and pain tears across my flank so fast a roar rips out of me with it. I hit the floor hard enough to rattle the lamp beside the couch, blood flooding fresh into my nose while I fight to get air back into my lungs.

Arlo is already moving when I stop sliding, but he checks himself halfway across the room and stops where I can see both of his hands. My snarl comes out low and ugly. He doesn’t answer it with Alpha pressure, which should make this easier, but my head swims when I try to lift it and I hate that he can hear exactly how badly this hurts no matter how much of the sound I keep behind my teeth.

“The wounds are infected,” he says. “I need to get those darts out.”

I shove backward until my spine finds the wall. Arlo stays where he is, lowering his hands until they rest loose at his sides instead of reaching for me. “I’m staying here.”

The deepest wound throbs with every heartbeat. I want the foreign thing out badly enough that I twist, trying to get my teeth around the shaft even though the angle is impossible. Pain I can fight makes sense.

Hands can be bitten. Restraints can be torn. Teeth, guns, men in white coats, all of them give the bear something to push against. Infection only sits inside me and keeps hurting, which leaves nowhere for the panic to go except everywhere.

Arlo watches me fail to reach the dart without taking another step. “The fur’s the problem. I can’t see the tracks well enough to clean them.” His voice stays level, and the answer is already sitting between us by the time he says it. “You’d have to shift.”

The growl rolls out of me on instinct. Human skin means wrists narrow enough for restraints and veins nobody has to hunt for beneath fur. It means bare shoulders against cold tables, somebody holding my jaw while another person writes numbers on a form, all of them calmer because the body in front of them looks easier to control. The bear has teeth large enough to make people reconsider touching me. My human body only carries the scars left by the ones who didn't.

I pace the length of the room on a bad leg, putting distance between Arlo and everything his request dragged up with it. He lets me have it. “I’m not ordering you,” he says when I turn back. “I’m asking because I don’t know how to do this safely while you’re a bear. If you have another idea, I’ll take it.”

There’s no other idea. I prove it by trying for the deepest dart again, twisting until the wound pulls wider and my leg gives beneath me. Arlo swears under his breath but still doesn’t rush in. Instead he lowers himself to the floor and sits cross-legged with his hands resting on his knees, nothing in the shape of him that looks ready to pin me down.

“I screwed this up in containment,” he says after the room has gone quiet again. “I bit you because I thought it was the only way to get you out. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, I’m not deciding what happens to your body every time I get scared.”

He glances once at the infected darts and brings his eyes back to mine. “I want you to shift because I think I can help. You don’t have to do it because I’m an Alpha. If you stay like this, I’ll figure out something else.”

People have lied to me while holding consent forms. They called restraints necessary, sedation compassionate, examinations routine, and none of the softer words ever changed what happened once the door shut. Arlo has already proved he can force a bond if he believes he has no other choice, and now he’s sitting on the floor giving one back to me even though we both know the infection won’t wait forever.

My legs start trembling while I’m still trying to decide. Arlo doesn’t fill the room with another promise. A low purr starts in his chest instead, quiet enough that I feel more of it through the floor than I hear, and my ears turn toward him on instinct. There’s no command tucked inside the vibration, only something steady enough to lean against while the pain keeps pulsing through my back.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he murmurs. “I’m right here.”

I answer with a low hum that feels more exposing than showing him my throat ever could because nobody pulled it out of me. Arlo keeps purring without making anything of it, and after another breath I let the shift start. It catches first in my shoulders, bone moving under fur while the change rolls down my spine and my paws narrow into hands against the rug. Cold air finds skin that hasn’t been uncovered in days. Arlo tells me he’s moving, then tells me again when he comes in from my left, and I nod both times because words are still too far away. My balance goes, I lean toward him, and only then does his arm slide beneath mine.

Without fur between us, his body is almost too warm. I end up folded against his chest while the last of the change grinds through my hips and legs, too weak to hold myself up and too tired to care how much of my weight he’s taking. His grip stays loose until I sag harder into him. Only then does his arm tighten enough to keep me off the floor.

When it’s over, I’m naked on the rug with my forehead against his shoulder, hair hanging into my face and hands that look wrong after days of paws. Every scar is out where he can see it now: the old bond-removal wound across my left shoulder, the marks restraints left at my wrists and ankles, small pale tracks from needles and stitches that came after examinations nobody asked me to agree to. I wait for his eyes to start inventorying the damage the way everyone else’s always did, but when I finally look up, he’s watching my face.

“There you are,” he says, so quietly I almost think I imagined it. Then the smallest smile touches his mouth. “Hi.”

A grunt is easier than giving him anything back. The smile softens anyway, and I look aside because letting him see what that does to me feels worse than being stared at. Arlo reaches toward the folded blanket on the couch, then stops with his hand halfway there. “Blanket?”

I take too long to answer. He picks it up slowly, and the second the wool settles over my shoulders, too much of my body disappears beneath something I didn’t put there myself. Paper crinkles under my spine in a room that isn’t this one, straps close over my chest, and I rip the blanket off hard enough to send it across the room.