Eden Grace
Eden was too stunned when her gaze followed the hard lines of his face taking in the dirt and blood that marred his skin, by the way the shadows clung to his features like a second layer of pain.
The dark red stain of blood had spread through his shirt, pooling beneath him. He looked nothing like the powerful wolves she had grown up hearing about.
He looked broken.
Eden pressed her fingers to the side of his neck and found a pulse faint and flickering, but stubbornly present. She thought to herself as she stared at him.
How long had you been lying here? What made you bleed in the dark with no one looking for you?
"Hey…Can you shift? Your wolf can handle this better. It will hurt less." Eden said softly. "Your body will heal faster."
For a moment, he did not respond. Eden thought he had passed out again. But the handsome man shook his head, his breath going uneven.
"I c-can't…" he rasped.
He can't..?
"Why not," she asked urgently. "What do you mean you cannot."
His breathing turned uneven. His chest rose and fell in shallow, broken rhythm.
He tried to speak but nothing came out.
His lips just parted and closed.
"I… don't… have…" he whispered, his voice fading. "No strength. It's…suppressing my wolf and me."
The words barely reached her ears but they shattered her. Suppressing… his wolf?
She could see the man was in great pain, she could hear the low broken growl of his wolf. It was strained and helpless, like a wounded animal unable to fight back anymore.
Crying out in pain.
Eden's eyes suddenly landed onto a faint line across his cheek and found a dried tear, thin and barely visible but still there. As though it had dried long ago yet refused to be erased.
Seeing the heart wrenching sight, something within her cracked and she saw a reflection of her own pain.
So, he had been abandoned too. Was he betrayed by someone..? Was he thrown aside by the world just like her…?
He looked like every unspoken ache she had ever buried deep inside. Every failure. Every unapologetic goodbyes. Every insult she had swallowed with no resistance.
And in that shared silence between two broken werewolves in a dark alley, a flicker of something unspoken passed between them. A fragile thread woven from loneliness, loss and a desperate hope neither dared voice.
Tears welled in her eyes again, silent and bitter. They kept slipping down her cheeks and she leaned closer to him, her hands trembling. And slowly, almost instinctively she gathered him in her arms.
The man's skin was cold, his pulse was faint. He wasn't unable to shift, she could feel his wolf whimpering too. The man didn't fight her touch. He simply laid there… as if he was waiting.
Waiting to die.
His chest barely rose and his lashes fluttered like they were heavy with exhaustion or surrender. He looked like he had accepted death.
"No." Eden cried brokenly, brushing blood from his brow. "Please… don't die."
Her sobs came louder now, helpless and ugly, the kind of desperation that had no shape or form, only grief.
The tears fell in fat drops onto his skin mixing with the blood. She looked around in a panic, her body moving before her brain could catch up.
"I'll save you so please don't die on me. Just hold on a bit." She slipped her arms under him, lifting his half conscious body with all the strength she didn't know she had.
As she stumbled through the blur of trees and rusted fences she finally found an old abandoned shed.
Her knees nearly gave in but she didn't stop. "Just hold on…Please don't die yet." she whispered hoarsely, blood soaking through her shirt.
By the time she kicked the door of the shed open, her legs were barely functioning. She lowered him to the floor, breathless and shaking.
She turned on the nearby light and dropped beside him. Eden's hands were trembling violently as she examined the wound near his waist. It was bad.
The silver coated blade had torn close to a major artery, and the bleeding had been heavy. But something else caught her attention, something far worse.
His pupils were blown. His lips had turned slightly blue. His breath was turning labored and uneven.
She froze.
This wasn't just blood loss…!
She leaned closer, her eyes narrowing. There was no mistake that these signs on this werewolf concluded that he had been poisoned. With a rare wolfsbane toxin. One she had read about in the forbidden corners of biochemical journals.
A rare, illegal compound designed specifically to suppress a wolf's healing ability and slowly poison both body and his inner wolf.
No! It would kill him soon!
"Who the hell did this to you?" Eden gasped, her stomach twisting. "Who could be this cruel?"
The sound broke through the silence. A hoarse breath rasped from his throat, his lips barely moving.
"Be…trayal." He whispered so low she almost missed it.
Eden froze. That word. That damn word! It pierced her like a dagger, because it was her story too.
Betrayal had dragged her down once, had burned her career, her soul, her name.
Betrayal had broken her completely.
She stared at him, her voice trembling. "You want to live? Even if the world treated you unfairly?"
He blinked once. A slow, almost imperceptible nod.
Her tears formed, "Why?"
It took everything in him to whisper the next word. "Revenge."
That one word cracked something inside her wide open. Revenge?
Eden felt like she wasn't looking at a stranger anymore. She was looking at a mirror. The same blood. The same ache. The same hunger to make it all burn.
And then Eden's hands moved on their own like a divine's hand. She cut open his shirt, cleaned the wound and removed the bullet. Her hands moved fast, too fast for a broken girl but she wasn't just any girl.
She was Eden Grace. A genius. A fallen doctor with a blessed gift. A healer born under the Moon's quiet blessing.
She sutured torn vessels, cleaned internal bleeds but the toxin kept spreading. Her eyes flared. How do I stop this toxin from keep spreading!
There was only one thing that could stop it. Her blood. The gene therapy her parents had given to her and was told to keep the secret. But if she didn't treat him now, he and his wolf would die any second.
With shaking hands she drew her blood. Dark red and warm.
Glowing faintly under the lamp's light. Moon-touched.
She then injected it into his bloodstream. "Live." she whispered. "Live…for your revenge."
She did not know his name. She did not know his rank. She did not know what he had lost or what war he was fighting.
But she had given him something precious. A second chance.
And maybe, just maybe, saving him would be enough reason for her not to die too. At least for tonight.
She worked in silence until the bleeding slowed, until his breath no longer rattled. She tied the bandage as tightly as she could and wrapped his torso with scraps of cloth from her bag.
Her hands were soaked in blood. Her sleeves clung to her skin but she didn't stop until it was fully done.
When she was finally done she leaned in, her breath brushing over his lips and with one final defiant surge of madness, she kissed him softly. Like sealing a pact.
"Live. And make them all bleed for what they did to you."
With that Eden got up, ready to walk away when she suddenly heard a monstrous vibrating growl.
"MATE!!!"