Bound by Fate Book 1: Flame and Fang
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NGVandivert
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After ten years on the run, Mara can’t escape the one thing she refuses to believe in: her fated mate. Royce, a powerful werewolf, has always been impossible, infuriating, and impossible to ignore. When fate—or something far more primal—throws them together, Mara is forced to confront the pull she’s fought for years. Thirst, humor, and a spark that won’t quit draw them closer, but trust isn’t given freely. Can Mara let herself be caught, or will her walls keep love and danger at bay forever?
Chapter 1
Mara started at the sound of a truck roaring along the road outside her clinic. The quarter mile of dense trees muffled the noise, but the speed was unmistakable.
She waited, a mix of anticipation and anxiety tightening her shoulders as the engine’s roar rose and fell, fading in the distance.
She finished the last of her incantation, swept the last few grains from her palm, and stepped carefully back from the protective salt circle she’d laid around the building.
A three-quarter moon cast a weak shadow in front of her as she walked back through the clinic’s double doors. Before stepping inside, she looked back, lifting her face to the moon. Even now, several days out from the full moon, she felt the pull of her other side.
Soon, she wouldn’t be able to ignore it.
Another truck roared along the outer road. Mara frowned and took a step back outside. It was too early for closing at the local bar.
Something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” said Vic, coming up beside her.
Mara glanced down at her petite friend. Vic sucked on a straw stuck into an almost empty blood bag. She grinned up at Mara and licked at a smear of blood from her lips. “B negative, my favorite.”
Another truck, moving faster, and this time it turned down the clinic access road.
Vic said, “There goes your quiet Tuesday.”
The truck’s sounds changed from a muffled roar to an uneven thump, thump as the driver had to slow to negotiate the clinic’s rutted gravel road. Headlights canted crazily through the trees.
“You should leave, Vic. This guy’s drunk.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“I know you aren’t. Something has happened. Drunks are unpredictable, and if they’ve been using besides drinking, I don’t want this to get any more weird. You know they like to taunt you.”
Vic glanced at the road, her fangs showing under her sneer. “They might hurt you.”
“I’m the one that sews them up so they can go back to work tomorrow. They won’t do anything.”
“Mara—”
“Please, Vic,” she said, laying a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder. “You’ve got rounds to do. I’ll meet you back at the trailer.”
“I don’t like leaving you with drunk loggers.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
Vic took a last long sip of blood. “I’m calling you in an hour.”
“Deal. Now, get out of here.” She gave Vic a friendly shove.
Mara watched Vic disappear through the rear doors to her bloodmobile, then scanned the ER cubicle, noting everything for an emergency was in its place. She grabbed her ancient flip phone, stuck it in her pants pocket, and then strode back to the double doors, pressing the catches so they would stay open.
Headlights blinded her as the truck emerged from the trees and careened along the gravel road. Flash floods after last years’ fires had left it rutted and choppy.
Shocked at their speed, Mara stepped back inside the doorway as the truck turned into the small clearing, spraying stones and dirt as it skidded to a stop just outside the salt circle.
Drunken laughter and the ungodly smells of stale beer and vomit wafted from the truck. The door opened, and a body was pushed out. More laughter, and the driver gunned the engine, spraying more gravel as he wheeled and sped back down the road.
Mara rushed to the groaning figure on the ground. Male, tall, well-muscled, probably over two hundred pounds, age indeterminate until she got him inside, which was going to be a bitch of a job by herself. Light from the inside let her see blood pooling under him.
Swearing, she called on her wolf for strength and grabbed the man under his shoulders, lifting him into a fireman’s carry. She got him into the ER cubicle, hit the height adjustment on the gurney to lower it, and then heaved his upper body onto the gurney. She shifted his legs.
His face was bruised, lip split, one eye swollen shut. He groaned, breathing heavily as he clenched one hand over the right side of his stomach. Blood welled.
Blood loss first. She snapped on gloves, then grabbed a bleeding control kit and tore open the pack. He fought her as she lifted his hand and put the pack of clotting medium and then a thick layer of gauze over his open wound.
“Hey,” she said, putting his hand back, and with the other, taking her flashlight and flicking it toward his eyes. “You’re safe now. Can you open your eyes? Can you tell me your name?”
His eyelids fluttered, revealing whiskey-brown eyes glowing with power.
She almost dropped her flashlight. An alpha.
His lips moved. “Where am I?”
“You’re at the only health clinic for about sixty miles.” She had to be vague in case he remembered. It had been too much to hope her family wouldn’t find her again.
He tried to sit up, grimaced and groaned, clutching his side as he fell back, panting. “Who are you?”
“I’m a Nurse Practitioner. And tonight, I’m alone, so I need you to cooperate with me to be able to help you.”
“How did I get here?”
She started him on oxygen, then swabbed his arm, found a vein, and inserted an IV. “I’m going to give you some painkillers; you may feel dizzy.”
She put a blood pressure cuff on his other arm, cut away his blood-stained shirt, and set up a heart monitor. “Your pulse and blood pressure look good. Can you tell me your name?”
His eyes were fully open now, and he watched warily as she cut away the rest of his shirt. “Royce, Royce Hawkins,” he said, his voice melodious and deep.
“Well, Royce,” she said, “you can call me Brielle.”
She started to unbuckle his pants, and he grabbed her wrist. “No,” he said.
Arguing with an injured patient never went well.
“Royce,” she said, injecting a soothing witch undertone to her voice.
His eyelids fluttered as her magic calmed him and his grip on her wrist relaxed.
“You arrived here dumped out of a moving truck full of drunk loggers. I need to see what other injuries you might have, and that means the pants come off.”
The drug was starting to work; he blinked and shook his head.
“No.” He bared his teeth.
“Yes,” she said gently, shifting him to slide his pants down his legs. His very muscular legs and a world-class ass. “There’s nothing here I haven’t seen before.”
“Shit. Fuck!” he said as she stripped him, then drew a blanket over his legs. He fought the painkiller and her magic, panted, and tried to sit up. “I have to get out of here.”
“Nope, you’re not going anywhere. Now, let me see that wound.”
Gently, she pried his hand away and lifted the gauze pack. He hissed as she swabbed the wound with disinfectant and then palpated around the now slowly seeping hole.
“Who shot you?”
“I don’t know. I stopped at a bar to make a call. Reception is so damn bad out here.”
“Yup. Almost nobody around here bothers with a cell phone.” She prodded further, and he hissed some more. “You know, the bullet isn’t that deep.” She met his angry, fuzzy gaze. “I’m going to try to get it out.”
He fell back and put an arm over his eyes. “Do it.”
She maneuvered a thin pair of forceps into the opening, placing her other hand on his chest, both to comfort his wolf and to hold him if he struggled. He was lucky that whoever shot him was probably drunk and unable to aim. The entry wound was into his abdominal wall and away from major organs.
He panted as she worked but held himself still. He grabbed the wrist of her hand on his chest and squeezed.
Almost immediately, she felt the bullet, small and lodged in a thick band of muscle. Mara worked steadily, edging the forceps tips around the bullet to get a firm grasp and then pulling it straight out. He took a long inhale and then swore.
Blood welled from the wound, but not as much as when he’d arrived. She swabbed the wound again, added two staples, and taped a gauze pack on top.
Mara set the bullet into a specimen cup, wondering at the strange way it caught the light. Curious, she took it to the sink and rinsed away the blood. Silver. It was a silver bullet. She was glad she wore gloves because it tingled her skin even through the latex.
She turned to him, holding the bullet for him to see. “Try again. Who shot you?”
