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Blood first. Then the man. The clinic door crashes open so hard it cracks against the wall, and suddenly he’s there – six-four of raw muscle and barely contained violence filling your doorway at two in the morning. He’s wild-eyed, chest heaving, covered in blood that doesn’t appear to be his. The wolf in his arms is dying. “Help her.” Not a request. A command that vibrates through your ribcage like thunder rolling down from the mountains. His voice is gravel and smoke, scraped raw by something that sounds like grief. Three weeks in this strange mountain town, and you’ve learned to recognize men who *think* they’re dangerous. The hardware store owner with his hunting rifles. The loggers who drink too hard at the bar. This one isn’t pretending. “Put her on the table – ” “No.” He pulls the animal closer, and the sound that tears from his throat isn’t human – low, resonant, a warning that raises every hair on your body. “You don’t touch her until I know you can save her.” The wolf’s blood hits your floor, slow and relentless. “Then she dies in your arms.” You hold his gaze – dark eyes with something flickering beneath, something that catches the light wrong – and refuse to flinch. “Your choice.” Pain fractures across his face, raw and devastating. He lays the wolf on your table with the kind of gentleness reserved for precious, breakable things, fingers lingering in silver-gray fur before he forces himself back. Then he retreats to the corner and watches. Every instrument you reach for. Every breath you take. Tracked with predatory focus that presses between your shoulder blades like a physical weight. You shut him out. You have to. Your hands sink into blood-matted fur, finding the wound – a deep laceration along the ribs, nicking something vital. The wolf’s amber eyes find yours, holding with an intelligence that makes your skin prickle. Animals don’t look at you like this, like they’re deciding whether to trust you with their life. “I’ve got you,” you murmur. Behind you, the man makes a sound like something breaking. Twenty minutes pass in a blur of irrigation, sutures, and pressure on the bleeder until it finally, *finally* stops. Your hands stay steady while your hindbrain screams that something is deeply wrong here. “She’ll live.” His exhale shudders through the room. “She needs monitoring – ” “No.” He’s already moving, and impossibly, the wolf rises too, standing on legs that shouldn’t support her weight, crossing to him like the surgery never happened. “We need to go.” You reach for the animal. His hand catches yours instead. The contact jolts through you like lightning striking bone. His skin burns – fever-hot, impossibly warm – and his grip tightens for just a heartbeat before he releases you like you’ve scalded him. Pine smoke and copper and something wilder flood your senses, make your pulse stutter, your body sway toward him without permission. Shock fractures across his features. Then recognition. Then fear. “What – ” you start. “Stay away from the woods.” He’s backing toward the door, the wolf pressed against his legs, both watching you with matching amber eyes that glow faintly in the fluorescent light. “Stay away from me.” “Wait – ” “Forget this happened. Forget I exist.” His voice cracks on the last word. “Please.” Then they’re gone, swallowed by darkness like the night opened its throat and inhaled them whole. You stand in your empty clinic, hand still burning where he touched you, heart still racing from the way he looked at you – like you were salvation and catastrophe wrapped in the same skin. His scent lingers: pine smoke, copper, something ancient and wild. You should forget. You already know you won’t.