That’s all it is.
She pulls back. Not satisfied. Just outweighed.
He passes. His scent drops from immediate to present. My hands steady.
One chance. Don’t waste it.
He dismounts at the stone. Sits. His back to the trail. His hand finds the flat face of the marker, fingers spreading against the surface — not looking for it, finding it. The same gesture, worn into muscle.
I move.
Out of the scrub. Stock to my shoulder. Boots quiet on limestone. The mare’s ears rotate — she catches something in my scent — but I’m past her before she decides what to do about it.
Fifteen feet. Ten.
I fire.
The dart takes him in the right shoulder above the scapula. He’s already turning when the sound finishes — fast, one hand going for the dart — and his eyes find mine before I expect them to.
Dark. Hard. A face that’s made a decade of hard decisions and looks every day of it.
“What the—?” His eyes flash gold, his wolf catching me for a half-second. Something sharpens in his expression, something almost like a question.
Go down, you bastard.
The ketamine takes him. His legs go, and his weight pitches sideways toward the rock shelf.
I drop the gun, lunge forward, and catch his shoulder. Take his weight on my arms and go down to one knee with him, controlled, steering the fall away from the stone. If he cracks his fucking skull open, I’ll have done all of this for nothing, dammit.
He’s heavier than I estimated.
Of course he is.
But he’s out. Breathing slow and deep. The drug has him. Thank fuck.
I stay kneeling a moment, getting my breath back. His face, slack now — jaw unclenched, the lines between his brows smoothed out — seems younger now, younger than it has any right to be. The face his sister might have known, before the stone on the ridge and everything he built after.
Don’t look at it.
I stand up.
The mare is pulling at her ground tie, ears flat. I catch the rein and talk her down with a low sound, soothing her. She settles. I tie her reins around her neck so she doesn’t step on them, then watch as she gradually ambles off to graze nearby. If she heads back to the compound, someone will come out to find him. They’ll find the ridge empty, and the search party will come.
I might have hours, not days.
“Stay here, girl,” I murmur, wishing there was a better way to control this situation.
Work with what you’ve got.
I turn back to the unconscious male. Getting him to the truck is the hardest physical work I’ve done in years. I can’t carry him.I drag — his arm across my shoulders, his weight on my back, my legs doing the arithmetic.
“Fuck, you’re heavy,” I grumble beneath my breath.
Two hundred yards of stone and dry grass. The dirt shows the furrow of his boot heels the whole way, and I’ll have to come back and brush it out.
One thing at a time.
At the truck, I get him over the tailgate — a controlled roll that costs me my breath and most of my dignity. I pull a tarp over him and drive.