Keep Her Safe From Me

d the hiker's blood soaked through my jac

much before the pain took the rest of his words. Forty-two years old, a schoolteacher from Ohio, in Colorado for a week of hiking he had saved for

the snow under my boots and the way the pines leaned away from the wind. My fingers had stopped

most of the climb, watching through my eyes, and

he said. Not the m

ad learned to keep my mou

w. Two paramedics were wrestling a stretcher out of the back, and a woman in a dark green jacket stood

That was the first thing. T

. Snow, cold and clean. Antiseptic, sharp and faintly sweet. Coffee gone stale in a paper cup. And u

on him bristling, and he made a sound

e said.

away with the other stories they told around the pack house fire. The scent that fin

bleeding on my shoulder. Whateve

d. Her voice cut through the wind

as I could. He groaned, and

leave,"

eant it, and I hated how easily the lie sat i

shade darker than the pines, and there was a small white line at the corner of her mouth where she had been biting her lip.

medics. "Get the tourniquet above the knee. I

idden with me twice before, leaned in. "Doctor, his leg is

ing here," she said. No heat in it. Just the flat cert

eter's knee to the middle of his shin, a deep tear where the rock had opened him up. I presse

nd then at me, and somet

trail with him on

es

since noon. The station s

one h

Then she turned back to Peter and started giving orders again, a

oint she put her bare hand over mine to show me where to press, and the touch went through me like a struck wire. Her fi

e did not say anything. She looked at my face, at my eyes, for a bea

gone ver

, he

told

r and slid him inside. She stripped her gloves off and dropped them in the red bag, and h

gers are the color of a fish belly and you hav

m f

and you're bleedin

id to walk away up the trail and not look back. The mate bond was a pack law matter. A human wh

said, "what'

"Clara Reyes. Get

on my jacket, I realized, in the same white

in t

my shoulders, watching her hands. The ambulance swayed, and the sirens were loud, and at one point she rea

lass vial with a gray stopper and a smear of dark red ins

d her face did not change, and

," she said.

e bus and listened to the tires hiss through the slush and did no

the date, and I knew what had been found up there three weeks ago, beca

rs had g

he said. She

ra looked up at me across Peter's stretcher, and he

d away. Instead I stayed where I was, and that