Dalton strips them off as Anders’s gaze runs over me, assessing.

“Left thigh, right arm, upper right chest,” I say.

“You’re still with us,” he says.

I nod. “Conserving energy. Chest worst. Didn’t go in deep. Just …” I hiss in pain as I inhale.

“Relax and let me look.”

I lie back. Dalton’s tearing his shirt into strips as Anders pushes mine up over my ribs.

“There’s water in the back,” he says. “Eric—”

“Got it.”

“Can I ask what the hell happened?”

Dalton hesitates. “It’s my fault. I—”

“We got separated,” I say. “I was attacked by a hostile.”

“Shit. This close to town? We need to do something about them,” Anders says grimly. “And we might need to reconsider the possibility our killer isn’t from Rockton after all.”

Dalton falters, the guilt and fear so strong it seems to paralyze him, as if he’s back in that moment, facing his brother.

Facing his brother.

I haven’t had time to make sense of that. I still don’t. I only know that something is wrong with Jacob. Whatever Jacob says, Dalton’s sin against him cannot warrant this level of vengeance. It just can’t.

“Eric?” I say, and he snaps out of it, mumbling more apologies as he hurries over with the water.

Anders cleans and binds my wounds as best he can. With every light-headed dip toward darkness, I shake myself back, and I manage to stay conscious until they load me into the ATV. Then I lose the battle.

Three

I wake in bed. My bed. Beth is checking one of my dressings. Dalton’s sitting on a chair he’s carried up from downstairs. He’s lost in thought, startled when I croak, “How bad is it?”

“Could have been worse,” Beth says.

I chuckle, which sends pain stabbing through me. “Damage report?”

She rattles it off matter-of-factly. Diana can call that cold, but it’s how some of us process and deliver data best.

The leg and arm were both shallow cuts. They hadn’t required stitches and shouldn’t scar, but hell, it’s not like I’d notice a few more anyway.

The chest wound isn’t as shallow, but Dalton pulled Jacob off before the blade penetrated far. It scraped my rib, which kept it from nicking my lung. I’m not going to bounce off to work in the morning, but I’ll be fine. In the meantime, the fact that I am relatively unconcerned about my injuries suggests I got a nice dose of opiates while I was unconscious. Beth confirms that.

“I also did a transfusion,” Beth says. “I have blood in the clinic, but since you’re a universal recipient and someone was very eager to make amends for getting separated in the woods, I did a direct transfusion.”

It takes a moment for me to realize whom she meant. Yep, they are good drugs. I glance at Dalton, and realize the slightly dazed look on his face is more than guilt and exhaustion.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I say.

He says nothing.

“You should go home,” I say. “Rest.”

“Casey’s right,” Beth says. “I’ll call Will to help you home.”

“I’m fine.”

“Eric …” I say, and I start to insist, but I fade, slumping back onto the pillow. Beth tucks me in with, “Get some sleep. I’ll send Eric home.”

I wake to find Dalton still in the chair. Beth’s gone and he’s alert enough now that when I open my eyes, he’s at my bedside.

“Didn’t obey the doctor’s orders, I see.”

“I understand if you don’t want me here—”

“No,” I say. “I do. But you look ready to drop.”

“I’m staying.”

“Okay.” I shift so he can sit on the bed. After some prodding, he does.

I say, “No one else knows about Jacob, do they?”

He shakes his head.

“Was it a long time ago?” I ask. “The separation?”

He nods and then blurts, “If I had any idea he’d ever—”

“You have a brother in the forest, Eric. One of the hostiles is your brother.”

“He’s not a—” He swallows the rest.

“Did it happen when you were kids?” I ask.

He nods.

“I’m going to guess he was either taken from the town or he wandered off, got lost out there, and was taken in by settlers.”

He pauses so long I don’t think I’m going to get an answer. Then he says, “Something like that.”

“And he blames you. Maybe you were with him when he got lost or he just blames you for not coming after him.”

“Something like—” He runs his hands through his hair, head dropping as he lets out a noise between a growl and a groan. “Jacob’s not a hostile. He’s never been—What you saw out there—I don’t know what’s happening, but that is not my brother.”

“Okay.”

He waits for me to argue. When I don’t, he shifts on the bed and faces me. “It happened when we were kids, like you said. By the time I saw him again, we were teenagers, and I tried to bring him to Rockton, but he wasn’t interested, and maybe I should have dragged his ass in here and—”

He stops, breathing so fast he can’t continue. He grips the bedspread, closes his eyes, and then continues, a little calmer. “The point is that he’s always been welcome here, but he’s not interested, and I respect that. As for what he blames me for … Yeah, I was a kid, and I made a mistake, and I thought I was doing the right thing, and …” He shakes it off. “Doesn’t matter. He does blame me for the separation. But it’s not like what you saw out there. He’s not like that. Even the smell …”