The rain in this city didn't just fall; it felt like a personal insult.
Andrea pulled her thin hoodie tighter around her shoulders, the damp fabric sticking to her scrubs in a way that made her skin crawl. It was 3:14 AM. She had just finished a double shift in the ER that had consisted primarily of cleaning up drunk frat boys and dodging the advances of a senior resident who smelled like old coffee and entitlement.
"Just six more months," she muttered to herself, her boots splashing into a oily puddle. "Six more months of this bullshit, and you'll have your pins. You'll have a real paycheck. You might even be able to afford a grilled cheese that isn't made of plastic."
She turned the corner into the shortcut—a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway that cut ten minutes off her walk to her cramped studio apartment. Every instinct she possessed told her this was a bad idea. Her mother's voice in her head was currently screaming about serial killers and urban legends.
But Andrea was tired. She was the kind of tired that lived in your bone marrow.
She was halfway through the alley when she heard it. A wet, ragged sound.
Hhhhh-uuh. It was the sound of someone trying to breathe through a chest full of fluid. Andrea froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that made her ears ring.
"Keep walking, Andrea," she whispered. "You didn't hear anything. You're a hallucinating, sleep-deprived student. Just keep walking."
Cough. Splat.
The sound of something heavy hitting the rain-slicked pavement followed. Andrea's brain told her to run. Her "nurse" brain—the part of her that had been drilled into submission by three years of clinicals—overrode it.
"Goddammit," she hissed, reaching into her bag for her penlight. "I am going to get murdered, and my landlord is still going to charge me for the cleaning deposit."
She clicked the light on. The beam sliced through the dark, reflecting off the falling rain until it landed on a heap of shadows slumped against a dumpster.
It wasn't just a heap. It was a man.
He was massive. Even crumpled in the dirt, he looked like he'd been carved out of granite and dipped in ink. He was wearing charcoal-grey trousers that probably cost more than her tuition, but his shirt was gone—or rather, it had been shredded.
Andrea gasped, her clinical detachment vanishing as she saw the sheer amount of blood. It was everywhere, mixing with the rain in a dark, shimmering river.
"Hey! Can you hear me?" She scrambled toward him, dropping to her knees in the filth. She didn't care about her scrubs anymore.
As she got closer, she realized why he was so massive. It wasn't just muscle; it was a presence. His skin was covered in intricate, dark tattoos—stars on his shoulders, a jagged church across his ribs, and Russian script she couldn't read.
"Don't... touch... me..."
The voice was a low, vibrating growl that seemed to rattle the very air. Andrea flinched. The man's eyes snapped open. They were a piercing, lethal blue that seemed to catch the light of her penlight and hold it.
"Oh, shut up," Andrea snapped, her sass flaring as her adrenaline peaked. "You're currently leaking all over the pavement, and I'm pretty sure I can see your spleen. You don't get to give orders."
She reached out to check his pulse, and the moment her fingers touched the skin of his neck, she almost jerked back.
He was burning.
"Jesus!" she breathed. "You're febrile. Like, 'call the CDC' febrile."
His skin wasn't just hot; it was radiating a dry, searing heat that felt like a furnace. He let out a jagged gasp as she shifted his weight to get a look at the wound in his side. It was a jagged, ugly hole—a gunshot, but something was wrong with it. The edges of the wound looked... charred. Not by fire, but like the flesh was being eaten away by acid.
"What the hell did they hit you with?" she whispered, her hands moving with practiced efficiency. She reached into her bag, pulling out a clean pair of gloves and a roll of gauze she'd 'borrowed' from the ER supply closet.
"Leave... it..." the man rasped. He tried to push her away, his massive hand trembling.
"I said shut up!" Andrea pressed the gauze into the wound, hard.
The man let out a sound that didn't belong to a human. It was a deep, guttural roar that made the hair on her arms stand up. His fingers gripped her wrist, his strength even in his dying state enough to make her bones groan.
"You're hurting me, you giant idiot!" she yelled back at him. "I'm trying to keep your insides from becoming outsides! Now stay still!"
He stared at her, his pupils blown wide, those strange blue eyes searching hers. For a second, something shifted. The air in the alley seemed to thicken, a heavy, musky scent of pine and ozone hitting her senses.
His grip on her wrist loosened, but he didn't let go. His thumb brushed against her pulse point, and for a terrifying second, Andrea felt a jolt of pure, unadulterated heat shoot up her arm and settle deep in her gut.
It wasn't a medical sensation. It was something primal. Something... hungry.
"Kotenok..." he whispered, the word a jagged caress.
"My name is Andrea," she snapped, trying to ignore the way her hands were shaking. "And if you call me 'kitten' again, I'll leave you here to bleed out. Now, hold this. I need to get my phone."
She reached for her bag, but the man's hand shot out, pinning her hand to the ground.
"No... phone," he managed, his voice dropping to a lethal, velvet shadow. "No... police."
"You've been shot! I'm a student, not a magician! You need a hospital!"
"No." His eyes suddenly flared, the grey bleeding into a terrifying, molten gold. "They... are coming."
"Who? The police? The ambulance?"
"The hunters."
Before Andrea could ask what the hell he was talking about, a howl echoed through the city streets. It wasn't a dog. It wasn't a coyote. It was a deep, chest-vibrating sound that made the very bricks of the alleyway shiver.
Andrea looked at the man. His wounds were smoking. Literally smoking.
"Okay," Andrea whispered, her brain finally winning the internal argument. "I have officially lost my mind. I am in a rainstorm, talking to a tattooed Russian who thinks he's in an action movie, and I'm pretty sure I just saw his eyes glow."
"Andrea..." He pulled her closer, his heat overwhelming her. "Save... me."
She looked down at him, at the blood on her hands and the raw, terrifying power in his gaze. She should run. She should get up and sprint until her lungs burned.
Instead, she looked at the silver-tinted bullet lodged deep in his muscle.
"Fine," she hissed, her voice trembling.
She didn't know it yet, but the life she had spent four years building was already over. The wolf had found his healer, and he had no intention of letting her go.