Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) by S.P. Wayne Read Free Book Online Page A

out of a sucking gut wound.
    "Right," Dana repeated, for his own benefit. Briskly, he tugged up his surgical mask and snapped a pair of latex gloves on his hands. "Time to get to work."
    And yet--he waited. He waited attentively, poised with a pair of disinfected tongs in his hand--but he waited.
    Then it happened quickly, like wind rippling across a field of wildflowers. Axton went from wolf to man. It was his body's last ditch effort to survive.
    Dana sighed, something loosening in his chest, and then moved fast.
     
    ++
    When Axton awoke, he was groggy with sedatives, the sharp scent of disinfectant stung in the air, and Dana was sitting next to his bed reading a book.
    Breathe , Axton thought, and it was the first word that came back. No--others had come back in his drugged dreams. Stay , he had heard, not in his own voice, and then he placed the sound in his memory and he had thought: Leander . How long had it been since he had known his lover's name?
    ( time , Axton said to himself clearly; the word is time and you have lost much of it )
    Man and wolf and hunt and hunger and forest and air and water and then the names for so many animals. And then the Latin names for them came, and then Axton opened his eyes.
    "Ice chips?" Dana asked languidly, just barely looking up from his book to offer a cup.
    Axton stopped. Maybe all his words hadn't come back yet. He did not understand how to answer that--but it wasn't that he did not know what ice chips were once he thought about it. It was that he did not know how to say all that he felt. When he finally decided it still took him a long time to speak. He had forgotten how to push air out of his lungs that way, how to force it up and how to shape his throat to make sounds, and how to move his mouth, how to hold his lips.
    Mostly he coughed.
    Then, low, raw:
    "Why?"
    Dana shrugged, mouth moving with his shoulders.
    "Why what? Why did I shoot you, or why did I take the time to extract the bullets and sew you up nicely?" He reached over and picked up a plastic jar, rattling it. Bullet shells jangled.
    "No," Axton managed, voice rougher than gravel. " Why . I was--" he stopped, shook his head, distressed. It hurt to talk, but it also hurt in a different way to explain. "--fine. Before."
    "You were feral and stuck in one shape and out of your goddamn mind."
    "Why bring me," Axton struggled to finish, "--back?"
    "I did what I had to do," Dana said, snapping his book shut decisively. "And you didn't make it easy."
    "You shot me," Axton croaked.
    "Ooh, yes, and doesn't that hurt your pretty widdle feelings," Dana cooed, bringing his hand up to the base of his throat in a mocking, camp gesture. Then, in his normal voice: "Sucks, don't it?"
    Axton didn't rise to the sarcasm and instead regarded Dana carefully.
    "You were afraid," he whispered finally. "I smelled it."
    Dana glanced away, the haughtiness gone out of his face.
    "I don't want you to die," he allowed.
    "And yet ," Axton objected, pushing himself up to his elbows and coughing with the effort.
    Dana offered him the ice chips.
    Axton stared at the cup for a long time.
    How? Fingers. But how? Axton sat up a little more to free his arm and started at his hand. How, damnit, how? He wiggled his fingers experimentally and then tried to take the cup. He almost dropped it.
    Patiently, Dana caught it and then he unwound Axton's fingers and then wrapped them around the cup securely.
    "See," he said into Axton's ashamed silence. "You were far gone. You don't remember things."
    "I remember," Axton said defiantly.
    "No you don't," Dana said. "You probably can't even walk right yet and you're going to stumble around like a newborn calf when you try."
    Axton clenched his jaw, but did not take the implied challenge.
    "It's okay, though," Dana said. "Fine motor skills always return last but you're doing great. You'll remember how to use this body in no time."
    "You've seen someone get stuck before," Axton said. It wasn't a question. He picked at