Luka was dying. Pain radiated from his back. Slow tears trickled down his face and dropped into the patches of snow underneath him.

At least he was alone here. Sometimes when the nightmares came, more and more often, he thought he was back with them.

Whimpering, he curled into the fetal position. The wound on his back pulled and oozed more blood. He hugged himself like he had done so many nights.

He needed someone.

He should be hungry. He hadn’t been strong enough to hunt for some time. But his belly was sunken, just another tight pain like the rest of him.

He groped for his knapsack, the only thing he’d been able to salvage when he’d abandoned the old blue truck. He had to sit up to squint at his journal in the harsh light, flipping through pages, his fingers cramped and swollen. As much as he needed to express himself, he didn’t think he could manage it anymore.

Pages and pages of drawings, all of him, Luka’s dream man, his healer.

He’d started dreaming about his healer when he’d been a captive. He remembered the first time he’d tried to draw him his fingers had been crusted with his own blood, but when he managed a part of the man’s face, scratched into a cedar wall, he’d forgotten his swollen lip, his broken ribs.

He’d stared at the man in the light of the single candle he saved for special occasions, feeling something… He wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t pain, though it made his chest ache.

Now looking at that face he could lie down again, feeling familiar peace. He only had a pencil, so he couldn’t fill in colors, but Luka knew his vision had gray eyes with squint lines at the corners and rugged features, bronzed by the elements. His hair was brown and shaggy with threads of white at the temples. He had big hands, gentle hands, healing hands. Sometimes when Luka was really sore, when just turning over made him whimper from pain, Luka would picture those caring hands on him.

He’d never experience that. The late April snows had taken him by surprise, and he had no camping gear, not after the way he’d escaped. When he’d been hungry, he’d roamed as the wolf, finding game. More and more he’d spent time as the wolf but a bullet wound from a hunter’s rifle had creased his back and the pain had fractured his ability to change.

Now he lay naked and shivering under the canopy of a pine tree, its boughs weighed heavy by the last snow of winter. The wind cut under the branches, ice pellets striking his exposed flesh.

Dempsy had told Luka over and over again he was barely worth keeping alive. He knew he had only one use. He squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered what that was. Dempsy’s rough hands on him, his breath hot against the back of Luka’s neck as he—

No. He was going to die out here, he knew that, but he was going to die a free wolf. He wouldn’t think of the pit, of watching his father and brothers and cousins go down.

It wasn’t so bad anymore. He was getting warmer, as if something kind had touched him when he surrendered. He didn’t have to fight anymore, or hide, or be afraid.

* * * *

Charlie Danvers shook his snowshoe, trying to free some of the ice that encrusted it so he could continue his solitary tramp through the still, crystalline forest. Here nothing was between him and his maker, as his pa used to say.

He smiled. He missed the old man, though he’d been gone since Charlie was twenty, fifteen years ago. Now he had no one to share the work with, the small triumphs, the crushing sadness when he failed to save one of his rescue animals. His grandfather had founded a small nature reserve on Danvers Peak way back when most people didn’t think this land was good for anything but cattle and logging. Charlie strove to protect the slice of pristine wilderness.

It was lonely work. When the sole cowboy working his land had passed away from a heart attack two years ago, Charlie had been left badly short-handed. Since then he’d made do with the help of volunteers. He knew he had to hire someone on, but the work required a special affinity for the wild.

He sucked in a breath that felt like cold fire deep in his chest. Directly ahead of him was a foot, sticking out from underneath the shelter of a pine. What the hell?

His heart jumped and he crawled under the branches as quickly as he could. He found a man lying half-covered with snow, naked, his arms, chest and legs exposed to the brutal elements.

Charlie ripped off his glove and put his fingertips against the stranger’s neck. At first he only felt cold damp flesh.

The man’s eyes snapped open. Dark green. Jungle green. Feral and wild.

Charlie caught his breath, an icy trickle working down his back.

“You found me!” The stranger’s lips cracked and bled as a beautiful smile illuminated his face, like a warm candle in the midst of the frozen land.

Charlie knelt, suspended in the moment, heart again thumping in his ears. The man’s eyes shut and his breath whispered out of his chest as though it was his last.

“No. No!” Charlie yanked off his thermal coat, pulling the young man up and wrapping it around him. On his back a long wound oozed blood and pus. Shit, it looked like a bullet wound. Someone had shot this man!

Charlie stared at his face… He was a stunning man, but one side of his face was marred by thick scarring, the flesh looking melted as if it had been burned. The mark was as big as Charlie’s fist. “Jesus, fella,” Charlie growled. What the hell had happened to him?

Charlie didn’t waste any more time speculating. He managed to drag the stranger by the feet from under the tree, then hefted him into a fireman’s carry. Only the fact the man was so thin made it possible for Charlie to huff his way back in the direction of his snowmobile.

Halfway there he fell, snow getting under the collar of his sweater. Charlie shuddered as it melted against his skin. The man didn’t react and Charlie was too scared to see if he could find a pulse. Limp in Charlie’s arms, he wasn’t looking good.

“Don’t you give up,” he said. “I got you now, so don’t you give up.”

Eyelashes flickered in the lean face but he didn’t see any other sign his words had registered. The startling green eyes didn’t open again.

Desperate, Charlie yanked off his snowshoes, the boots underneath and stripped off his waterproof pants and jerked them onto the stranger. Body heat left him and he became clumsy, sluggish.

But he couldn’t waste time. He dragged the stranger the rest of the way to his snowmobile, then strapped him onto the back, grunting from the dead weight.

“Hold on,” he said, starting up the engine. He went over the topography of this part of his land in his head, quickly deciding to risk the lake if the ice was thick enough. It would cut the time necessary to get to his cabin.

He picked up speed, passing the skirts of trees and breaking through powder bare of anything but animal tracks here and there. Shivering constantly, Charlie had to get to the cabin as much as the stranger. This late storm had been a bad one, bringing a wet cold that sank into his bones and made them ache.

At the lake, he settled for skirting by the frozen beach, not wanting to risk the heavy machine and double weight on spring-fragile ice. Beyond the trees he looked over the water and could see his log cabin. His grandfather had built it, using the forest’s wood and beach rocks gathered from the lake’s shore in the large chimney.

Charlie skidded to a stop at the chipped wooden front stairs. He unstrapped the young man and slung him over his shoulder again while he climbed carefully. He shouldered open the door and once inside, kicked it shut.

He tramped through the great room toward the couches near the big hearth. A small fire still crackled. He eased the stranger on to one of the couches, then reached for kindling and a log to build up the fire. His hands were shaking so hard he burned one, swearing under his breath.

From behind him, he caught a slight sound and looked to see the stranger watching him with sleepy eyes. Good, that was good. He had to get warm. If he fell asleep, he might be in real trouble and Charlie’s place was too remote for a quick rescue.

He turned up the heat in the cabin, something he didn’t usually bother with since the fire was pretty efficient. He stripped off his damp sweater and T-shirt before kneeling in front of the man.

“Can you understand me, buddy?” he asked. The guy had sounded a bit odd back on the mountainside. Perhaps the cold or the wound on his back had affected him.

The man nodded, his eyes solemn on Charlie’s face.

“You need to get that borrowed clothing off. I’m going to run a bath for you in the loft, try to get you warmed up.” He paused. “Uh, what’s your name?”

“L-Luk-ka.” The voice was like a feather floating down to the floor from a down comforter, a small voice, an uncertain voice. Charlie felt his own throat tighten in response. This young man seemed afraid of his own shadow and yet Charlie couldn’t forget the feral look in his eyes when he’d first seen him.

“Luka.” He waited but nothing else was offered so he shrugged. Okay. Some people came to these mountains to lose themselves, to lose their pasts. He could understand that and give a man room.

“I’m Charlie. I’ll, uh, get that bath water going.”

He clomped up the stairs to the loft, aware of Luka’s gaze on him the whole time which made him feel self-conscious. And that was plain dumb. Probably he was feeling this way because he spent far too much time alone except for the animals he’d rescued. Wild animals on the reserve, some in the hospital and fenced rehabilitation areas.

In the loft where he slept, he skinned out of his jeans, leaving only his boxers. His legs stung a little, still chilly. He went to the bathroom and turned the taps.

An abrupt picture of climbing in the tub with Luka so they could both use it to warm up popped into his head. His cheeks reddened. Holy shit!

“Charlie.” The voice was timid.

He jumped and turned to find Luka hesitating at the top of the loft stairs.

“Crap, you should have waited until I could help you!”

Luka’s jaw set and he shook his head, but his legs were wobbling.

Charlie stalked to him and put an arm around his shoulders, supporting him. “Come on, you’ll feel better when you warm up.”

Luka was naked, his body ice white, cold to the touch. Charlie hustled him to the tub then carefully—Christ!—as carefully as possible, helped him into the water.

For a suspended moment, nothing happened but having been damn cold before, Charlie could imagine the pain as warm water touched Luka’s chilled body.

Charlie waited for Luka to swear at him or to tell him how he wound up in the woods in the altogether.

Instead, Luka cried.

In total silence, Luka wept, big tears running down his cheeks and dripping into the tub water.

Helpless, heart aching, Charlie knelt beside him, finally reaching out to place a tentative hand on Luka’s shoulder. Luka tensed for a moment and a wild look was in his eyes.

Without knowing what else to do, Charlie talked, not really aware of what he was saying, just stuff like his list of chores for the day.

Luka put his head on his knees, wrapped his arms around himself and wept.