Prologue

"…Colby. Don't. Move." Ian cautioned in a tight voice, eyes never leaving the beast staring down the younger agent.

Colby gulped, the whites of his eyes clearly visible, reflecting the bright moonlight filtering through the lone window of the basement they were being held captive in.

An answering snarl came from the large animal.

David reached an arm out quickly, pulling Colby up and away from the sharp fangs. Off balance, Colby fell back against him and they both went crashing into the walls behind them in a heap.

The animal surged forward, teeth bared viciously.

Ian didn't hesitate. In one quick motion, he was between the wolf and the other two agents, bracing for the jarring impact of the furred body slamming into his own and the feeling of sharp fangs tearing into his skin.

The wolf leapt.

Chapter 1

One month earlier

"Don!" Ian shouted. "Don? Where are you?"

Ian unholstered his glock and entered the warehouse at a fast pace, mentally cursing Don's impulsiveness. They didn't have enough backup for this. Or any backup at all, for that matter. No radios. No cell service. Don apparently hadn't noticed or hadn't cared and chased after their suspect anyway, straight into the one building Ian couldn't see into from his vantage point on the adjacent roof.

By the time he'd made it down to ground level, Ian had lost sight of Don and had no clue as to which direction he'd gone.

The warehouse looked abandoned. If this was where the arms deal was going down, Ian had a feeling that it had either already happened or it wasn't happening tonight. Before running of like a damn fool, Don had signaled he had clear eyes on Jason Renner, a weapons dealer wanted for brutal murders committed in three different states. Ian had been tracking him for months.

And now Don was somewhere in the large warehouse with him, without backup and with no way of telling anyone his precise location.

When Ian found him, he was going to kill Don himself.

Suddenly a loud shout of "FBI! FREEZE!" could be heard in the distance. Don.

Quickly following was a pained yelp and two swift gunshots.

Then silence.

Ian ran dead out towards the sound. "DON!"

He eventually came upon a door leading into an office. The first thing he saw was blood coating the corner of the large wooden desk.

He stepped further into the room and saw the source - Don's still form lying in a pool of blood.

Ian's heart lurched. He quickly surged forward, kneeling down next to Don. He could see a gash in Don's forehead – likely what caught the edge of the desk, but in the low lighting he couldn't make out an injury that would have caused so much bloodshed.

He began trailing fingers over Don's still form, trying to find the injury. When his hand made contact with Don left bicep, a loud groan told him he'd found it.

"Ughhh. Wha-" Don muttered, clearly dazed and confused either from the head wound or the blood loss.

"Shut up," Ian snapped, suddenly pissed off. Don had looked dead before and it was his own stupid fault for charging in so recklessly when they had no idea who was aroun- Wait. "Don? Where did Renner go? Is there anyone else here?"

Don's eyes sluggishly met Ian's. "Thought I wasn' s'posed t'talk"

Ian growled in frustration, ripping off his jacket and wrapping it tightly around Don's injured arm, pointedly ignoring the loud hiss of pain Don released. "C'mon. We've got to get out of here. You've probably got a concussion," Ian said gruffly, hauling Don to his feet.

They made it back out to Don's SUV without running into anyone else, Ian half carrying, half dragging a severely wounded Don for most of the way. Once Don was securely in the passenger seat, Ian hopped in the driver's side and pulled his jacket away to get a better look at Don's arm.

He gaped in horror looking at the mangled mass of bloody flesh. He could even see bone peaking out of the wound. "Oh my God Don! What did he do to you?" Ian cried, retying the jacket around the gaping hole and quickly starting the car.

"Wha?" came Don's sluggish reply. " 'M fine, Ian. Jus' wan go home."

Ian glanced over in incredulous horror as he flipped on the emergency lights, but Don was already slumped over, passed out against the door.

They made it to the emergency room downtown in minutes, though it felt like hours to Ian, who was muttering to himself the entire way.

"He's gonna be fine. It can't be as bad as it looks. They won't let him lose the arm. It's going to be okay. It's fine. It's fine."

He didn't believe it for a second though. Wounds that big and that deep were highly prone to infection. Especially when obtained in a grimy environment like Don had. Ian had seen it hundreds of times in Afghanistan. You go in to a hospital with a mangled limb like that and nine times out of ten, by the time you woke up – if you woke up at all – you had a stump where your arm used to be.

Don would lose his career. Maybe even his life.

Ian didn't know what he'd do without him.

He spent the hour after two of the ER medics pulled Don out of his grasp and onto a hospital bed decidedly not thinking about it.

He was so lost in his personal nightmare, he didn't even think of calling in to the office and letting Don's team know what happened. He didn't remember to call Charlie or Alan either. He just waited, sitting in a hard plastic chair, staring into space until a nurse abruptly jerked him out of his thoughts.

"Sir…? Sir?"

"Huh?" Ian eyed the white shoes in front of him, eyes drifting upwards to pink scrubs, before finally focusing on bright blue eyes peering out at him from behind round glasses.

Seeing she finally had his attention, the young nurse beamed. "Sir? Are you here with Mister Eppes? You can come back now. He's almost ready to be released."

"Released?" Ian gaped at her.

The nurse nodded enthusiastically. "Yep. The doctor said as long as he wasn't going to be alone over night he'd be cleared for discharge." She spun on her heel, not waiting for Ian to comment further.

Ian followed behind her dumbly, not comprehending anything she'd said. He knew there had to be some kind of mistake. People didn't just go home for the night after sustaining an injury like that. It just didn't happen.

But when the nurse pulled back the curtain around one of the beds in the back of the ER, there was Don, sitting up and smiling, chatting with a man in a white coat, presumably the doctor.

Ian could only stare, and then he swiftly moved forward, enveloping Don in a tight hug.

"Hey…" Don said softly, bewilderment clear in his tone. "I told you, I was fine."

Ian pulled back, eyeing Don suspiciously for a few seconds, before summarily dismissing his words and leveling his best 'don't fuck with me' glare at the doctor.

The good doctor took an unconscious step back before clearing his throat and gently contradicting Don's words. "I wouldn't say 'fine' exactly. Don sustained a grade three concussion. He should be monitored closely for the next 48 hours for any changes in orientation or alertness, nausea, severe headaches, or altered vision. Additionally, his temperature is slightly elevated. If it continues to rise, then the cut is probably infected. I'm putting Don on a low-grade antibiotic, just in case. I trust you will be the one monitoring him?"

Ian nodded dumbly, accepting the script the doctor handed to him. "What about his arm?"

The doctor looked puzzled for a moment, before his expression cleared. "Oh! That. There was substantially less damage than the blood originally indicated. I didn't even need to stitch it."

Ian frowned. That just wasn't possible. He had seen bone. Bone.

"Just flesh wound, babe." Don said with a wink. "Blood must have been Renner's. I got a couple of shots off after all, didn't I? Must have gotten lucky with one of them."

Ian flashed him a skeptical look. If it had been Renner's, there would have been a blood trail. Not just a neat pool beneath Don's lifeless body. Ian shook his head to clear the gruesome image.

"Agent Eppes, if it's possible that it was another person's blood, we'll also run some blood tests to make sure you haven't inadvertently contracted an infection," the doctor informed pointedly.

And it was a sad state of affairs that the doctor speak for 'We're going to do a blood test to make sure the scum of the earth low-life that you were chasing down didn't give you HIV,' was the first thing anyone had said since he'd walked in the room that made sense to Ian. He shook his head tiredly. "Can I take him home then?"

"Of course," the doctor replied. "Nurse Amy will see you out."

The beaming nurse motioned for Don to take a seat in the wheelchair she brought over. Don grumbled a bit, but eventually relented and allowed the small woman to push him to the exit. Ian jogged ahead to retrieve Don's SUV from the parking lot, grateful to be leaving the hospital, but still thoroughly confused by what had transpired.

He knew what he saw. He wasn't some green agent that lost it over the sight of blood and he'd done triage enough to know when a wound was serious.

Something strange was going on, he was sure of it.

But driving over to the double doors of the ER entrance where Don was standing and waiting for him? So much better than sitting in a hard plastic chair for days on end, wondering how the love of his life was going to cope with the loss of an arm.

Maybe for once, he should just accept the mystery for what it was.

A miracle.