Chapter 64

🜼 🜼 🜼

A visitor had come calling.

It was early, the sun having only just begun to gild the sky. With autumn close at hand, a crisp morning chill drifted through the seaside neighborhood, which lay as still as a painted landscape. The grand houses nestled along the lush coast served mostly as vacation homes, so on weekdays the area fell quiet, broken only by the gentle wash of waves and the distant cries of gulls.

Yuri Kiselyov was stretching before heading out for his morning walk. Once, ten minutes of warming up would have been more than enough; now, he needed over twenty. The serious accident he had suffered not long ago had left both his stamina and his muscles badly diminished. He had spent an entire month in a coma before awakening, almost miraculously, a few weeks earlier, and had only just completed the most basic stages of rehabilitation.

Once he felt reasonably prepared, he bent to adjust his running shoes. After tightening the laces, he raised his head and found himself staring into a pair of eyes.

SWOOSH

A white muzzle and brown nose protruded from the bushes beside the road leading toward the shore.

Yuri regarded the unannounced visitor in silence. It was a dog, brown overall, with white fur mixed across its chest, legs, and face. Pale, rounded markings sat above its eyes like eyebrows, and its ears stood half upright, their tips folded over.

Is it a stray?

It had been a long time since Yuri had seen an abandoned animal without an owner. Unlike his hometown, where government oversight barely extended, Vancouver had very few stray dogs. At most, he occasionally encountered coyotes racing through a park or raccoons prowling through someone’s backyard.

This unsettled him in a way that finding an obnoxious raccoon digging through the garbage did not. He had no idea what people in ordinary neighborhoods were supposed to do with stray dogs. Back home in Saratov, attitudes toward them varied; the worst sort of people threw stones, while others tossed them scraps of bread left over from a meal.

Yuri had generally been one of those who shared whatever he happened to be eating.

The dog did not run, even when their eyes met. Its blue gaze, however, was brimming with suspicion, and Yuri sensed that any sudden movement might provoke an equally sudden response. Until he knew whether it was aggressive, he needed to proceed carefully.

In his former condition, even a wild predator would have posed little difficulty. Now, he could not exert much strength. If the dog had rabies, fleeing rather than confronting it would be the sensible choice, but it would take him several more months to recover enough to outrun one.

Releasing the shoelace in his hand, Yuri slowly straightened. The dog’s gaze followed every movement. Its eyes were such an unusual blue that he found himself studying them before deliberately looking away. He had no intention of maintaining eye contact long enough for the animal to interpret it as a challenge.

Once he looked aside, the rest of its body came into view. It must have been wandering for quite some time. Its brown coat was dirty and coarse, the white fur across its chest clumped together, and its hide clung so tightly to its frame that every rib showed. It appeared to be a naturally thick-coated breed; for its bones to remain so visible beneath all that fur, it had to be in terrible condition.

The evidence of starvation soured Yuri’s mood. His pale, expressionless face tightened, and he frowned faintly as he considered what might be in the kitchen. This was not his own home in Vancouver, and he felt uncomfortable taking food from someone else’s kitchen without permission. Even so, that seemed better than sending the dog away in its current state.

Having made up his mind, Yuri backed away quietly so as not to startle it. The dog neither fled nor lunged. It simply crouched inexpertly behind the bushes and stared at him, as if it might wait for his return.

Yuri had just turned toward the house when the back door flew open.

“Yuri!”

The moment the dog saw the tall man emerging through the doorway, it recoiled. Yuri turned sharply to check on it, but the frightened animal had already spun around and begun to flee. Watching it limp away, he noticed that it held its left hind leg awkwardly off the ground.

As Yuri stood gazing toward the woods, the man hurried over, almost breaking into a run. The distinctive pheromones of an Alpha rolled from him, wavering with anxiety. Their owner looked every bit as alarmed as his scent suggested.

Yuri slowly turned toward him, lifting his chin until their eyes met.

His eyes were beautiful, a vivid green.

They looked as though summer itself had been distilled and captured within them, and the instant Yuri saw them, his heart began beating to an entirely different rhythm. The still surface of his emotions rippled, exposing everything that had lain hidden beneath. A fine tremor stirred deep in his throat, almost making him dizzy, and his breathing quickened. Heat rose through him, warming the fingertips that had begun to grow cold in the morning air.

“Cherriot.”

He murmured the name he could have repeated endlessly without ever tiring of it.

Only then did Cherriot’s expression ease. His hurried steps gradually slowed until he stopped in front of Yuri. When Yuri noticed the bare white feet planted in the grass, a faint crease appeared between his brows.

“I opened your door, and you weren’t there. You scared me half to death. Why are you awake already, Yuri? It’s far too early. You should sleep until ten.”

Concern spilled from Cherriot the moment he came to a stop. His eyebrows drooped as he rapidly examined Yuri with anxious green eyes. Although the gunshot wound had long since healed, Cherriot had treated him like an invalid without fail since the moment he awoke.

Yuri waited in silence until Cherriot finally paused for breath, then said what had been on his mind from the beginning.

“You came outside barefoot.”

Cherriot’s feet were as beautiful and flawless as the rest of him. His toenails were as neat and rounded as his fingernails, while the toes extending from his pale insteps were long and straight. The thought of those pretty feet, touched with a healthy pink, being injured against the bare ground made Yuri uneasy.

“Oh.”

Only after Yuri pointed it out did Cherriot seem to realize. He blinked and lowered his head, and his slightly disheveled reddish-gold hair slipped forward. Yuri watched the movement with helpless fondness.

He was enormous, yet sometimes he behaved like a small child.

“I forgot because I was in such a hurry. It’s all right, though. It’s only grass.”

Cherriot might have considered it all right. Yuri did not.

After studying his feet for another moment, Yuri bent down and began untying the running shoes he had so firmly secured. Cherriot was taller and broader than he was, and his feet were correspondingly larger, but he could at least crush them into Yuri’s shoes long enough to get inside.

“There may be stones. Put these on before you go back in.”

Cherriot had been watching in confusion as Yuri loosened the laces. At those words, his brows drew together. Yuri, never one to hesitate once he had chosen a course of action, immediately started removing one shoe, only for Cherriot to seize his arm.

“Be reasonable. Are you seriously trying to make me take the shoes off a sick man?”

Cherriot’s grip was strong enough to stop him, but he immediately seemed to realize his mistake and relaxed his hand. His fine lashes trembled apologetically.

“I’m sorry. That hurt, didn’t it? I wasn’t careful with my strength.”

Yuri looked up at him without speaking. Slowly straightening, he considered how he might finally make Cherriot understand that he had recovered. Considering everything that had happened, Cherriot’s behavior was not incomprehensible. Still, Yuri did not want him worrying this much.

About two months earlier, there had been a shooting. The incident, whose scale none of them could have imagined when Cherriot first went to see Alexei, had fortunately ended without casualties. What they had initially assumed to be a threat born from some romantic entanglement turned out to be a plot devised by Cherriot’s uncle.

Cherriot had two uncles, and Jackson Goodnight, the architect of the scheme, was the younger of them. His motive had been money. His finances were apparently so ruinous that stealing Cherriot’s trust fund would not have satisfied him; he wanted the entire family fortune.

Jackson Goodnight had squandered his own trust through a taste for luxury and gambling, and he had also taken out numerous loans by exploiting the family’s reputation and credit. To pay his mounting debts, he repeatedly borrowed money from those around him, launched businesses, and drove them into the ground until he finally reached a point from which there was no return. Obsessed with preserving the dignity of the Goodnight name, he could not bring himself to admit the truth of his financial condition. In the end, he turned to illegal funds and became entangled with a criminal organization called the Hell’s Watchmen. Once his life itself came under threat, he decided to cross a line that could never be uncrossed.

He would kill everyone except his own wife and son, including his elderly parents. Remarkably, the plan had originated with Jackson Goodnight rather than the Hell’s Watchmen. According to the police investigation, Jackson’s finances had been in disarray for years, and his association with criminal groups had lasted far longer than anyone realized. The scheme might have succeeded had Alexei and Yuri not intervened.

Thanks to Alexei uncovering the plan to massacre everyone attending the family party, no one was killed.

There had been one crisis, however, when Jackson’s son, Joseph, lured Cherriot away so that he could kill him first. Cherriot had nearly died that day. He would have, had Yuri not taken the bullet in his place.

That was why Cherriot now worried over him to an almost excessive degree. Even after Yuri emerged from the coma, completed rehabilitation, and became capable of ordinary daily life, Cherriot continued treating him as though he were still recovering from the gunshot.

Yuri knew it was rooted in guilt and a sense of indebtedness. Cherriot could hardly bear seeing anyone injured, and he had witnessed something horrific at close range. It was perfectly understandable that the experience had traumatized him and left him hypersensitive.

Yet that was precisely why Yuri wanted him to stop worrying. Cherriot, not Yuri, was the one who had endured something truly terrifying. His own family had planned to murder him, and he had watched another person take a bullet directly in front of him. His mind had to be in tatters, yet instead of looking after himself, Cherriot spent every waking hour tending to Yuri.

Yuri felt guilty for that.

Most people sought counseling to process trauma after an ordeal like this, but Cherriot had not even allowed himself time to rest. He was frequently summoned to cooperate with the investigation and prepare for the criminal trial, yet he still exhausted himself caring for someone like Yuri.

Whenever Yuri reflected on the day he had taken the bullet for Cherriot, regret rose within him. He despised himself for failing to account for the variable Joseph posed while dealing with the mercenaries, and the knowledge that his own stupid oversight had almost gotten Cherriot killed was unbearable. If he had at least been shot somewhere Cherriot could not see, Yuri might not have felt so guilty.

Instead, it had happened directly before Cherriot’s eyes. Yuri therefore resented the injury itself and hated Cherriot caring for it even more. Yet he could not apologize.

When he had finally regained the ability to speak after awakening from his long sleep, saying that he was sorry had made Cherriot cry. Yuri had been disoriented when he first regained consciousness. It felt as though he had surfaced from the deepest sleep of his life, only to open his eyes upon a situation he could never have anticipated.

Cherriot screamed his name, and Dolly rushed away to fetch the doctor. That was how Yuri discovered he had awakened not in a hospital, but in Cherriot’s home. Even that alone had been bewildering.

Truthfully, Yuri had been certain he was going to die. He had already taken several bullets in the preceding fight and had no strength left, while the final round had struck him in the abdomen. Abdominal gunshot wounds often proved fatal, and the instant the bullet tore into his flesh, Yuri sensed that the end had come. He had believed he would never open his eyes again.

If he did, he expected to wake in hell. Instead, he regained consciousness in an unfamiliar room. It was neither his home in Vancouver nor a hospital, but a place steeped everywhere in Cherriot’s scent and pheromones.

The instant he recognized it as Cherriot’s space, he saw a pair of green eyes gazing down at him through the beautiful sunlight. Relief flooded him. Once he understood that Cherriot was alive, sleep dragged him under again. For a time, he alternated between long stretches of unconsciousness and brief awakenings.

After lying still for so long, even moving a finger remained difficult for several days. When he could finally keep his eyes open and speak properly, he and Cherriot exchanged a few words.

The first thing Yuri asked was whether Cherriot was all right. The second was an apology.

Ever since his thoughts had cleared, he had wanted to say it. He was sorry he had not found Cherriot sooner, sorry his miscalculation had allowed Joseph to nearly kill him, and sorry Cherriot had been forced to watch him take the bullet. Cherriot had been smiling as he told Yuri that he was finally allowed to eat soup.

The moment Yuri apologized, however, he fell silent. Cherriot had never stopped smiling while caring for him from the day he awakened, but for the first time, the smile vanished. Yuri could still remember that expression with painful clarity.

Cherriot’s chest heaved as though he could no longer breathe, and his dark reddish-brown brows twisted. His hand clenched around the little spoon he had been holding until the metal bent, and then his shoulders began to tremble. The soft curve of his lips collapsed, followed by the rest of his face. Cherriot squeezed his eyes shut, his brow knotted with anguish, and tears spilled down his hollowed cheeks.

The reaction was so unexpected that Yuri was genuinely stunned.

When sobs began escaping through Cherriot’s parted lips, Yuri’s heart constricted with pain. He dared to touch him then. A hand that had never comforted a crying person awkwardly closed around Cherriot’s shoulder, and the larger man folded toward him as though collapsing.

Both arms reached out and wrapped tightly around Yuri.