And then the dog helped Bull steer Frankie upstairs and into the shower. Leaving her there, he knelt in front of the pup. “You did a great job, buddy. You saved our girl. Brave dog, good dog.”

Leaning against Bull, Gryff ate up the praise as if he could understand every word.

“Your previous owner was an idiot. You’re no coward. You just didn’t have a good reason to fight before.” Bull hugged the furry dog. “You did good, my friend. Incredibly good.”

Gryff licked Bull’s chin, making him laugh.

“Okay, I’m going to go help Frankie.” Help her. Hold her. Reassure himself she was all right.

When he stepped into the shower, she was sitting on the tile under the water, head in hands. Crying.

His heart cracked in half.

“Frankie.” He knelt beside her, so small. So valiant. “Are you in pain?”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.” Bull turned her face toward him. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She was shaking despite the hot water pouring down on her. “It’s… I hit them so hard. To make them stop. I felt bones…break. And the man’s throat. I think I must have killed him, and…and…right then, I was okay with it. Wanting it. So, he—they—wouldn’t hurt me or you or anyone.”

Combat fever, eventually, came to an end and left a soldier sick right to his soul. “Yeah, I get it. It’s part of war.”

“I can still hear the screams and yelling, and it won’t stop, and I want to throw up and hide. That wasn’t me hurting those men. It wasn’t.”

He ached for her. Hell, she’d chosen aikido because it was the least aggressive of the martial arts, because she didn’t like attacking anyone. “I know.”

It’s how he felt about killing. “The aftermath still hits me hard, too. Some soldiers adapt; I never did.”

She leaned against him, taking his hand, silently offering sympathy in return.

After a minute, she took a deep breath. “I suppose we should wash up before the water turns cold.”

“Let’s do that.” He lifted her to her feet. A sweetly curved bundle of competence and courage with a temper worthy of her ancestors, and a swathe of compassion wider than the ocean. “I love you, Francesca Bocelli.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered. Turning in his arms, she pulled him down for a kiss.

Carefully, he removed the dressing on her leg. It was stitched up and no longer bleeding. Gently, he washed her, cataloging each darkening bruise and gash, then realized as she ran her hands over his back and made sympathetic sounds that she was doing the same.

Her fingers circled some damned painful places. “These are where bullets hit your vest, aren’t they?”

At the odd sound in her voice, he turned.

She’d pulled her lips in and blinked hard, obviously trying not to cry again. Because he’d been hit.

Gently, he touched the darker blotch over her ribs where a bullet had cracked her rib. “Good thing we armored up, huh?”