Pack of Her Own, page 12
“Shit,” I said under my breath. Then I heard the sirens in the distance. I picked up Natalie, being careful of her broken arm, and carried her back into the cabin. I pulled off the sheets on the bed and laid her down before I returned to the front porch. Zeke’s police cruiser pulled up, along with an ambulance and a large, white unmarked panel van.
“Did we miss the party?” Zeke called as he got out of the car.
“Not by much.” I gestured around to the back of the cabin. “Left some dessert for you and your boys, though.”
He gave me a grim smile. “How thoughtful.”
“You know me. Always thinking of my friends.”
He scoffed and rounded up several of his people before heading around the cabin. The ghouls would gather up the bodies scattered around and put them in their refrigerated truck for transport. I was lucky that I’d never had to see their truly demonic visages when they decided to eat, but I’d heard the sounds once.
I’d had nightmares for a week.
Heather stepped out of the car next. She was watching me carefully as she followed them. If she ran, I’d know it. And I’d catch her. She wasn’t in any shape to do it.
Out of the ambulance came Hikaru, who hurried up to the cabin. “Where is she? Is she all right?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, I led her into the bedroom so she could take a look at my wounded human. It took her only a couple of minutes to examine Natalie. Hikaru winced sharply at some of the wounds and paid special attention to her arm.
Then she turned back to me with a small smile. “It’s not bad,” she began. “The arm will need to be reset and immobilized for a while, but the rest is relatively minor.” She put fingers on Natalie’s head and gently prodded around her ginger hair. “And I’ll maybe run a CT scan for any head injuries. I’m worried about this contusion on her head.”
I turned away from Natalie’s body, laid out on the bed like that. “This was my fault,” I whispered.
“Wren, don’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known this was going to happen.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care. I shouldn’t have befriended her. I made her a target. I put her in a position to get hurt, and now look!” I flung my hand out in her direction. “All because I wanted to be friendly! To cook her some food so the poor thing didn’t starve! This is why we don’t get involved with humans!”
“Stop! If you want to get all pity party and woe-is-you, you do it later. Right now, I need your help to get her in the ambulance so we can take her back to the clinic. Got it?”
I didn’t turn. “Can’t you just, you know, give her your blood or something? Doesn’t that heal humans?”
Something small but hard hit my shoulder. Hikaru’s fist. “Healing the natural way would be best for her, you know that. I don’t know what she’s going to remember when she awakens, but this is not the right way for her to be introduced into our world. Giving her my blood is one of the last options I would reach for.”
“Why?”
“Because if I give her too much she might turn. Do you want that? Taking that decision away from her and making her like me?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t. I just want her to be okay.”
“Then help me make her okay.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to draw in a deep breath. Then I focused on the shift, letting my body return to its human form. “Okay,” I whispered, “let’s do this.”
I helped Hikaru get the gurney and transfer Natalie onto it before putting her in the back of the truck. If anyone had an issue with me being naked, they didn’t speak up. Which I was thankful for. Heather came around the corner as we were getting ready to leave, and climbed into the passenger seat with a determined look on her face.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Coming with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my Alpha now.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “No, I’m not. I’m nobody’s Alpha.”
“You killed the asshole who held my leash. Now it’s yours. If you want it.”
“I don’t! I don’t want anyone’s leash!”
“And that’s exactly why I’m freely giving it.” She took in a deep breath like she was trying to cleanse something from her body. “For the first time since I found out I was a wolf, I can give it to who I want to. You gave me that freedom. So, I’m sticking with you.”
My hands clenched into fists on the steering wheel hard enough to make indents. Hikaru cleared her throat from the back. “Wren, maybe I should drive.”
I didn’t bother trying to argue. I slipped into the back to sit beside Natalie as Hikaru took the driver’s seat. I ignored everything and everyone as we pulled out and headed back to Terabend. I took Natalie’s hand in both of mine, clutched it tightly, and whispered a prayer to the Mother of Wolves that she would be okay.
And maybe, just maybe, she would see me as a woman. Instead of a monster.
Chapter Twenty
Wren
Hikaru had been practicing in Terabend for a long time, and her clinic was probably almost as equipped as any small, regional hospital. It helped to have a small community of supernatural beings like myself in town, able to provide assistance, or to ensure we were the ones to get hurt over the humans. But, clearly, sometimes the humans got hurt too.
Meg was still resting in the smaller recovery room, the one that most of the town knew about. Me? I was sitting in an armchair in the other room, the one in the back that most of the town never saw. An IV was hooked into my arm and a bag of my own blood trickled down the line. It was supposed to help defuse the silver still in my system from the bullet, so that I could heal properly. We’d never had a reason to test the theory until now.
Natalie was still asleep, her broken arm held immobilized in a cast after Hikaru and I had reset the bone. Bandages covered her legs and arms and around her head.
There was no way my wolf was going to let her lie there alone. Hikaru had been nice enough to lend me a pair of scrubs, and let me tell you, I was seriously considering adding a theme to the diner—a hospital theme or something. These things were damned comfy.
My shoulder too had been repatched and rebandaged since shifting had destroyed the old bandage. Never mind it had been covered in blood from the fight in the woods. Looking back, I felt a sense of loss for ruining Natalie’s work from the night before.
I shook my head, staring at the woman on the bed in front of me. Even injured, scared, and probably half-delirious, she’d still realized that I was the same wolf she’d operated on after seeing my fur and the shoulder wound. Would she remember when she woke up?
Did I want her to?
It’d be easier if she forgot. If this was just a random act of violence. Better still if she believed that I was into something dangerous. Then she’d stay far, far away from me, no matter how much it made my heart ache and my wolf go nuts with the mere thought. She scrabbled and clawed inside me, desperate to curl up with our proposed mate and lick her wounds clean.
I was about to agree with her when the door creaked open, and Hikaru entered on silent feet. She carried a large folder, a frown on her face as her eyes swept the room, finally coming to rest on me.
“Is she…” I took a breath. “Is she okay?”
Hikaru hesitated too long.
“What is it?”
She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “It’s not that simple,” she said, closing her eyes. “Her arm will heal fine, and the minor injuries are nothing to worry about.”
“But?” I prompted her when she fell silent.
“But there’s something in her head.” She opened the folder and pulled out a scan of something that looked kind of like a brain. “She has intracranial damage. She must’ve taken a blow or two to the head or something. It’s making her brain swell and there’s no guarantee she’s going to come back from that.”
My head snapped up and a growl rumbled from my chest. “No. That’s not an option,” I snarled. “What can we do? Surgery? Medications? What?”
“Wren, it’s not that simple.”
“Bullshit! They pull off miracle shit in hospitals all the damned time.”
“Yes, Wren, in hospitals. I may be well equipped here—for good reason—but I can’t pull off this kind of miracle alone.”
“Okay, so we get her to a hospital.”
She scoffed. “How? The nearest one is hours away and I can’t promise you she’ll survive the trip.” She put the folder on the table beside the bed and turned to me. “Wren, I—”
“Don’t!” I said. “Don’t you fucking dare say she’s going to die! I won’t let her.”
“What are you going to do? Turn her?”
I stared at her. “That’s an option?”
She threw her hands in the air in frustration. “Well, yeah! I know you didn’t learn how to be an Alpha from your old pack, but surely you know that Alphas can turn humans.”
I shook my head. “If there’s a way to save her, I’m going to damned well save her!”
As if hearing the argument, Natalie’s body shifted, and her good arm twitched. We both stared at her, waiting for her to open her eyes, for her to say something, but there was nothing more. Either way, it gave both of us a moment to breathe.
“Wren, think about what kind of life she’d have if you did that,” Hikaru said. “Think about what it would do to her. She doesn’t even know what’s going on, and she can’t fully understand what you are! And you want her to wake up into this world with no say and no knowledge?”
I shook my head. “No! No, I don’t want that, but I want her alive! I need her to be alive. To be okay. I need her, Hikaru.” I slumped back down into the chair with my face in my hands. “I need her. I barely know her, and I need her.”
“I know, Wren. I know.” She let out a long sigh. “I can teach you how to turn someone—since you are Alpha, you can do it. But right now, I don’t think it’s the best idea.”
I wanted to run out of the room, leave it all behind and let the wolf out to run, but I couldn’t. I needed the additional blood, the IV. I could almost feel it working, cleansing my veins of the poison inside. The blood bag was about half empty.
Blood bag…blood…
I looked to Hikaru. “What about your blood?”
“What?”
“Your blood! Vampire blood heals humans, right? We talked about it back at the cabin.”
She opened her mouth then closed it several times. “We went over this before. It’s dangerous. There’s a lot of problems that might come with me giving her my blood.”
“She can handle it. She’s stronger than we give her credit for.” I looked to the woman who I wanted for my mate. “She’s stronger than even she knows. She stood up to those assholes when she didn’t even know what was going on.”
“I get that, Wren, I really do, but you need to listen to me right now.” She paused, taking a deep breath—something I supposed was left over from when she was alive. “There are risks. Risks that might not make it worth it.”
“Like what?”
She ran a hand through her hair. “If I give her too much, she’ll turn like I did. And we already decided we didn’t want that.”
“Okay, I get that. What else?”
“She could become addicted to it.” My eyes went wide at the admission. “It’s a thing, it happens. Like a drug. I’ve never had someone become addicted to mine, but I haven’t been open to sharing it all that often, either.”
I hesitated again. “Okay, yeah, um…”
“Oh! And let us not forget that giving her my blood will allow me a modicum of control over her mind, allowing me to speak with her in her head. And the more she takes, the stronger that connection.”
“Fine!” I snapped. “Fine! It’s a bad idea, I get that. But if she doesn’t turn and she doesn’t get addicted, and I can trust you won’t abuse any sort of hold you have over her, and all of that, isn’t it better than her having to live the rest of her life as a fucking werewolf? Not to mention that I don’t even know how to pull it off.”
“You may have a point. Though I’m surprised you’re willing to risk anyone having any sort of mental influence on your mate.”
I growled again. “I am trusting you here, Hikaru. And I want to save her life.”
“If this goes bad, it’s on you.”
“Duly noted.”
Hikaru grumbled but stepped to the bed anyway. She took her glasses off, then tapped Natalie lightly on the cheek. “Ms. Donovan? Ms. Donovan, can you hear me?”
Natalie’s eyes fluttered weakly. No sound came out of her mouth, but she seemed to react. I wanted to run to her, but I kept my distance. The risk of her freaking out over seeing me was too great.
Her eyes opened just enough that Hikaru could meet them with her own blood-red ones. I could almost feel the power that flowed out of Hikaru’s gaze as she said softly, “Natalie Donovan, I mean you no harm.”
Natalie’s head moved in a vague nod and Hikaru continued. “I need you to drink something. It will help you. But you must drink and swallow it. Understand?” Another nod. Hikaru brought her wrist to her mouth and cut it with a tooth. Blood welled up in the wound and she pressed it against Natalie’s mouth. Natalie’s eyes were still stuck on Hikaru’s, but her mouth and throat moved to drink the vampire blood, and I had to look away.
It was for the best. It had to be. It was the only way to be sure she would survive.
And yet, deep down inside, it felt like I might’ve made the wrong choice.
Chapter Twenty-one
Natalie
Hands and knees. Cowering. Curled up against the thick bark, cuddled by large roots and moss. Pain was everywhere. Every part of me felt like it was on fire. Jeans I wore for hiking, torn and bloody. T-shirt sharing the same damned fate.
The look on his face when he threw me down the hill. When he told them not to help me. When my family abandoned me. When I woke up in the hospital, guarded, told not to say a word about what really happened.
Then, standing over me, a man with a shitty haircut. Others, people I don’t know. Chasing me through the trees.
And through it all, a wolf howling. A silver wolf. Huge. Red staining the fur on one front leg. She moved closer, came to me like there was no one else to move through. Everything else disappeared. Only her. Only the wolf.
And then she was gone, replaced with Wren, naked in all her glory. But not naked. No, there was fur running up and down her legs, her arms, her chest and back. Ears atop her head. Tail waving around behind her. Claws and fangs. Blood on her shoulder. Amber eyes staring down at me.
“Please,” I whimpered, “please, don’t leave me.”
She knelt in front of me, sharp claws touching torn clothes.
“You and I,” she whispered, “we’re mates. We’re pack.”
I gasped in a massive breath of air and my eyes opened wide under harsh fluorescent lights. Inside my mouth tasted of old pennies. My heart beat almost out of my chest as I fought to relax, an itching feeling in the back of my head. Like someone was back there, whispering something. My eyes caught Dr. Maru in the corner, concerned eyes focused hard on me through her purple glasses.
Stay calm.
I twitched as the words reverberated in my head. The voice. It was Dr. Maru’s, but it was in my head. I shook myself, running my hands over my face to try to clear my head.
“What the fuck?” It didn’t make any sense. I know what I felt before, I know I saw the bone sticking out of my arm. But it was fine now. No marks, no scars, fully functioning. My head, my legs, everything that was hurt before was better. Better than better, I hadn’t felt this good in years.
“Natalie.” The whisper came from the corner of the room. Wren was in a plush armchair, an IV in her arm and nearly empty bag of blood on the pole.
“Wren…” I drank her in like a dying girl’s final breath.
“Ms. Donovan.” Dr. Maru appeared beside the bed, hands in plain sight. “How are you feeling?”
I glanced at her, then looked back to Wren. “I…did I dream all of that? I don’t understand what happened.”
“What’s the last thing you remember clearly?”
I closed my eyes. “I left the clinic. After talking to Meg. I grabbed the truck from the diner and went back to the cabin.”
“Anything after that?” Wren asked.
I looked between the two of them the intensity of the moment making me squirm. But worse was the feeling that they knew more than I did.
I shook my head. “Not really. Someone burst into the cabin, but it gets a little fuzzy after all that.”
The way they glanced at each other told me everything. Something was up, and Wren was in the middle of it all. My memories and feelings came flooding back. That guy—Jason—wanted Wren to suffer. And then she showed up, all wolfed out. But I felt like she didn’t want to talk to me about it now. Like they were both fishing for how much they’d have to say. If they had tried some kind of mind-trick-voodoo on me to take away my memories, I was going to be pissed.
“What is going on in your heads?” I demanded.
“What?” Wren asked.
“What?” Dr. Maru echoed.
“You’re giving each other looks, and you want to know what I remember, and all this crap—” I gestured. “But no one is talking to me!” I yelled. “I have questions, too, you know! Like how my arm is fine? Or how I don’t hurt at all after all that bullshit at the cabin today? And most of all, why you—” I pointed at Wren. “Why the hell you were covered in fur and claws and a fucking tail?”
“Ms. Donovan, please calm down.”
