Courted by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates Shifter Romance Series Book 3)

by Felicity Heaton

  “What’s wrong?” Rath thundered up the stairs, spilling water everywhere as he struggled to keep the pitcher steady.

  His wild grey eyes landed on her as she scooted to the stuff she had stolen and searched for what she needed.

  “There’s air in his chest.” She tried to keep calm, but her hands shook as she picked up a catheter and hurried back to Flint. “His lung is collapsing.”

  The tight sharp gasping sound of Flint trying to breathe rattled her.

  She almost dropped the packet.

  She was no use to him like this. As quickly as she needed to work, she would only mess things up if she didn’t take a second. She closed her eyes and breathed. Once. Twice. Centred herself.

  When her hands stopped shaking, she opened her eyes and went into action, tearing open the packet and removing the needle. She kneeled beside Flint and pressed her fingers to the left side of his chest below his collarbone, found his ribs and followed them downwards to the space she was looking for.

  She practically heard Rath flinch as she plunged the long needle of the catheter in and air bubbled and hissed out of the plastic end. Flint’s breathing instantly improved, but it was still wheezy, rasping in her ears to shake her.

  “Fucking hell,” Rath muttered. “I think I need some air.”

  “You stay right there,” she snapped before he could move and waved her free hand around behind her. “Give me that tape.”

  She heard him moving things around and then he set something in her palm.

  “Hold this.” She looked from him to the needle sticking out of his brother’s chest.

  He paled but moved to crouch to her right and carefully took hold of the catheter.

  Yasmin tore off two strips of tape and secured the needle with it so it remained upright, allowing air to continue to escape Flint’s chest. She placed the tape on the bed beside him and felt along his side, her eyes slipping shut as she used her powers to check on him. His lung was pierced. She focused on it, using just a sliver of that power to help it heal, only enough to speed his own healing process.

  She couldn’t risk any more than that.

  It was too dangerous for her.

  She moved away to the supplies and lingered with her hand hovering over a bandage. Using any clotting agent on a shifter was risky because of their physiology. Their bodies were fairly fluid, needed to be in order to change form, and using such drugs on them could cause issues, stopping veins or tissue from moving or morphing as necessary.

  But Flint wasn’t going to be shifting any time soon.

  She would make damn sure of it.

  She grabbed the hemostatic dressings and went back to him. “Clean that blood off.”

  Rath was still holding the catheter. Maybe she should have made it clear he could relax. His grey eyes shifted from Flint to her, a flicker of fear lighting them as he stared at her. Gods, she needed a moment too, but it had to come later, once Flint was safe.

  “Rath, can you clean the blood off please?” She gentled her tone and he blinked, as if she had just roused him from some sort of trance.

  He nodded and went to work, using the cloth and water he had brought to carefully wipe down the punctures in Flint’s left side. While he was working to dry the area, she prepared the dressing. The moment he was done, and blood began to creep to the surface again, she applied the first plaster, managing to get it over two of the puncture wounds. She prepared a second bandage as Rath mopped up the blood from the remaining wounds, and placed it over them as soon as he moved his hand away.

  “He can’t shift with it on.” She looked across at Rath, wanting to see he understood. “It’s a clotting agent. I’m not sure what will happen.”

  “I’ll keep him on a tight leash.” Rath nodded and then looked his brother over, his expression turning sombre again as he lifted a hand and gently brushed Flint’s black hair from his damp brow. “Although I don’t think he’ll be getting up for a while.”

  She took the cloth from him and cleaned the long lacerations across Flint’s chest. “How many days do we have?”

  Rath looked back at her.

  She glanced at him, moved away and found a suture kit and a box of butterfly closure strips. “Before the next challenge. Will he have time to rest?”

  Rath growled, “I’ll make sure he does. Traditionally, it’s only a day, but I’ll make sure it’s two.”

  Two days didn’t sound enough to her. Flint’s healing was going to need a boost to make sure he would be able to compete. She hesitated as she looked at him and shook away that thought. He could heal without her help. All shifter species healed quickly. She just needed to get him patched up and his body would take care of the rest.

  “Hold these together while I apply the strips.” She gently pressed together the two sides of the first laceration that darted from Flint’s left shoulder to his right hip.

  Rath dutifully did as she had asked, and she applied a closure strip every few inches. She would sew the wounds once she had all of them roughly together. Including the ones on his back.

  When she had finished with his front, she carefully slipped her hands beneath his hip and looked at Rath. “Can you ease him onto his right side?”

  He nodded and took hold of his brother’s shoulder, and together they rolled him, careful not to disturb the catheter in his chest. Rath held him as she used the closure strips at intervals along the claw marks down his back, and as she carefully stitched the long gashes as neatly as she could manage.

  She looked to Rath when she took hold of Flint’s hips again, and they carefully eased him down onto his back.

  Yasmin looked him over again. The shallower wounds on his legs and arms were already healing, and there wasn’t much she could do for the break in his tibia other than splint it. She placed her hand on his shin, funnelled her power into him and sensed the fracture. It was already healing. As long as he kept his weight off it for a day, it would set just fine.

  She moved back to his chest and opened another suture kit, using the black thread and curved needle to close the wounds she had applied the strips to with Rath’s help. He watched her as she worked, gaze flitting between following her hands and studying his brother’s face. He grew restless as she stitched the second wound, a particularly nasty gash that had cut deep enough to reveal bone in places, and she looked at him.

  “Could you get me a glass of water?” She smiled softly at him.

  He was quick to take to the task again, rising onto his feet and disappearing downstairs. She listened to him moving around and looked at Flint. His breathing was almost back to normal now, steady and strong, and no more air was leaking from the catheter.

  Rath returned and placed the glass down beside her, and she thanked him with another smile.

  “Want another task?” She didn’t need to ask twice. He nodded. She jerked her chin towards the needle sticking out of his brother’s chest. “You can remove that now. Do it slowly. It’s long, and his body might already be healing around it.”

  He blanched, but went to work, removing the tape and then grimacing as he took hold of the needle. “You’ll have to teach me how to do this manoeuvre, just in case I need to do it in the future.”

  “We can practice on him when he wakes up. Payment for scaring us both.” She gave Rath another gentle smile and continued talking as he eased the needle out, sensing his need to talk to give him something to focus on other than what his hands were doing. “I’ll teach you how to stitch cleanly too, and anything else you all need to learn. Maybe I’ll even let Flint sit in on the lessons.”

  The corners of Rath’s lips finally twitched at that. “Flint is normally the one who needs medical attention… but I think he’d like that.”

  She knew he would. She would like it too. She wanted to know Flint could take care of himself.

  Rath stuck a small folded piece of gauze over the point where the needle had been and taped it down, and she finished sewing the laceration and moved on to the next on
e. The final one.

  She paused and swiped her hand across her brow to clean the beads of sweat from it. Rath offered her the glass of water, and she leaned towards him and sipped it as he tipped it for her, and nodded when she’d had enough.

  He took the glass away and sighed as he looked at Flint. “Reckless idiot.”

  Her thoughts exactly.

  Rath loosed another long, deep sigh and smoothed the rogue strands of ebony hair from his brother’s ashen face. “He’s always been like this. Ever since we lost our parents.”

  “Because he hadn’t been allowed to fight.” She didn’t take her eyes off her work as Rath glanced at her. She sensed his surprise and realised that Flint was more like her than she had thought and he rarely told anyone about what had happened to him back then. Before Rath could voice his shock, she continued, glancing at Flint’s face as she spoke. “We bonded over sob stories by the river after Jey was wounded. I didn’t realise at the time it was such a big thing for him.”

  It had been a big thing for her too. Normally, she did her best to keep her distance from everyone, because she had learned her lesson in the past. Her immortal blood meant she outlived everyone she had ever loved. Ivy had been the first friend she had risked making in decades.

  Flint was more than that though.

  He might just be the first man she risked falling in love with in her entire life.

  She could never bring herself to indulge in one night stands, craved something more long term with a man, something as beautiful as her mother and father had shared, but she always left when things got too serious, when she was in danger of falling in love with them, fear getting the better of her.

  She didn’t want to run this time though. She wanted to face her fears.

  Gods, she was so afraid it wouldn’t be worth the potential pain, the agony of being rejected or things not working out between them.

  But one glance at him and she wanted to take the leap.

  She wanted to believe he was falling in love with her too and that dream she had of finding a love as beautiful and enduring as the one her parents had shared was going to come true.

  “Yeah,” Rath said softly, stealing into her thoughts to bring her back to what they had been talking about. “He was a kid. We couldn’t let him fight. I think it broke him a little. He changed, risked his damned neck at every opportunity… would get into fights with everyone over every little thing.”

  Because he had wanted to prove to his family that he was strong.

  He had wanted to prove it to himself.

  And now he wanted to prove it to her.

  But he didn’t need to prove it.

  She could see his strength, and she could see the source of it, and it wasn’t his body. It was his heart.

  He was just like her in that respect.

  He loved deeply when he allowed himself to do it. So deeply that it felt like a weakness, and that frightened him, had him shying away from relationships and embracing a single life, one where he didn’t need to form an attachment with anyone.

  One where he felt strong, because his heart was empty.

  Hers had been empty too before Ivy. Ivy had filled it a little, and Yasmin had been afraid because of that, all of her old doubts and fears returning. But Ivy wasn’t only a weakness because Yasmin loved her. She was a source of strength for Yasmin too.

  Now that heart that had been filled a little by Ivy, was growing fuller by the day.

  Because of Flint.

  She finished with his wounds and carefully cleaned them, falling so deeply into her thoughts that she didn’t notice Rath had moved until he touched her shoulder and gently shook her.

  She looked up at him.

  “I need to go see Ivy and check on Cobalt. You’ll be okay?” Rath’s gentle smile warmed her, but the cold was quick to seep back in as fatigue crept up on her and she looked out of the window to see it was dark now.

  “I’ll let you know if I need you.” She tried to glance back at him, but her gaze caught on Flint.

  Rath squeezed her shoulder. “Try to get some rest.”

  She absently nodded.

  When the cabin was silent save for the sound of Flint’s soft breathing, she slumped forwards, her strength leaving her as everything that had happened suddenly crashed over her, threatening to sweep her away.

  She stared at Flint.

  Idiot.

  She couldn’t believe he had fought a bear for her.

  Had been hurt and pushed close to death because of her.

  Numbness chased through her as that thought hit her.

  This was all her fault.

  And she was sure that the rest of the courtship would be just as dangerous.

  Yasmin shuffled closer to Flint’s side and looked him over, her dark eyebrows furrowing. Damned idiot. He was a mess, his skin pale and drained of colour, and bruises littering his arms and chest, and stomach. They were blackest across the left side of his ribs, so dark she feared his lung was still damaged.

  She placed one hand on his clammy forehead and the other on his chest and focused on him as her eyes slipped shut.

  His lung was fine now, operating well, and the clotting agent had done its work, stopping the bleeding. He was healing, but he was still in pain.

  Her eyes flicked open and she looked at his face, at the sculpted planes of his cheeks and brow, and the defined line of his strong jaw, and the straight slash of his nose, to his full lips and the long dark lashes that rested against his pale skin.

  The thought of him suffering tore at her, and she pushed back against the urge the welled inside her. She couldn’t. It was too dangerous. She had already used a little of her powers on him. That would be enough to heal him. He would make a full recovery.

  Would he?

  Fear rose again to whisper that he wouldn’t, that everything she had done for him wouldn’t be enough. She had to make sure he would survive the night and would recover. She had to make him well again, couldn’t bear the thought of him in pain, suffering because she had held back.

  Couldn’t bear the thought of him dying.

  Before she could think about what she was doing, she was flooding him with her power, funnelling it into him so he would heal faster.

  Proving herself as reckless as he was.

  But she felt his smaller wounds knitting back together, and the lacerations on his back and front beginning to heal, and his lung return to full health.

  She felt his pain ease and disappear.

  And gods, that made it worth it.

  She shivered as she leaned a little harder on him, her head feeling heavy as cold stole through her, and pain blossomed in her limbs.

  Yasmin broke the connection between them and sank against him, her head growing foggier by the second. She fought the need to sleep, battled it fiercely because she had to remain awake in case he needed her.

  In the end, it was too strong, overcoming her.

  She rested her head beside him on the bed and let sleep take her as she watched him, her hand resting on his arm, her head filled with the soothing steadiness of his breathing.

  Her reckless cougar.

  CHAPTER 12

  Everything ached, but the throbbing in Flint’s head and the tight feeling across the left side of his torso eclipsed the lingering pain in the rest of him. He kept his eyes closed, his body still as he waited for his senses to come back online. They were dull when they did, his body sluggish to start feeling sensation other than the fiery ache of his injuries. He breathed through that pain and methodically shut it out, until only his head and his ribs, and a point on his left pectoral burned.

  The rest of him felt cold.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  His left arm was warm.

  He slowly cracked his eyes open, grimacing as his lashes stuck together, and carefully lifted his right hand to rub at them. When his vision was clear, he looked down to his left.

  And was hit hard in his aching chest by the sight of Yasmi
n as she leaned over the bed, her head resting on his left arm, her slender hand clutching his biceps as she slumbered. She was paler than before, and he spotted dark shadows beneath her eyes that he knew weren’t caused by her eyelashes.

  They were his fault.

  He looked himself over, keeping as still as possible so he didn’t hurt himself or wake her, cataloguing all of the injuries she had tended to for him. The long slashes across his chest were neatly stitched, and he bet the ones on his back had received the same careful and tender treatment. He could breathe easily despite the crushing blow his ribs had received, and he was sure that the reason he couldn’t feel her black hair tickling an area of his bare side was because there were dressings over the puncture wounds there.

  Flint frowned at the crudely taped piece of gauze on his left pectoral. What had happened there?

  He didn’t remember having an injury in that area, and he was sure that if he had been wounded there, Yasmin would have taken care of it for him. He doubted the crinkled tape and fraying rough square of material had been Yasmin’s work. Rath had probably helped her. His brother needed those lessons that Yasmin had offered.

  He frowned back at his chest and then his side, and looked at Yasmin.

  Although, he felt certain that his current state was the product of more than just training. Now that he was shaking off the grogginess, he could feel himself more clearly, and all of the injuries that should have been causing him deep pain still were little more than a discomfort. Even the puncture wounds in his side barely throbbed now.

  There were only two reasons he could think of as to why he was making such a swift recovery.

  Either he had been asleep for a few days, enough time for his body to heal his broken leg and busted ribs.

  Or Yasmin had done something to him.

  Something more than patching his wounds up.

  He looked down at her, skull feeling as if it was crushing his brain as he focused and his heart pounding hard as he felt something.

  Connected to her.

  Because she had used her power on him, or because she was something to him?