by Helen Scott
3
Nina
“It’s just over this ridge,” Roman said, looking at the GPS app on his phone, which somehow worked out in the middle of nowhere. Not that I was objecting, just surprised. Maybe when you could afford the fancy phones with all the bells and whistles, stuff like that just worked. All I knew was that my phone had a hard time getting reception in the garage, let alone out in the woods.
“Sounds good,” I replied as I hefted the bags into a new spot on my back. I was carrying most of the gear, and Roman was carrying Micah. The younger wolf had started to pass out a while back. Even though we’d tried to rest, we knew that he needed the kind of rest that shouldn’t be disturbed so his body could do what it needed to and heal, which was why Roman had opted to carry him.
True to his word, when we crested the ridge, I could see the little cabin just down the slope in the trees. If I hadn’t known to be looking for it, then in all honesty, I probably would have missed it. It was tucked away in a cluster of pine trees, and had mud, leaves, and pine needles covering it.
Roman let out a soft howl, which startled me, but that wasn’t surprising, given how on edge I’d been since we ran from their pack. The confrontation with Rob and Joe had only made my anxiety worse.
A head popped out from the doorway and looked around. When he saw Roman, he raised his hand and smiled in greeting, only to quickly frown when he saw Micah. Silver poisoning and blood loss were not pretty to look at, no matter which way it was presented. I’d tried to avoid looking at my mates as much as possible for this last leg of the journey, but it was difficult. The need to monitor the spread of the silver and the pallor of Micah’s skin was almost enough to have me staring at him instead of watching where I was walking. If I tripped and hurt myself, that wasn’t going to help anyone though.
“Brecken, thanks for doing this,” Roman said as we reached the other man. He reached out to take some of the bags I was carrying, but I stubbornly held on to them. It had been hard enough to get Roman to let me carry them, and I wasn’t about to give them up the first time someone asked for them. Not when they contained everything we needed, and especially not to someone who was a stranger to me.
This Brecken might be friends with Roman, but that didn’t mean that I had to trust him. When I didn’t release the bags, he just shrugged and turned back to the cabin.
“Do you have anything to help with silver poisoning?” Roman asked.
“Of course. I figured it would be wise to bring my med kit, as well as a few other supplies for you, since we didn’t know how long you’d be staying. Come and get your friend on the table, then we can see what we’re working with,” Brecken said as he held the door open for the three of us.
As we walked in, I felt some of the tension ease from my shoulders. Sure, the packs were still after us, but at least now we weren’t out in the open and exposed to the elements as well. This gave us a chance to relax and get Micah back on his feet. If we couldn’t, then… Nope. Wasn’t going to think about that.
Roman gently set Micah down on the big wood table that dominated the cabin. As soon as I was able to, I set the bags down, stretching my back briefly now that the weight was gone, before going to stand at Micah’s other side.
Brecken came back carrying a black leather bag, the kind that they always used in TV shows to make sure the audience knew the character was a doctor. I didn’t think Brecken was a doctor though.
The syringe he pulled out of his bag said otherwise.
Roman stood by as Brecken prepared Micah’s arm, the one that Rob had sliced open with his silver blade, with an alcohol swab and tourniquet. My eyes kept flicking between him and the syringe as I waited for him to say something, anything, before his friend injected Micah with some unknown substance.
The last time I was injected with something, it was the serum designed to induce the mate bond. What if this was designed to break it? What if it had nothing to do with his silver poisoning at all?
“What’s in that?” I blurted out, unable to keep quiet.
“Silver poisoning remedy,” Brecken said, looking at me with concern.
“Nothing to do with the mate bond?” I clarified.
“No. Why would it be?”
He could be lying. I knew that, but he didn’t scent like it and his heart rate didn’t seem to increase, at least not noticeably.
“Not a lot of people are happy with…our current situation,” I said, feeling as though I wasn’t communicating very well but also not willing to throw caution to the wind. After all, I didn’t know what Roman had told Brecken.
“I don’t really care, to be honest. Roman is a good friend, and he asked for a place to lay low, so I provided it. Anyone asking to lay low is usually in some kind of trouble, which generally means that they will also have a need for medical attention. Maybe not immediately, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. Now, if you’ll let me, I’d like to save your friend’s life.” Brecken sounded slightly irritated by the time he was done speaking, and I knew it was because of my paranoia but I didn’t care. I’d rather be paranoid and try and figure out what was going on, than to let him do something that might hurt Micah even more.
“I trust Brecken, Nina. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Micah, I promise,” Roman said as he walked around the table toward me. Gently, he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him so I wasn’t staring at the syringe anymore. “Brecken isn’t like Jax. He only wants to help.”
He dropped a kiss on my forehead, and I relented with a small nod. If nothing else, I trusted Roman completely, so if he said Brecken was a friend, then I’d accept that.
A hiss sounded from Micah, and I spun to find Brecken standing there with a now empty syringe. I knew I’d agreed to it just now, but I couldn’t chase away the feeling that there was more in the syringe than just an antidote for silver poisoning. Suddenly, Micah began to cough and choke. Brecken and Roman barely got him turned onto his side in time for him to vomit.
Silver poured from his mouth in a disgusting waterfall. It was clumpy and gross, like cottage cheese, as though it was all solidifying inside him or something. I had no idea how silver poisoning worked, if I was honest. It wasn’t like I’d ever been old enough to understand something like that when I was with the pack before, and it never really came up in my adult life.
Without waiting to question Brecken on what was in the cabin or what he was okay with us using, I ran to the kitchen and rooted through the cabinets, grabbing the biggest bowl I could find and shoving it under Micah’s mouth as quickly as I could.
“Don’t worry about the mess,” Brecken said as though we’d spilled a bag of chips and it wasn’t one of my mates vomiting silver sludge.
“Hold him there,” I said, ignoring the man who was helping us, since I had no idea what to say to him.
I rushed back to the kitchenette and grabbed another bowl from the stack, this time I also filled it with water, grabbed some ice out of the freezer section of the small fridge and some paper towels. Medicine might not be my strong point, but I knew enough about throwing up to know that a cool rag on the face afterward was a balm. I’d spent many a night in the bathroom with terror running through my veins as my mind tortured me with images of my parents’ deaths, and worse, Sammie’s death.
Dealing with life and the mess that came with it was one of the few things I knew how to do. You wanted blood stains out? The smell of vomit cleansed from the room? I was your girl. It came from being too poor to risk my security deposit on the apartments I’d lived in. I knew they would always find something wrong, but I’d be damned if I didn’t do everything in my power to get every cent of the deposit back.
As I mopped Micah’s brow with a cool, wet cloth, I breathed through my mouth, trying to ignore the sour metallic tang of vomit that laced the air.
“I can’t stay much longer. Do either of you know how to do stitches?”
I nodded and saw Roman nod out of the corner of my eye as well. That was good
. If my hands got shaky, he could take over. I decided not to disclose the fact that the only stitches I’d ever done were on myself after watching a multitude of YouTube videos on the correct way to do it.
“Good. Don’t worry about the blood or any mess. I’m happy to help, and I hope your friend gets better. I have to get going. Do you think you can both handle this?” Brecken asked.
I looked over to Roman, and he just raised one of the dark slashes he called eyebrows at me. He didn’t need to put it into words for me to know what he was asking. Could I handle this? I gave him a small nod.
He studied me for a second, as though he needed to be sure of my answer, before he said, “Yeah, we’ve got it. Do you have any more silver serum?”
“There’s another vial in the bag, but I wouldn’t recommend using it on your friend. One is more than enough, plus if you give him the second, it may have some nasty consequences, like death. Two doses are unpredictable in the best of times. Out here alone in the woods? I wouldn’t risk it, but that’s just me.”
“When do you think he’ll wake up?” I asked, realizing that I was starting to trust this stranger. There was no reason not to. After all, he’d done nothing but help us so far, plus he was giving us a place to stay, and if Roman trusted him, then I should be able to as well.
“If he’s not awake by morning, then he probably won’t ever wake up. It would mean that the silver got to his brain before we got the serum into him, which will leave him in a coma for the rest of his life.”
Dread twisted my stomach. He had to wake up. If he didn’t, then all of this would have been for nothing. I couldn’t abide that.
“We’ll get him back on his feet, don’t worry,” Roman said, though I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or to his friend.
“I hope you do. Silver poisoning is a nasty business. Whoever did this wanted your friend dead. I don’t know or need to know the reason, but you have to understand that this isn’t something that’s done without premeditation. That being said, stay as long as you like. Take your time and recover. It might be a while before he’s able to get back on his feet,” Brecken said as he nodded toward Micah.
My gut twisted once more as I thought about Rob coming out, tracking us in the forest, and then hurting someone who used to be his friend in such a brutal way. Having silver was bad enough as a wolf shifter, but using it on another? Reprehensible.
Brecken was gone in a flash. When I looked at the clock on the wall, I realized that we’d been there a lot longer than I’d thought, but we’d all been so wrapped up in Micah and getting him through the initial burst of silver poisoning that time had just slipped away.
“Can you hold him while I get the suture kit out of the med bag?” Roman asked.
I nodded and said, “Be sure to look for some bandages as well, and a splint if there is one. We need to reset the bones in his wrist if he’s not going to be able to shift for a while.”
“If you’ve been out of pack life for so long, how did you learn how to take care of yourself?” Roman asked quietly as he went through the bag, pulling out packets of gauze and tape along with a suture kit and other accoutrement.
I wanted to avoid his question because it was uncomfortable to think about, but there was no point in denying the past. What happened was what happened, and it had made me who I was, which was someone I was proud to be. Roman was my mate, and I had to trust that he’d love me no matter what he found out about me, because that was what mates did, right?
“When I was first out on my own, I was living on the streets, penniless and without possessions. I got hurt a few times pretty badly, and I couldn’t afford the money to go to a healer or the risk that they’d tell my old alpha where I was, so I learned how to do a lot of simple things myself. I was able to hang out at the library quite a bit and did some research, watched some tutorials, that kind of thing, and it was enough to get me by.” The memory of getting attacked for the little food I’d found for myself resurfaced, and I cringed. I hadn’t known how to fight or defend myself and I couldn’t shift, since I’d already blocked my wolf off completely. I’d had to splint my own arm to try and get the bones to heal correctly. To this day though, it still ached, especially in bad weather. Richard had said it was probably nerve damage when I’d told him about it one time.
“So you were hurt enough times that you had to learn to do all of this on yourself?” Roman clarified.
I could feel his dark stormy eyes studying me as I held Micah on his side, trying to keep his head supported and his hair out of his face. It had been a while since he vomited now, but I still wasn’t comfortable having him completely on his back. “The scar on my arm, just there,” I said as I nodded to the arm that was bracing Micah’s front. “That’s from the first time I gave myself stitches. Trust me when I say doing something like that on yourself is a helluva lot harder than you’d think.”
“You okay to do them on Micah?” Roman asked, surprising me.
“I figured you’d do them?”
“I haven’t given anyone stitches in decades. If you’re okay doing it, then you’d probably do a better job of it than I would. Plus, if he tries to move around while you’re doing it, then I’ll be able to hold him down more securely.”
I shot him a glare. Just because I was a bitch didn’t mean I wasn’t strong. One of these days, we’d have to do some weight lifting together, and then he could see exactly what he was up against. Men and their egos.
As soon as he had all of the necessary supplies, Roman returned to the table and set everything to one side for me. The splint was one of those emergency ones, which made sense, the tan foam like material would harden once it was activated, and the Velcro straps would hold it in place on Micah’s arm. It meant getting the bones in somewhat the right shape first though.
“This is going to hurt,” I said, giving Roman a little warning as I grasped Micah’s hand and pulled.
The younger wolf cried out, even though he was barely conscious, and Roman had to hold him down just as he suspected he would. Micah wasn’t strong enough to thrash around in that moment though, so it was almost just a token resistance. The feeling of the bones mashing against one another in his wrist was enough to make my stomach turn with nausea, but I mentally pushed the feeling aside. Now was not the time to give in to my emotions.
That could come later.
With the bones of his wrist in as normal a configuration as I could get them without an X-ray, I snapped the material of the splint activating it so it would harden in the desired position around his wrist. Once I had it strapped in place, I reached for the suture kit.
I took a deep breath, knowing that this was going to be even harder than resetting the broken bones of his wrist. The one good thing was that Micah had seemed to pass out after the bone setting, which should make this easier on him at least.
The needle and thread were contained in a blue and white foil packet that I tore open, careful not to let anything touch the sterile insides. Shifters weren’t easily infected with things, not like humans, but with how compromised Micah’s immune system already was from the silver, I wasn’t taking any chances. I quickly wiped down the wound with one of the disinfecting wipes, hoping that I got any remaining particles of silver out of there as well. If we left any in his arm, it would just get irritated and swollen.
With more ease than I expected, I sutured the wound shut, surprised by how easy it was to do when I wasn’t stitching myself up. When I was done, I wrapped up the needles and gauze that I’d used and put them in a trash bag that I set in the corner of the room before I came back to the table.
Roman looked exhausted, and I felt the same weariness within myself as well. Gently, he laid my other mate on the table. I was fairly sure that the vomiting silver bit was out of Micah’s system, so I didn’t object. Before I could stop and rest though, I wanted to get Roman cleaned up as well. He might not have had silver poisoning or a broken wrist, but he had taken a beating as well.
We all had.
Without pausing from setting the trash bag down and out of the way, I went back to the kitchen and grabbed a clean bowl. Honestly, I was surprised by how many bowls were in the cabin, but then when I actually looked, I realized that there were only a couple plates. So whoever stayed here regularly with Brecken must have loved soup or chili or whatever you could eat out of a bowl.
I filled the bowl with some warm water and grabbed more paper towels, feeling a little guilty that we were burning through Brecken’s supplies, but not guilty enough to stop what I was doing. As I walked back over, I saw that Roman had collapsed on the couch.
“You can’t rest just yet,” I said quietly.
“Why not?” he grumbled.
“Because you’re filthy, and not in the good way. Now take that shirt off so I can clean the wound on your chest.” I tried to keep my voice smooth and nonchalant, but the truth was every time Roman took his shirt off, I couldn’t believe that he was mine. The gorgeous expanse of skin that dipped and rose around his muscles, dusted with dark hair in the center of his chest and below his belly button, was all too much.
“Wound on my chest?” he asked as he pulled his shirt off. I heard the hiss of air he took in when he had to peel the material off said wound. After he caught his breath, he said, “Ah, that wound.”
“Yes, that wound.” I tried to keep the humor from my voice, knowing that wounds were nothing to joke about, but judging from the grin on his face when the material cleared it, I had failed.
I dunked some paper towels into the water and began to work the dried blood from his skin, moving closer to the wound as I went until I was cleaning it directly. To Roman’s testament, he didn’t make a peep when I swabbed it with the sterilizing pad before putting some butterfly bandages over it to keep it somewhat closed.
Since he didn’t have the silver poisoning that Micah did, I was fairly sure that it would heal in normal shifter time, which meant that in a day or so, there would be no trace of it being there at all.
