“He’s lost so much blood, his body’s struggling to keep him alive, let alone heal itself. We need to close some of these wounds, stop the blood leaking out of him, and take some of the pressure off him.”
Now Cam had removed the rest of Jason’s clothes, Alec saw the full extent of the damage. Fucking hell. “He looks as though he was mauled.” Leaning close to inspect the wounds, Alec frowned. Turning to Keira, he asked, “Where did you find him?” Alec noted the way she avoided looking at the tube in her arm.
She met his gaze and kept eye contact. “On the far side of the park, at the edge of the boating lake.”
“He was on our territory?”
“Yes. From the looks of it, he wasn’t followed.”
“Maybe whoever did this assumed they’d finished him off.”
Tim wiped at the wound on Jason’s neck, the blood still trickling out at a steady pace. “They almost did. I’ve no idea how he managed to walk at all, let alone get all the way here.”
“I guess that depends on where he came from.”
“Well, you can figure that out between yourselves elsewhere. I need room to work.”
Taking the hint, Alec moved back out of the way.
Tim knelt on the bed, alternately wiping and stitching the massive gash in Jason’s neck. The skin should be knitting back together, but nothing happened, and Alec found the whole scene disturbing.
A shifter should heal.
With Jason’s neck all stitched up, Tim moved down to the other smaller wounds over the rest of his body.
Alec had seen too many shifter-inflicted wounds to count and would recognise them anywhere. Jason had been attacked by more than one shifter. He picked up one of Jason’s hands, the claws still out, and examined it. Nothing was caught in them, no traces of blood, skin or cloth like he’d expect to see.
Jason hadn’t fought back.
Either they’d taken him completely by surprise, which Alec struggled to believe. Or he knew his attackers. “Let me know as soon as he wakes up.”
“Of course,” Tim replied, not taking his eyes off the patient. “His healing should kick in properly when we stop the bleeding and set those bones.”
Bones? Alec hadn’t noticed anything broken. He looked again, gaze drifting down over Jason’s body, and only then did he notice the odd angle his wrist laid on the bed. Further down, he winced at the bone sticking out of Jason’s shin that his clothes had hidden from view. Now virtually naked, Alec took in the extent of his injuries, and he had to agree with Tim. With his body struggling to heal itself, how had Jason managed to move at all?
He spared him one last look, then returned to the living area, where Gareth sat next to Luke, a hand on his neck, and Cam stood next to the fireplace.
Cam pointed at one of the chairs. “Sit down.”
Alec sat. He spared one last glance at the bedroom. “He should probably be in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“I mean, Tim’s good, but Jason looks close to—”
“I know that, Alec.” Cam fixed him with a hard stare. “I can’t let anyone outside this flat know he’s here without alerting Newell, and I thought we agreed that was a bad idea.”
Sighing, Alec slumped back into the cushions. “Sorry. I was just thinking aloud.”
“Please refrain, unless you have something constructive to add.” He softened the words with a wry smile, and Alec sighed.
“What the fuck do we do now?”
“Nothing. We carry on as normal.” Cam crossed his arms, radiating calm, and thank fuck, because Alec was anything but. “Until Jason wakes up, we have nothing to go on. As you saw, the council works on facts, and right now the facts are that Jason is badly injured, but that’s it.”
Alec turned to Gareth. The need to do something, anything, made his words come out sharper than he meant. “Did you scent any other packs where you found him?”
Gareth didn’t react to Alec’s tone. “He was half submerged in the lake when we got there, hard to tell with everything else all over him.” He glanced at Cam, and Alec had a feeling what was coming. “But no, we didn’t scent anything other than his own pack.”
