"Maybe you should wait outside," Orion says quietly but firmly, and that helps too.
"Keep going. I can handle it."
Doc hums, making comments as he goes. Broken ribs. Collapsed lung. Shattered orbital bone. Broken nose. Broken hand. Broken foot. Each word out of his mouth a lashing.
"She is your fated mate?" Doc asks without looking up.
Orion answers for the both of us. "There's no doubt."
I look up and meet Doc's eyes. His beta is there at the surface, listening. A fated mate is rare but not unheard of. An omega, even rarer. To have both? Right here in front of me? Astronomical.
I nod, then look back down at the little omega. Face mottled in bruises, shiny and raw with swelling, rivulets of blood dripping from her forehead. Eye swollen shut. My sweet mate, our first encounter, and it's shadowed by this criminal offense. Shame washes over me.
Doc lets out a low whistle and continues his ministrations. He resets the bones in her hand, then her foot, and she doesn't wake. Her wolf is likely protecting her now, keeping her down to save her from the pain of re-breaking and setting bones.
As he slices through her shirt, he explains that a broken rib has punctured her lung. "You might want to step outside," he tells me, gentle but firm.
"Not a chance."
"Lune…" He pauses, carefully running his thumb over her eye socket. "Grayson, I need to cut her open. More than once." He points to her ribs, blood clearly pooling beneath the skin. Then to her eye, which needs to be drained and set. "I can sense how volatile you and your wolf are. It is in her best interest if you—"
"I'm not leaving. Help her. Get on with it," I snap, fisting my hands at my sides. If Orion can do this, if she can live through it, I can watch. Doc doesn't argue again. He pulls out a scalpel and begins to cut her open. Rib fractures first, then he repairs her collapsed lung, and when her shifter healing helps keep her stabilized, he moves on to relieve some of the fluid and pressure from her face. A wolf's field surgery is never pretty, but she will heal.
She will heal.
I don't know how anyone survives having an omega as a mate. Were this any other wolf, even a pup, I wouldn't blink or flinch. Wolves can be brutal; we live and play hard. Injury is a part of life.
I'm suddenly extremely grateful to have Orion here with me.
Doc wraps a bandage around half her face to keep the bones in place and help the skin heal.
I don't know that much about omegas. I've only met a couple in my lifetime. Do they scar? I know they have the same long lifespans as other shifters. Why did the Moon Goddess have to make them so fucking fragile?
"Could she be one of the missing wolves?" Orion's question pulls me out of the rabbit hole I'd fallen into, and I glance up. "Andrea—"
I bare my teeth, my alpha hissing at her name even being brought up right now. I'm still so fucking angry. Orion lifts his hands in peace. "She made a good point. What was an omega doing out here all by herself? Could she have… I don't know, escaped somehow?"
Now that her bones are set and Doc is shooting pain and sleep meds designed for shifters into her veins, color returns to her cheeks, and she begins to breathe more normally. The swelling is going down, and she's healing at last. It'll be days before she's back to normal, but it's a start. The improvement lets me think a little more clearly.
"Did she say anything before…?" I ask, my eyes still fixed on her face.
"No. Didn't get a chance. But all the missing shifters over the last few years, they're all female, around her age. Maybe she was stolen, abducted like the rest, and she escaped. Silas was the only—"
"FuckSilas," I snap. "He wasn't kidnapped. He's nearly a hundred and fifty years old, one of the strongest wolves I've ever known. Heleft. You need to accept that."
Both Doc and Orion disagree—it's an argument we've had too many times before. "Besides, we would have heard of an omega being kidnapped," I point out, just to change the subject.
"True. Especially one her age."
No way that would have gone unnoticed. Wolves may be shit at communication, but if a clan lost an omega, we'd have heard about it.
I reach out and touch the soft, bright red waves of her hair, caked with dirt and blood. A small hair tie is stuck in a tangle on one side, and I work to remove it, pulling her red locks down to their full length, way past her shoulders. Her jasmine scent washes over me.
Orion clears his throat to get my attention, but it takes a subtle jab on my shoulder to actually pull my gaze away from her.
"What am I doing with the traitors?"
"If they're still alive, lock them in the cell. I'll deal with them tomorrow." I scrub a tired hand over my face. "Or, later today, I guess."
