“Hold pressure here,” I tell Fern as I guide her hands to the wound on Dalton’s shoulder. “Don’t let up, no matter how much he growls.”
Dalton, a patrol wolf barely out of his teens, bares his teeth but doesn’t snap. Smart kid. He knows we’re trying to help him, even if every touch makes his wolf want to fight back. The bite marks on his shoulder are deep, the kind that come from another wolf who meant to kill. He’s lucky his patrol partner dragged him out when she did.
“You’re going to be fine,” I tell him, even though I’m not entirely sure that’s true. “The bleeding is slowing. That’s a good sign.”
He nods, but his face is pale and sweaty. I catch Fern’s eye and tilt my head toward the supply cabinet. She understands right away—we need more bandages and more antiseptics. More of everything, really. The medical center has become a war zone of its own, and our supplies are dwindling fast.
Every bed is full. Every corner holds someone bleeding, groaning, or unconscious. The Cheslem wolves hit the eastern boundary hard, and our patrol teams took the worst of it before driving them back. I’ve counted at least fifteen injured so far, and more keep coming through the doors.
I haven’t stopped moving since Bryan left.
The alarm tore him from my bed two hours ago, and I’ve been stitching wounds ever since. My hands know this work. My body moves through the motions without conscious thought—clean, assess, treat, repeat. It’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
Sera appears at my side, looking frantic. “We’ve got another one coming in. Looks like a bite wound to the thigh. Deep. He’s losing a lot of blood.”
“Put him in bay four. Start an IV line if you can find a vein. He’s probably dehydrated from blood loss. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
She nods and disappears into the crowded room. Sera understands triage better than most. Her time with the corrupted Cheslem pack taught her things no healer should have to learn. She saw wolves die from injuries that could have been treated if anyone had cared enough to try. She watched pack members suffer because Matthias hoarded medical supplies for his inner circle. Those memories haunt her still, but she’s channeled them into something useful. Now she’s one of the best field medics we have, and I’m grateful every day that she chose to stay in Silvercreek after the purification.
I finish wrapping Dalton’s shoulder and squeeze his uninjured arm. “Rest. Don’t try to move until I come back to check on you.”
“Thank you,” he manages, though his voice is rough with pain.
I don’t have time to respond. The wolf in bay four needs me, and there are three more patients waiting after him.
Connor stands guard at the front entrance with his massive frame blocking most of the doorway. He hasn’t moved from that spot since the first injured wolf came through, and I doubt he will until Fern is safely home. He watches every person who enters, checking for threats even though the danger is supposed to be outside our walls. Through the window, I catchsight of Dylan coordinating the patrol rotations and barking orders at the younger wolves.
Both of them have mates to protect. Both of them are doing exactly what they should be doing.
And Bryan is out there somewhere, fighting wolves who want him dead because of choices he made long before he came back to me.
I push the thought away and concentrate on the laceration in front of me. The wolf in bay four—a man named Peter who runs the hardware store on Main—has a gash in his thigh that’s going to need at least twenty stitches, but it doesn’t look like his artery has been touched. Sera already has the IV running, and the fluids are dripping steadily into his arm to replace what he’s lost.
“Bite?” I ask, examining the wound.
“Claw,” Peter grits out. “Bastard got me when I wasn’t looking. Thought I had him pinned, but he twisted and—” He gestures vaguely at his leg.
“Hold still. This is going to hurt.”
I clean the wound with antiseptic, ignoring his muffled curse. The flesh is torn but not shredded, which means it should heal cleanly if I can get it closed properly. I thread the needle and begin working, keeping my stitches small and even despite the tremor of exhaustion in my hands.
“Is it true?” Peter asks through clenched teeth. “The Cheslem wolves… They’re really back? I thought we finished them off years ago.”
“Some of them survived and regrouped under new leadership.” I tie off a stitch and start the next one. “Our patrol teams are handling it.”
When I finish, I bandage Peter’s leg and send him to the recovery area with instructions to stay off his feet for at least two days. He’ll ignore that advice—wolves always do—but I have to say it anyway.
The next patient is a woman named Jenna who works in the pack’s administrative office. She has a four-inch laceration on her forearm, deep enough to need stitches but not deep enough to hit anything vital. I clean it with antiseptic while she winces but stays still.
“You’re doing great,” I tell her. “Just a few more minutes.”
“I shouldn’t even be here,” Jenna complains. “I’m not a fighter. I was just trying to help evacuate the children from the school when one of them came out of nowhere.”
“One of the Cheslem wolves?”
She nods. “He wasn’t even trying to hurt me, I don’t think. Just trying to get past me to the school. But his claws caught my arm when I blocked the doorway.”
“You protected the children.” I thread the needle and begin closing the wound. “Those kids are safe because you didn’t run. That matters, Jenna.”
