“Hold her down,” he said, and everything in me panicked.
Leah didn’t ask any questions. She just reached out, grasped my lower half with one hand and shoulder with the other, and held me firmly.
Brayden didn’t warn me, he just shoved those tweezers inside of the hole in my lower flank. The scariest part was… I didn’t feel a thing. I heard it though; the sloshy wetness made my stomach roil.
“I’m going to be sick,” Leah said.
“Then stop looking,” Brayden counseled her, and she turned her head away.
I wanted to ask for a mirror so that I could see the procedure. How ironic the one time I finally get to see a bullet wound and it was on myself.
There was a clink of metal on metal as Brayden dropped the bullet into a bowl. My legs started to tingle as the feeling began to come back in them.
“Okay, now shift back to human. I can’t bring a wolf into my OR, and you’ll have the best chance if I bring you in with my team at Bonner General.”
Without question, I started to shift back. Brayden held gauze on my wound as I slowly morphed into my human form over the next thirty seconds. I was just getting some feeling back in my toes when dizziness washed over me and blood squirted from Brayden’s hands and sprayed the entire front of his chest.
“Oh shit,” Brayden said as blackness danced at the edges of my vison. Sirens wailed outside and I chanted to myself:Don’t pass out, don’t pass out…
But the blackness took me.
THIRTEEN
I cracked open my eyes only to shut them once again as I was blinded by the overhead lights. The slow steady beep of a machine played in the background as I listened to the hushed voices of two women.
“She’s Dr. Greywolf’s girlfriend,” the one woman said.
“He said that? I’ve never seen him with a girl. I thought he might be gay,” another said, and they both snickered.
When I realized they were talking about me, I opened my eyes again and looked over at the two nurses. I was in some kind of intensive care unit. There were three other beds across from me with sleeping patients that I could just see through a sliver in the open curtain. An older woman in her mid-forties with short brown hair walked right up to the end of my bed and looked at the ladies.
“Do rounds,” she snapped, and the two gossiping nurses scurried out of view.
I peered at the newcomer and she smiled, her eyes flashing yellow for a second.
Wolf.
I inhaled and sure enough she smelled familiar, like me, like Brayden.
“Hello, Averly, I’m Nurse Mary. I workveryclosely with Dr. Greywolf.” She stepped closer, looking at my beeping machine.
She’d flashed her eyes yellow to tell me she was a wolf and trusted by Brayden. Message received.
I nodded. Afraid to speak, afraid to move, I still couldn’t believe I was alive. I knew enough about medicine to know that when Brayden removed my bullet to save my spine, I’d bled out. I peered up at the IV bag above my bed to see it was full of blood.
“Transfusion?” I croaked, and Nurse Mary grabbed a light pink cup with a white lid and straw and held it to my lips.
I gulped the water down gratefully and she lowered her voice. “You can only have blood from your own kind and I was a match. Happy to help, dear.”
I went still, looking up at the woman in gratitude. “Thank you.”
She patted my hand, and even though she only appeared to be in her early forties, there was a sweet grandma-ness about her. Who knew any of these wolves’ real ages, or witches’ for that matter.
“Can you move your toes for me, hun?” She peeled back the end of the sheet and I wiggled my toes, causing her to smile.
“Great.” She walked over to a phone on the wall and spoke into it. “Paging Dr. Greywolf to ICU, Dr. Greywolf to ICU.” Her voice rang out on the PA intercom, and throughout the entire hospital I presumed, and then she hung it up and stepped over to me, peeling back the sheet. “I’m going to take a look at your wound. Now that you’re awake, make sure you don’t let any of the other nurses check on you. Only Brayden or myself should be looking at your wound.”
I frowned but nodded, and she read the confusion on my face, lowering her voice. “Your rapid healing would invite a lot of questions.”
