Pride (Shifters #3)(20)

The stray growled at me and retracted his claws, and overhead Jace hissed in fury, drawing the cat’s attention.
I dropped the handful of moss and let my hand skim the ground once more, this time moving slowly, to keep from startling the tom again. My fingers brushed the cold plastic plunger. My hand curled around the syringe, and I exhaled in relief.
I swung my arm up. Claws sank into my flesh again. Hot blood poured over my stomach and down my sides. One last scream ripped free from my throat. I shoved the syringe into the cat’s neck, wincing as it met gristly resistance. I pushed harder and the needle slid in.
The cat roared in pain and surprise. I shoved the plunger home. Something heavy thumped to the ground on my left, then soared toward us. My scream ended in a terrified yelp as the stray flew off me. His claws ripped loose from my flesh and I screamed again. My hands clutched at my stomach, slipping in my own blood.
Marc was at my side in an instant, pressing something to my stomach. It was his shirt. His jacket lay forgotten on the ground, his chest bare in spite of the cold. “Don’t move.” He stroked my hair with his free hand. “You’re bleeding.”
I laughed, but that hurt my stomach, so I stopped. “Ya think?”
He smiled, and pressed harder on my abdomen. “Shh,” he said, and I nodded, compliant now that I hurt too badly to argue.
Marc pulled out his cell phone and autodialed my father with one hand. Distantly I heard him read coordinates from the GPS unit, and tell our Alpha that we’d caught a stray. And that I was hurt. After that, I heard panic on the other end of the line and quit listening.
I turned my head to find Jace standing over the strange cat, who lay unmoving on the ground, the syringe still protruding from its neck. Jace had knocked the stray off me, accidentally ripping its claws from my stomach, but probably saving my life. “Thank you,” I whispered.
At the sound of my voice, Jace padded to me silently and rubbed his cheek on my shoulder. He lay down at my side, purring, and I put one bloody hand on his paw then closed my eyes.
Marc’s phone clicked shut, and he took my free hand in his, still putting pressure on my abdomen. “You’re gonna be fine,” he said. “Your dad’s sending help.” Then, so low I could barely hear him, “I should never have let you go.” 
Eight

I’m not sure how long it took for help to arrive, but it felt like forever.
While we waited, Jace kept his body between me and the unconscious stray, just in case, and Marc applied pressure to my wounds. He didn’t actually look at them, and even in my pain-filled fog, I understood that he was too scared to. He could apply common-sense first aid to slow the bleeding, but looking at the damage might tell him more than he wanted to know. More than I wanted to know, too.
We heard our backup long before we saw them, and knew from the racket that most of those sent were in human form. Since speed was the issue, they wasted no time on stealth, instead crashing though the woods like a bear on fire, pounding feet, breaking branches, and crunching leaves. Jace roared to help them find us; there was little else he could do to help me in cat form.
To my complete surprise, and more than a little relief, my father was the first man to burst through the brush. He still wore the suit he’d donned that morning, including shiny dress shoes that should never have seen action in the woods. They were now ruined by mud and scratches from exposed roots.
He stopped as soon as he spotted me, one thick hand holding back a branch he’d shoved aside. Alarm flickered across his face, then was gone, but I was surprised to have seen it at all. My brothers had been wounded dozens of times, and my father had always taken charge with calm professionalism. Yet for me, he’d shown fear.
Did my stomach look that bad?
No! It was only a few puncture wounds, and surely he couldn’t see the details without more light. My father was just upset because I was his baby—his only daughter—whom he’d never seen sliced open. Would this scare him into removing me from the field? Putting me on permanent desk duty?
Hell, no. I wouldn’t let that happen.
I grinned through the pain at my father, assuring him I was okay, and he smiled back in relief and knelt next to Marc in the crowded clearing, taking my right hand in his. He stroked my hair back from my damp cheeks, much as Marc had done, but didn’t say a word. I didn’t know what to say, either. When he found out it was my idea to play bait, his concern would likely be eclipsed by anger, and even in the grip of abdominal agony, I knew the ensuing argument would not be pleasant.
Behind my father, two dark, furred forms stepped into the clearing—extra security, in case we ran into more trouble on the way back. The first I recognized as Paul Blackwell’s grandson, and the second was…
Uncle Rick! I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him in cat form, but he’d come along as a public show of support for me, as much for Malone’s sake as for mine. But that didn’t matter. An Alpha doesn’t play security guard for just anyone. I was honored, in spite of the fire enveloping my stomach.
My cousin Lucas followed his father out of the brush, towering over everyone, including Dr. Carver, who carried his first-aid bag in both hands. His eyes widened as he took in first the unconscious stray, then me.
All business now, he dropped to the ground at my side, pushing my father over without so much as an “Excuse me.” Daddy moved without argument, and I was pleased to see that an M.D. trumped Alpha status in an emergency. Good to know.
Dr. Carver set his bag down, then carefully peeled Marc’s ruined shirt away from my stomach and dropped it into a plastic bag Lucas held ready. Then he took the bottom of my T-shirt in both hands and lifted it gently. I sucked in air through clenched teeth as the material tugged at my open wounds. When the injury was exposed, the doc ripped my shirt open from hem to collar. It tore easily, if not neatly—even in human form werecats are very strong—and suddenly my entire torso was exposed, bloody wounds, scarlet-stained bra, and all.Marc winced, and Jace whined over the state of my stomach. But no one even blinked at the partial nudity. We saw each other naked all the time, because Shifting with clothes on would have been ridiculous, not to mention expensive after a while.
Marc’s face reflected my own fear and horror, and I didn’t need any more of that, so I tilted my head to look at my father instead. His jaw was clenched tight, like mine, and I couldn’t help wondering what his was holding back. He smiled when he noticed me watching him. “You’re going to be fine.” He nodded, as if to convince himself. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
I flinched as Dr. Carver began mopping up the blood gently, and breathed a sigh of relief when he held my still-there navel ring to clean around it. But I never took my eyes off my father. “Where’d you get your medical degree?”
Daddy laughed hoarsely as Dr. Carver sat back on his haunches, drawing my attention. “Actually, he’s right. You’ve got four puncture wounds in the chest—I’m guessing claws?” I nodded, and he continued. “I’m sure they hurt, but they’re shallow and don’t appear to have done any real damage.”
So far, so good.
“The wounds in your abdomen are a bit more serious, but at a glance they don’t seem to have ruptured any organs. Of course, I’ll want to keep an eye on you to make sure. And the tears coming from the puncture wounds sliced through the skin pretty good, but I don’t think they’ve gone past the muscle. I’d say you’re damn lucky. I don’t think there will be any permanent damage.”
The forest itself seemed to sigh, and it took me a moment to realize I was actually hearing the men around me exhale in unison.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Dr. Carver frowned down at me. “It’s going to hurt for a while. You’ll need to be still for at least twenty-four hours, then Shift as soon as possible after that to speed up the healing. It won’t be fun, but that’s better than lying around here for the next month, wincing every time you laugh.”
“I can handle it, Doc.”
His frown eased. “I’m sure you can.” His gaze rose to meet my father’s. “Let’s get her out of here so I can sew her up.”
Lucas offered to carry me, and Jace wanted to Shift back and help, but Marc wouldn’t let either of them near me. He carried me cradled in his arms all the way back through the forest to the lodge, then another quarter mile to our cabin. I winced with every step, finally burying my head in his neck for the comfort of his smell. Marc nuzzled the top of my head with his chin, which did more to ease my pain than anything Dr. Carver could give me.
Lucas walked behind us, the unconscious stray tossed over his shoulder like a sack of feed. Dr. Carver said he’d be out for hours, based on the dose I’d given him of…whatever Malone had loaded in those syringes, which was evidently much stronger than what I’d been shot up with in the past. And the very thought of how long I would have been unconscious on such a dose, considering how much smaller I was than the stray, was enough to make me sick to my poor, abused stomach. 
When we got to our cabin, Marc placed me gently on the shiny green-blanketed bed in the room I’d claimed. He found a pair of scissors in the kitchen and cut the rest of my shirt off, then propped my head up with an extra pillow from his own room—I could tell because it smelled like him. He was doing his best to make me comfortable, and even though fire lanced my stomach with each breath, I was much too happy to have him touching me to ruin it by complaining, even about the pain.