Keller flushed beneath the thick fuzz on his weathered cheeks. “She got all riled up when I tried to get hold of her. See?” He held up his right arm, which was bleeding through several long rips in his flannel shirt. “I had to whack her on the back of the head with a piece of firewood just to get a good grip on her.”
I wasn’t sure whether to scowl or laugh at his approach to taming the shrew. Nor was I quite sure what to think of Keller’s willingness to whack the shit out of a tabby he mistook for me.
“I think she was lookin’ for food. I wish she’d just knocked on the door. I’d gladly ’ave given her some fresh deer meat.”
Dr. Carver smiled, wordlessly reassuring the bruin that he’d done no harm. “I think she’ll be fine. I don’t think it’s fractured. She should wake up soon, but we’ll need to keep an eye on her until then.” He glanced up at my father, then over at Paul Blackwell. “Where do you want to put her?”
Daddy shrugged at Blackwell. “It’s your lodge.”
Blackwell nodded. “Colin, clean out your room. You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.” He glanced at my father. “He’s leaving tomorrow anyway.”
“Paul—” Colin started from the kitchen doorway, where he was standing with an ice pack pressed to his jaw over the lump I’d given him.
Blackwell frowned, and I was kind of impressed by how stern the old man looked, in spite of the frailness of age. “Now.” Like the rest of us, he knew that if Colin had chickened out while defending his boss, the southwest territory would be looking for a new Alpha.
Colin stomped up the stairs to pack his bags, looking for all the world like a spoiled preschooler. A very large preschooler. I’d have gladly given up a week of my freedom to see the look on his face when his sire found out why Blackwell was sending him home.
“Greg, could you send someone for my medical kit, please?” Dr. Carver said, circling the coffee table to examine the tabby’s underbelly. “I left it in your cabin.”
“Of course.” My father scanned the faces still staring rapt at the tabby. “Jace?”
Jace handed the bread knife to Nate and headed out the front door without a word, trailed by Michael, since they weren’t supposed to go out alone. Shortly after they left, a buzzer went off in the kitchen, and Nate scurried to take the lasagnas out of the oven before they burned.
After that, Keller excused himself, and as the other Alphas shooed their men from the crowded room, I made my way slowly toward the tabby, expecting someone to stop me any minute. When no one did, I sank to my knees next to Dr. Carver and reached out hesitantly to touch her fur. My curiosity was trumped only by my sympathy for the prone tabby, who was in pretty bad shape, above and beyond the fresh lump on her head.
Dr. Carver smiled as I stroked her side gently. “What do you think? Any guess as to her age?”
“Young.” I frowned as my fingers skimmed ribs far too delicate and pronounced. “Too young.” In cat form, she was about the same size as my cousin Abby, which worried me more than I wanted to admit. Abby was seventeen and a half, but very petite; at a glance, she could pass for twelve.
Surely the tabby wasn’t that young. What the hell was she doing alone in the Rockies?
I inched closer to the table, one hand hovering over my still-tender abdomen, and my jeans whispered across the worn carpet. “She’s so thin,” I said, carefully working a cocklebur free from the fur over her left flank. “Why is she so thin?”
Glass clinked against glass in the kitchen as someone pulled bottles from the refrigerator. Dinner was almost done, but for once I wasn’t thinking about my stomach. I was thinking about the tabby, who clearly needed food worse than I did.
Dr. Carver’s eyes found mine again. “She’s malnourished. Half-starved. And this kind of damage doesn’t happen quickly. Either whoever’s supposed to be watching out for her is guilty of long-term neglect, or she’s been on her own for quite a while.”
My fingers skimmed a patch of fur matted around a clump of something soft and sour smelling. “How long?”
“A few weeks at least. See here?” The doc ran his hand backward across her fur, revealing a patch of dry, scaly skin. “She’s peeling. And look how bloated her stomach is.”
Her belly was a little poochy, in contrast to her otherwise bony appearance. A devastating pang of sympathy rang through me, bringing tears to my eyes. But an instant later my pity was replaced by blazing anger. Whoever this tabby was, she hadn’t simply winked into existence. Some tom had sired her, and some dam had given birth to her.
Someone, somewhere was responsible for this poor girl, and someone was going to pay for the sorry state she was in.
I would see to that personally if I had to.
“What happened here?” My mood sank even further as I lifted her left front paw to show him an open wound oozing a thin, clear fluid.
“She cut it on something, probably glass from someone’s trash can, if that’s how she’s been feeding herself. It’s infected, and since she’s malnourished, it won’t heal. Not until we can get some nutrients into her, anyway.” The doc stroked her side, petting her like he might a scared kitten. “Something tells me she won’t want much to do with us once she wakes up, so I’m going to do what I can for her now. Want to help?”
I nodded, mute, my head spinning as I tried to figure out what had happened to her. How the hell had a cat so small and young survived on her own long enough to become so malnourished?
Jace and Michael returned with the medical kit just as Nate yelled for everyone to grab a plate. While the toms formed a line behind the Alphas for dinner, I stayed on the floor with Dr. Carver, taking the supplies he handed me as he dug them one at a time from his bag.
Several minutes later, as I shone a flashlight at the tabby’s paw so the doc could see better, Marc sank onto the couch at my back and held a full plate of food toward me. “Here.” He nudged my shoulder with the plate rim. “I brought you some dinner. You should eat.”
“Thanks.” I glanced at him long enough to see the concern in his eyes, and to know it was for me, not for the tabby. “You go ahead. I’ll eat when we’re done here.”“The food’ll be gone by then.”
“Then I’ll grab something else. I want to help.” I couldn’t have said why I wanted to assist the doctor, but the urge was there, nonetheless. I couldn’t get up to stuff my face while this poor young tabby lay unconscious on the table, thin to the point of emaciation, with knots in her fur and unhealed wounds on her feet. It wouldn’t be right.
Still… “I’d love a Coke, though, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Marc set the plate of food on the middle couch cushion, to save his place, then marched into the kitchen like a man on a mission. I smiled as I watched him, amused by how happy he was with a task to perform, until my father crossed my field of vision. He carried his dinner to an armchair against the far wall, where he sat and balanced his plate on his lap.
As an Alpha, my father could have demanded a seat at the kitchen table, where he could easily have kept an eye on me while eating in comfort. Yet he came into the living room, not to monitor me, but to watch me. To observe me and study my motives. And he looked pleased, which drew an odd blush of pride from me.
Though I’d never given his disapproval of my wardrobe, my big mouth, and my craving for independence much thought, his opinion of me as a person—as a possible successor—well, that meant the world.
The approval in his eyes was worth listening to my stomach growl for a few more minutes.
Marc returned with my soda and sat on the couch behind me. In the kitchen, Jace sat around the table with Lucas, Michael, and my uncle Rick, all of them watching as I helped Dr. Carver clean the tabby’s paw and treat it with some kind of goopy cream and a gauze wrap. Everyone else had filed into the dining room, where there was space at the long table for fourteen.
When Dr. Carver and I had done what we could for the tabby, he carried her upstairs to the bedroom Colin had vacated for her at the end of the hall, and I followed, carrying his supplies. When he had her settled on the bed, he thanked me for my help and sent me downstairs to grab some dinner.
I was loath to leave because I wanted to be there when the tabby opened her eyes. But I went because I didn’t want my growling stomach to be what woke her up.
However, I was only halfway through the hunk of lasagna Marc had set aside for me when a thump shook the ceiling over my head, followed by a roar and a vicious, frightened growl. Dr. Carver screamed, and every cat still in the lodge jumped to his feet, until my father called a halt and nodded for Marc to follow him and my uncle upstairs.
While they were gone, the rest of us listening in absolute silence, Blackwell and Malone emerged from the dining room demanding answers. Before anyone could tell them we had no idea what had happened, a door closed on the second floor and Dr. Carver appeared on the stairs, a bloodstained towel wrapped around one arm.
“What happened?” I asked when he settled into the kitchen chair next to me. The Alphas gathered around the table and I felt all eyes on us.
“She woken up, and I must have startled her, because she took a swipe at me. Cut my arm wide open.” Dr. Carver lifted the towel gingerly to expose three bloody claw marks bisecting the top of his forearm.