“Wow.” I inhaled sharply. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“If only there were a doctor in the house…” Carver laughed, his tone heavily ironic. He had a pretty good attitude for a man bleeding so heavily.
I shrugged. “Marc’s done his fair share of emergency stitching…” Lots of the guys had, actually, but other than my mother’s and Carver’s own, Marc’s stitches were the neatest I’d ever seen.
“Marc?” my father called, and Marc stepped forward with the doctor’s supply bag already in hand. I kicked a chair out for him and he sat, already pulling out disinfectant and a wicked-looking curved suture needle.
“I had to tranquilize her,” Dr. Carver explained, as if to distract himself as Marc poured peroxide over the cuts. Evidently doctors don’t make very good patients. “But it should wear off in a few hours. Let’s hope she’s in a better mood then, because I’m going to have to treat her sooner rather than later.”
“I don’t think you should go in there alone, if she’s dangerous,” Uncle Rick said.
“Surely she’s not dangerous.” I scowled. “She’s probably just scared, and Dr. Carver said he startled her.”
“I see no reason to take that chance,” Malone said.
My father nodded, turning to the doctor. “I agree. When she wakes up, we’ll send several toms in with you, in case she needs to be restrained or tranquilized again.”
Dr. Carver frowned. “I’m afraid that won’t make her very easy to care for. Or very willing to cooperate.”
“That’s better than having anyone else injured.” Uncle Rick leaned against the kitchen door frame. “We need all the able-bodied toms we can get right now, so no one goes into the tabby’s room alone. Understood?”
We all nodded, but Dr. Carver looked just as frustrated as I felt. And something told me the tabby wouldn’t take the news any better.
Fourteen
“Faythe!” A cold hand touched my arm as a whispered breath brushed my ear. “Faythe, wake up.”
My eyes opened, then closed when they met only darkness. The sun wasn’t up yet, and neither was I. Instead of answering, I snuggled closer to the warm body pressed against my chest, stomach, and legs, too tired to care who I’d curled up next to, since I was still fully clothed.
“Faythe, come on!” the voice whispered again, begging that time.
I sucked in a deep breath to give the rest-stealer a piece of my mind, but froze instead when the scent of the body in front of me penetrated my exhausted, medicated brain.
Jace? I’d slept in Jace’s bed? Or had he slept in mine?
Either way, this was very, very bad. My father was going to have kittens when he found out, which wouldn’t be long, considering someone had just discovered us together. If I was going to screw everything up by sleeping with Jace, I should at least have some really hot memories to balance out my father’s fury. Not to mention Marc’s…
Wait. If I’d spent the night with Jace, why was I still dressed? And why couldn’t I remember what we’d done? More important, would I get away with blaming this on the pain pills?“Faythe…”
“I’m up,” I mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes. I rolled onto my back carefully, then went still again as a warm, heavy arm draped across my ribs. From my other side.
Who the hell is that?
One whiff gave me the answer. Marc. I was in bed with Marc and Jace? I should sure as hell have some memory of that!
Wait… Whose bed were we in? And more important, what the hell was I thinking?
Moving slowly this time, I completed my rollover and my cousin Lucas’s red curls came into focus, backlit with light from the living room. As soon as I saw him, the requisite memories slid into place, along with a pang of mild disappointment.
Nothing bad had happened with Marc and Jace—nothing good either, for that matter—and we were in Nate’s bed. Nate and his roommate were on the nightshift in the woods, still searching for the strays and the missing humans.
The young tabby had still been unconscious when my father was ready to retire for the evening, so I’d asked to stay in the lodge. I wanted to be there when she woke up because she would no doubt be frightened by the strange surroundings and the gaggle of unknown toms ready to hold her down and sedate her.
My father let me stay at the lodge because Marc and Jace said they’d stay with me, and Nate and his roommate offered us their room. And because Dr. Carver had removed my stitches an hour earlier, proclaiming my recovery to be right on schedule. But since the guys wouldn’t sleep in the same bed, and neither were willing to let the other sleep in my bed, we wound up snuggled together on the two twin mattresses, pushed together to form one big bed. Another potential catastrophe averted by a werecat’s affinity for lying around in big piles.
Naturally, I got stuck on the crack in the middle.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered, blinking sleep from my eyes as I removed Marc’s arm carefully to keep from waking him.
“Dr. Carver’s asking for you. The tabby woke up again.”
Sleep fog drained from my body, leaving me alert and cold. I was up in an instant, using my werecat’s balance and stealth to crawl from the bed without disturbing either of the toms sandwiching me. Or reopening my own half-healed wounds.
Standing, I straightened my shirt and tugged my jeans into place, staring in regret at the bed I’d just left. It wasn’t every day I got to sleep between two such yummy morsels of masculinity, and part of me wanted to crawl right back between them. But the rest of me was too curious about the strange young tabby to give up the chance to see her while everyone else was sleeping.
I trailed Lucas into the living room, then detoured into the bathroom before following him upstairs, where Dr. Carver waited in the hall outside her bedroom. “When did she wake up?”
The doc rubbed the bandage on his arm absently. “I heard her moving around about half an hour ago, but I just listened for a while, because she was pacing.” A pacing werecat is either nervous or upset—or both—and not to be approached. “When she settled down, I opened the door a crack. She was curled up in one corner, and she started hissing at me. I told her who I am, and that I wasn’t going to hurt her. But when I tried to open the door farther, she started hissing and growling.”
“I take it she hasn’t Shifted yet?”
“No. I asked her to, but I can’t even tell if she understands me. She just stares at me and swishes her tail.” He paused, and tucked his injured arm behind his back, as if out of sight really meant out of mind. “Anyway, I thought the scent of another tabby might help calm her down…”
My pulse spiked in excitement. “You want me to go in with you guys?” I’d never expected to get more than another peek at her until the Alphas had pronounced her safe to approach.
“No.”
I twisted to find Marc on the top step, Lucas towering over him from behind, though he was one tread lower.
Marc marched toward us, censure heavy in each step. “Faythe’s still recovering from a serious injury, and she is not going to get another one on my watch.”
Irritated, I propped both hands on my hips. “I can speak for myself.”
He nodded. “So long as you say something sensible.”
Before I could start yelling, Dr. Carver cleared his throat to get our attention. “Marc…” His fingers picked uneasily at the edge of his bandage. “We need to know who the tabby is, and I don’t think she’ll talk to any of the toms. But more important, she needs food and medical treatment, and I doubt she’ll take either until she feels safe. I can’t even get her to Shift. Faythe is probably the only one of us she’ll trust, at least at first.”
“Then go get Greg’s permission.” Marc stopped three feet from the doctor, clearly prepared to stand his ground. “He’ll see your point, and probably go in there with you both.”
Carver sighed, and suddenly looked very tired. “I’m afraid she won’t cooperate—even with Faythe—with the rest of us standing around ready to knock her out the first time she twitches. She needs to feel safe, not threatened.”
My blood raced, my skin tingling in excitement. He wanted me to go in alone!
“Absolutely not.” Marc’s eyes went hard. “He’d never let Faythe confront a feral cat alone while she’s still injured from her last adventure.”
The doc closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to meet Marc’s. “Exactly.”
“And if I let her, he’ll have my head.” Since Marc was the senior ranking enforcer present, in theory, if he gave me an order, I’d have to follow it. Of course, in practice that didn’t always work out very well—for him. “And there’s no telling what the rest of the council would do. I value both of our lives too much to risk finding out.”
“What about her life?” Dr. Carver tossed his head toward the closed bedroom door. “That tabby’s emaciated and dangerously dehydrated. She has a concussion and an infected laceration on one paw. She needs food, water and medical attention. Immediately. If you wake Greg up, he’ll say no out of an understandable but overprotective need to keep his daughter safe. But the tabby’s the one who will suffer.”