No response seemed forthcoming. Resting a hand on Luc’s head, he sighed. Though his skin remained damp, he wasn’t feverish. After drawing a blanket over him, Brett retrieved the chair and settled into place. It took a couple of hours, but Luc finally woke again.
Discomfort rippled across his face a moment before his eyes opened. “I’m in hell.”
“You bought the ticket.” The blithe reply suited him. He’d watched carefully, aware of every breath the man took. “Next time wait until you’re fully healed before you try to pick a fight.”
“You wouldn’t have hurt me,” the other wolf mumbled, before rubbing a hand to his face. “Though it feels like a truck hit me all over again.”
Speaking of which… “Exactly what happened that you ended up in the hospital?”
“You won’t believe me if I told you.” Bracing a hand against the bed, he tried to push himself upright. Brett caught his shoulder then used the bed control to ease him higher.
“Better?”
“Yeah.” Then, he added, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Tell me what happened.” The details he had were sketchy, more because the Enforcer didn’t know anything beyond Luc had been found badly injured and nude in a ditch off to the side of the road.
“I was tracking a scent. I couldn’t make sense of it.” The story came out in drips and drams, pain darkening Luc’s voice. Glancing at the side table next to his bed, Brett spotted the Norco. Most wolves burned through pain medication too fast for it to be all that effective, but they could help. Palming the bottle, he popped it open and counted out two pills.
Luc accepted them, then the water bottle with a grunted, “Thank you.”
“Welcome. Once we get through this, if you meant it—I’ll bring you into the pack and I’ll help you with the pain.” He couldn’t take it away, but he could help shoulder the burden by sharing his strength.
“Punishing me?” Genuine inquiry rather than challenge inhabited the question.
“No, but decisions made while you’re in pain may not be what you really want.”
Tipping the bottle toward him, Luc nodded. “Fair point.”
“I have them from time to time. You were tracking a scent…?”
“Yeah, I caught wind of…the only way I can describe it was pack, not pack. Wolf, not wolf. Does that make any damn sense?”
“Not really,” but he didn’t discount it. The other wolf had a good nose. “But go on anyway.”
He took another drink of water before continuing. “I kept picking it up in different places, sometimes outside a cleaners, once near a grocery store. It was always faint, like I was a day or two behind. Then I’d lose it entirely. I stopped for food at this great burger joint and there it was…fresh.”
“So, being the planner you are, you shifted and took off after it.” Luc really didn’t have to continue. “You were so caught up on the scent, you didn’t pay attention to traffic?”
Grimace turning into a snarl, Luc glared at him. “Hey, in all fairness that jerkwad didn’t have his lights on, and he didn’t slow down after he clipped me either.”
“You could have been killed, you know?” The growl rumbled through him. Of all the idiotic, dumbass ways to die… “All for some damn curiosity. It’s supposed to kill cats, not wolves.”
“I almost did you know.” The faint grin didn’t vanish. “And as luck would have it…I found it.”
Irked didn’t cover his feelings on the subject. “Found what?”
“The scent. Or should I say, the owner of the scent.”
Brett frowned.
“Come on, I asked you if you checked out her scent. Didn’t you notice it?”
Colby’s contradictory scents. The unusual, provocative nature of it. “You think Colby is a wolf?”
“Dude, I have no idea what she is, but I want to find out. From the moment she started looking after me, I felt better and clearer than I had in a while. Even the drugs they kept feeding me couldn’t compete with it.”
Chill fingers wrapped around Brett’s heart. A mate could do that for a wolf. Give them clarity and happiness even in the darkest of times. They could make the world brighter.
“I had to bring her here…get her to bring me. As long as I was with her, I was okay. Soon as you shoved me in that room upstairs…”
“You had an infection and needed to change. If she’s a wolf, you would have just shifted in front of her.” As soon as he was out of the hospital. His ride home would have been significantly easier, too