Chapter Twenty-Six
KIT
Louisa stopped telling me not to drain too much of Lucas’s pain after the third time he cried out, bonelessly flopped over one of Errol’s broad shoulders as we ran through the rain.
We needed to get him to Callum, who had more reserves for pain draining than the three of us, and we needed to get him there fast.
My vision wasn’t perfect in the dark, but I’d shied away from looking at Lucas’s leg. Even a quick glance as I’d rushed into the hut had turned my stomach. It had laid across the straw at an odd angle, the sodden fabric of his jeans full to bursting.
Callum would be able to drain Lucas’s pain effortlessly while we figured out how to help him.
There had to be something we could do for his leg.
Hopefully the strange wetness to each of his breaths was just because he’d gotten drenched.
The clammy chill of his skin was probably his body’s way of fighting the cold.
We’d found him. Now we just had to get him to safety so that we could help him.
I stumbled when Errol stopped by his jeep, but didn’t stop draining Lucas’s pain. I was exhausting myself, but how could I pull back when I could feel that everything I was able to take only smoothed off the rough edges?
‘Kit, get in the other side. I’ll put Lucas across the back seat and you can support his head while I drive.’
What Errol said made sense, but I was reluctant to let go of Lucas’s hand. I squeezed it, then raced around the four-by-four. Lucas whimpered, then cried out when Errol lowered him from his shoulder and eased him across the back seat.
As soon as I touched him again, dark swirls danced across my hands. I rested his back to my chest, keeping his legs straight across the seat. With my arms laced around his torso, I gripped his hands in one of mine and pressed the other to the side of his face.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ I whispered as Errol and Louisa climbed into the front.
Lucas didn’t give any sign he’d heard. His skin was a horrible mix of blotchy reds and stark whites.
His eyes fluttered and weak moans escaped over his chapped lips.
In the hut, salty lines across his face had evidenced where his tears had fallen.
The barrage of rain between the hut and the car had washed them away.
I hated thinking of Lucas in that hut, hurting and alone. I hoped he wouldn’t remember, would have vague memories of the storm before waking up somewhere dry and warm.
Louisa reached between the front seats and gripped Lucas’s hands as Errol started up the car. I didn’t look at her. I held Lucas tight and drained more of his pain. I didn’t need energy for walking anymore.
‘You’re safe now,’ I murmured into his matted hair. ‘We’re going to make sure you’re okay.’
The slam of the car door pulled me from a stupor of draining Lucas’s pain and whispering promises over his laboured breathing.
The drive to find Lucas had felt much longer than the return trip to Callum and Aster’s cabin.
My arm ached where I’d been pulling too much of what Lucas felt into myself and tiredness sapped my bones, but I didn’t stop draining the whole time we manoeuvred Lucas out of the car.
Errol hefted him back over his shoulder and rushed to the cabin, Louisa and I following with Lucas’s hands pressed between ours.
The cabin door opened before we reached it. For one second, Aster stood on the threshold. In that second, the hope on his face crumbled. He stepped aside.
‘Bring him into the bedroom,’ Callum commanded, his fear of the storm secondary now there was someone for him to care for.
Errol was gentle as he slid Lucas off his shoulder and into the middle of the blanket covered bed, but Lucas still cried out.
I gripped his hand and sunk onto my knees beside the bed, gritting my teeth against the desperate sobs threatening to rise up through my chest.
Lucas looked so much worse in the light.
‘Aster, we need scissors.’ Callum knelt on the bed, one hand on Lucas’s belly under the jumpers and coats we’d hurriedly thrown on in the hut.
Aster hurried in with scissors and a cup of water. He climbed over me and sat on the bed near Lucas’s head.
‘Hey, bestie,’ he crooned, threading shaking fingers through Lucas’s tangled hair. He used one hand to raise his head. ‘Can you drink this for me?’
Aster pressed the cup to Lucas’s parted lips. He tipped a trickle of water over Lucas’s tongue, but stopped when it leaked from the corners of his mouth. He grabbed a tissue and dabbed at Lucas’s face.
Louisa had taken the scissors from Callum so that he didn’t have to use them one handed while draining Lucas’s pain.
She cut through the clothes sticking to Lucas’s top half, right up the centre of his chest then down across his arms. With Errol holding Lucas’s shoulders off the bed, she pulled the sodden mess away.
My jaw ached with how hard I clenched my teeth together. For a moment before Aster bundled his best friend’s top half into armfuls of blankets, Lucas’s bruised chest was exposed. His skin was the same wrong colour as his face, his ribs juddering with each of his shallow breaths.
Louisa cut off the right leg of his jeans first, and Errol tugged off the boot.
They paused before starting on his left side.
Getting the fabric off Lucas’s broken leg was going to hurt him.
There was no avoiding it. His shin was bent unnaturally, but that wasn’t the most disturbing part.
His flesh was thick and bloated, pulling the fabric unnaturally tight.
‘Go from the top,’ Callum advised, thick lines of black lacing across his arms where he pressed one hand to Lucas’s forehead and the other to his stomach. ‘Be as quick and smooth as you can.’
Louisa nodded. She licked her lips, then cut through the thick waistband. She eased one of the blades under the straining fabric.
Lucas moaned. His eyes fluttered.
He screamed as the scissors sliced through the fabric down to his knee. He whimpered when Louisa descended to where his leg was broken, then quietened.
I frantically searched his face. He’d passed out from the pain. I drained as much as I could, but even with Callum’s superior strength we were no match for it all. I couldn’t feel the specifics of what was wrong with Lucas like Callum would be able to, but the pain was seemingly endless.
Louisa took advantage of Lucas’s unconsciousness to slide the cut open jeans from under his broken leg. Errol sliced through the laces of his boot and eased off the battered leather.
A shuddering gasp escaped me when I looked at Lucas’s leg.
The skin was a mottled purple stretching from his enlarged toes to where his black boxers cut across his upper thigh. Thick red veins stood out across the bruising. His shin bone was broken, but the skin hadn’t been pierced. The damage was contained within his distended skin.
‘Broken tibia and fibula.’ Callum’s eyes roved across Lucas’s leg. ‘One of them has sheared a vein. That’s what’s causing the internal bleeding.’ His gaze moved upwards. ‘Dislocated knee as well.’ His eyebrows lowered. ‘He’s got hypothermia, but something else is going on.’
Louisa and Errol bundled blankets over Lucas’s legs while Aster pressed close to his side. I gripped Lucas’s hand, willing warmth into his flesh as I drained what pain I could away.
Callum’s expression cascaded from confusion to shock. ‘He’s got pneumonia.’
‘Fuck,’ Errol hissed.
Aster’s panic was sharp. ‘What does that mean?’
Callum looked to Errol. As head of the coastguard on the island, he was the most medically trained person in the room. Except perhaps for the man lying unconscious on the bed.
Errol wrapped a hand around Lucas’s ankle and closed his eyes. His forehead wrinkled in concentration.
‘We won’t be able to keep draining his pain for long enough to give his body the time it needs to fight everything.’ He opened his eyes but didn’t let go of Lucas, black vines darkening the deep brown skin of his hand. ‘We need to get him to hospital on the mainland.’
‘Will that be possible in a storm?’ Louisa’s fingertips pressed to Lucas’s swollen foot, her pale skin run through with twisting lines of black.
The heavy silence in the room answered her question. We had a doctor on the island, but she wouldn’t have the supplies to help someone in such a critical condition.
‘What does that mean then?’ Aster’s skin was deathly white beneath his freckles. ‘We can’t get Lucas off the island, so what’s going to happen?’
The sobs constrained in my chest threatened to burst free. I clutched at Lucas’s unmoving hand and focused on the faint pulse flickering at his wrist.
Callum lifted his hand from Lucas’s brow and cupped Aster’s face. ‘If we don’t do something, he’ll die.’
‘What? No. Just. I. Fuck.’ Aster couldn’t flail without jostling Lucas so used his facial muscles to express his abject rejection of what Callum had said. ‘That’s not an option. You said that if we don’t do something Lucas will die. What can we do to stop that from never ever happening?’
Callum’s eyebrows drew together. ‘I can bite him. Turn him into a werewolf.’
Aster nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. Do that then.’
‘It’s not a decision to be made lightly.’ Callum lowered his hand to curve his fingers around the side of Aster’s neck. ‘It’s a big change. Do you think Lucas would want to not be human anymore?’
‘If it’s a choice between my best friend being a furry wolf-man and alive or a perfectly ordinary human and dead, then I don’t give a flying shit what he would want. Anyway, he would want to stay with us. With me.’ Aster glared at his boyfriend. ‘Bite him. Right now. Please.’
Inexplicably, Callum’s gaze flicked to me. I didn’t know what he saw except terror and howling sadness, but his jaw tightened.
Raw yellow light overtook the mingled browns and greens in his eyes. He opened his mouth to allow his fangs to extend to their full length. Letting go of Aster, he nudged away the blankets tucked around Lucas’s neck, then lowered his head.
Only a born wolf could change someone outside of the full moon. If I bit Lucas right now, we’d just have to add puncture wounds to his list of ailments.
I lowered my head to the back of Lucas’s hand and willed his body to accept the change. The worst it would do was reject it, but in this moment that was a terrifying possibility. He might not have chosen to leave being human behind like me, Louisa, and Errol, but he needed to become a wolf.
The scent of blood filled the air as Callum pressed his fangs deep into Lucas’s neck.
He and Bonnie hadn’t been able to explain how they were able to turn people outside of the full moon.
Callum said something vague about saliva and Bonnie claimed she and her brother were superior wolves.
Either way, I was unendingly grateful my pack contained the possibility of saving Lucas.
The last time we properly talked couldn’t be when he’d fled from me. I couldn’t accept that he would die without knowing deep in his core that everything between us would always be okay, even if he never wanted to kiss me. The last sounds I heard from him couldn’t be faint whimpers of pain.
Callum sat back. ‘It’s taking.’
‘Thank fuck,’ Aster said, then burst into tears. He buried his face in the unbitten side of Lucas’s neck.
I’d not been around a werewolf transformation other than my own before.
Usually, it took a day or so for a body to switch from being human to a wolf.
Lucas’s change would likely take longer, since his body had not only a mystical change to contend with but all the damage he’d sustained during the storm as well.
‘Kit?’ Louisa’s hand was firm on my shoulder. ‘Can you come with me?’
I lifted my head and blinked up at her. I didn’t want to leave Lucas, but the lines of black on my arms were sinking to grey. I’d used up my ability to drain pain, fought off sleep with every heavy drop of my eyelids.
Lucas was okay. His breathing had calmed and his heartbeat was strengthening. Aster was curled into his side, Callum tucking himself under the blankets on the other. They would look after Lucas in the volatile few days after becoming a wolf. We’d all rested here as we got used to our new bodies.
I wondered if Errol and Louisa had cried as much as I had after they were changed.
‘Do we need to go?’ I slurred as I stumbled after her into the main room of the cabin.
The fewer people around when Lucas woke up, the less overload he’d suffer as he adjusted to his newly heightened senses.
I wanted one of those people to be me, but Callum had turned him.
He needed to be close when Lucas woke up.
And Aster wasn’t about to leave his best friend any time soon.
It was horrible to walk away, but I had to trust Callum and Aster would look after Lucas. They had much more claim over him than I ever would.
‘We’ll go in a minute.’ Louisa shut the door to the bedroom behind us.
The rain pounding on the roof of the cabin was much louder in the main room, or maybe it was that out here my sole focus wasn’t on Lucas’s heartbeat. Logs crackled in the fire and a grey pygmy goat snored where it cuddled with a larger brown and black one on the sofa.
Louisa grasped my shoulders. ‘You can fall apart now.’
I hadn’t realised I’d needed permission to crack in two.
A wet sob forced its way up my throat as I collapsed into Louisa’s waiting arms.
Lucas was alive. He would be well. Forever linked to me as a member of my pack.
But he had come close to dying. Far too close.
It took a long time for my tears to stop, the memory at the forefront of my mind Lucas’s slowing heart right before Callum bit him.