Chapter One #2
But the alternative was leaving an injured person in his yard to bleed out, and that wasn’t really an alternative at all.
Whatever else shifters might be, they were still people.
Mostly.
The taxonomy got fuzzy.
Half carrying, half dragging a wolf that probably weighed more than he did was not on the list of things Clint had planned for tonight.
Neither was getting blood all over his entryway or praying that he wasn’t making the kind of mistake that ended with his face on the evening news.
But the wolf tried to help, pushing with its back legs when it could, and somehow, they made it through the door and into his living room.
Clint eased the creature down, grimacing at the blood now smeared across his hardwood.
That was a problem for later.
Right now, he needed to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it before his unexpected patient died on his living room floor.
Blood soaked through another towel, turning white cotton pink and then red.
Clint grabbed fresh gauze from his bag, pressing it against the deepest gash while his other hand felt along the wolf’s ribs.
Two definitely broken, maybe three. The breathing stayed shallow and rapid, not quite panting but close enough to worry him.
“Right, so here’s the situation.” Talking helped steady his hands, gave his brain something to focus on besides the absurdity of performing emergency veterinary care on someone who could probably bench-press him tomorrow.
“You’ve got yourself some nasty lacerations here.
The good news is they’re not arterial. Bad news is you’re still losing blood faster than I’d like. ”
Saline solution ran clear, then pink, then red as he irrigated the wounds. Dirt and what looked like bits of tree bark came away with the blood. Whatever happened, the wolf had been running through rough terrain afterward. Running from something, most likely.
“Not my business,” Clint muttered, threading a suture needle. “Definitely not my business what a shifter was doing out there or who might have—”
The wolf’s ear twitched. Just once, but enough to let him know it was listening.
“Yeah, I know. Terrible bedside manner. The gerbils at the clinic complain about it too.”
Suturing took concentration. The wolf’s skin was tougher than a regular canine’s, requiring more force to push the needle through.
Each stitch pulled the edges of torn flesh together, neat rows marching across the worst of the damage.
His fingers moved on autopilot, muscle memory from thousands of similar procedures, though usually on creatures that couldn’t later shake his hand and thank him.
Or sue him for malpractice.
Did shifters sue? Everyone sued these days.
“Almost done with this part,” he said, tying off another suture.
“Then we’ll deal with that leg.” He resumed working, trying not to think about what he’d gotten himself into.
“Mom always said I had terrible judgment. ‘Clint,’ she’d say, ‘why can’t you date nice people?
Why can’t you have normal problems?’ Well, Mom, here’s your answer.
I don’t date anyone because my life is too bizarre for nice men. ”
The wolf’s eyes snapped to him, like it agreed with Clint.
Setting the break would hurt. No way around it. Even with the wolf barely conscious, manipulating broken bone would trigger a pain response. But leaving it meant the bone might heal wrong, assuming the shifter healing eventually kicked in.
Strange marks caught his attention as he worked lower, cleaning blood away from the wolf’s flank. Not cuts or bruises, but something else. Faint lines traced across the skin under the fur, darker than the surrounding tissue. Almost like...
“Huh.” Clint leaned closer, parting the fur carefully. “These look like burn marks. Or maybe electrical burns?”
Scorch marks, really. Thin lines that branched like lightning across maybe six inches of skin. Old enough to have started healing but recent enough to still be visible. Whatever caused them had happened before tonight’s injuries.
The wolf’s breathing hitched.
“Sorry. Won’t poke at them.” Clint moved his attention back to the immediate problems. “Though if you’re regularly getting electrocuted, we need to talk about your life choices.”
From her perch on the armchair, Mabel watched the proceedings with feline disdain. Her tail flicked once, twice, before she settled into a loaf position that suggested she’d appointed herself supervisor of this disaster.
“Don’t give me that look,” Clint told her. “Yes, I brought home a giant predator. Yes, it’s bleeding on our floor. No, I don’t have a good explanation.”
Mabel’s slow blink conveyed exactly what she thought of his decision-making skills.
The leg came next. Clint’s hands moved along the bone, feeling the break through fur and muscle. Clean fracture of the tibia, thankfully. Could have been worse. Could have been compound, bone through skin, or shattered beyond his ability to set it properly.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned, though the wolf seemed barely conscious now. “If you can hear me, try not to bite my face off.”
Aligning the bone took steady pressure. Pull to separate the broken ends, rotate slightly to match the alignment, then ease them back together. The wolf’s whole body went rigid, a sound escaping that wasn’t quite animal or human.
“I know, I know. I’m an asshole.” Clint grabbed the splinting materials. “But it’s better than having your leg heal sideways. Trust me on that one.”
Clint worked quickly after that, splinting the leg with materials meant for much smaller animals. Gauze wrapped around and around, then rigid supports on either side, then more gauze. Not pretty, but it would hold the bone in place until the shifter magic did its thing.
If it did its thing.
Why wasn’t it doing its thing?
“There we go. Worst part’s over. Probably. I mean you still might die, but at least your leg will be straight when you do.” Clint sat back on his heels, surveying his work. Bandages covered the worst wounds, the leg was immobilized, and the bleeding had mostly stopped.
Blood loss was still a concern, as was shock and whatever had prevented the healing in the first place. But those were problems beyond his ability to fix with needle and thread.
“You’re way too calm about this.” He taped the last bandage in place. “Either you’re in shock or you’ve done this before. Neither option makes me feel better about my life choices tonight.”
The wolf’s eyes hadn’t closed through any of it. Dark amber in the lamplight, they tracked Clint’s movements without aggression or fear. Just watching. Trust, maybe. Or maybe just too exhausted to do anything else.
“You need fluids,” Clint said, more to himself than the wolf. “And antibiotics, though I’m not sure what dosage to give someone who’s technically two species at once. Is your metabolism more human or more wolf? Do you process medications differently when shifted?”
Questions he had no answers for. His veterinary training hadn’t covered this particular scenario. The semester on exotic animals had included nothing about treating people who turned into animals when the moon was full or they were pissed off or whatever triggered it.
Blood had dried on his hands, under his fingernails, across his shirt.
The living room smelled like copper and antiseptic and wet dog.
His coffee table had become a makeshift surgical platform, supplies scattered across its surface.
The living room looked like a crime scene. Which, technically, it might be.
“What a Monday,” he said, and realized it was actually Tuesday now. Past midnight, probably closer to one. “What a Tuesday, then.”
The wolf’s breathing had evened out some. Still too fast but less ragged. The immediate crisis had passed, leaving Clint with a two-hundred-pound predator on his living room floor and no idea what to do next.
Call someone? Who? Animal control would laugh at him. No human hospital would admit a wolf. Dr. Reeves—the emergency backup who’d helped during last month’s parvo outbreak—would ask questions Clint couldn’t answer.
Hey, I’ve got a werewolf bleeding out on my floor. What’s the protocol for that?
“Guess you’re staying here tonight.” Clint grabbed a clean towel from his bag, wiping the worst of the blood from his hands. “Fair warning, the accommodations are pretty basic. No room service.”
Mabel’s ear twitched.
Exhaustion hit him all at once, fourteen hours at the clinic plus emergency wolf surgery finally catching up. His shoulders ached. His back protested when he stood. Every part of him wanted to collapse into bed and pretend this was someone else's problem.
But the wolf was still watching him with those too-intelligent eyes, and Clint had already crossed whatever line existed between sensible caution and reckless compassion.
“I’m getting water,” he announced. “For both of us. You’ve lost too much blood to not be dehydrated.”
In the kitchen, he filled two bowls with water and grabbed a handful of clean dish towels. The wolf might not be able to drink easily while lying down, but he could at least drip water into its mouth if needed. Basic hydration was better than nothing.
When he returned, the wolf had shifted position slightly, curled more on its side to take pressure off the injured leg. Smart. Also concerning, since movement meant consciousness, and consciousness meant pain.
“Here.” Clint set one bowl within reach of the wolf’s muzzle. “If you can manage it.”
The wolf’s nose twitched, nostrils flaring. After a moment, its tongue emerged, lapping weakly at the water. Good sign. If it could drink, its body was still fighting.
Clint took a long drink of his own water, copper still hanging in the back of his throat, and tried to process the reality of his situation.
Injured shifter on his floor. Blood everywhere. No backup plan if things went wrong.
“My life used to be simple,” he said to no one in particular. “Wake up, go to work, come home. Rinse. Repeat. Now I’m apparently running a supernatural emergency ward.”
The wolf had stopped drinking, eyes growing heavy, exhaustion finally winning over vigilance. Made sense. Blood loss, trauma, and pain took their toll on any creature.
“You’re lucky I have a hero complex,” he told the sleeping wolf. “And terrible judgment. Really, spectacularly bad judgment.”
Grabbing a throw blanket from the couch, Clint draped it carefully over the wolf’s body, avoiding the bandaged areas. Probably pointless since the thing had fur, but it felt wrong to leave an injured... person... lying exposed on his floor.
Clint should probably sleep too, but leaving the wolf alone felt wrong. If it took a turn for the worse, if the bleeding started again, if whoever had hurt it came looking...
Too many ifs.
Moving to the chair, he settled in where he could watch the wolf without hovering.
His shirt stuck to his skin where blood had soaked through, and exhaustion pulled at him like gravity.
But leaving felt wrong. If something went sideways, if the wolf stopped breathing or started bleeding again, someone should be there.
Someone who apparently had no sense of self-preservation.
Mabel jumped down from her perch and padded over to him, butting her head against his shin before curling up on his feet. Her purr rumbled through the quiet room.
“At least one of us has good judgment,” he murmured, reaching down to scratch behind its ears.
Across the room, the wolf’s breathing had evened out into something approaching normal sleep. Blood no longer seeped through the bandages. The strange marks on its side seemed less angry in the soft lamplight.
Outside, wind rattled the windows. Inside, his living room had transformed into some kind of supernatural emergency ward, complete with a patient who might wake up human and have questions Clint had no answer to.
Like why he’d helped.
Like why he was still sitting here, watching over a stranger who’d shown up bleeding on his lawn.
Like why the sight of those too-intelligent eyes had made him throw caution aside and drag two hundred pounds of predator into his home.
The only possible explanation was that he saw an injured animal and instinct kicked in, not his self-preservation or sanity.
Just the weight of Mabel on his feet and the sound of the wolf’s breathing filling the silence.
“I’ll just rest here a minute,” he told himself, though his eyelids were already drooping. “Make sure you’re stable.”
The house settled into quiet around them. Just the tick of the clock in the hallway, Mabel’s occasional shift against his feet, the wolf’s steadier breathing. Normal sounds made strange by the context.
Outside, wind moved through trees, carrying the scent of pine and approaching rain. The world went on, unaware that Clint’s living room had become a trauma unit for the supernatural.
He really should’ve gotten that doctorate in cryptozoology instead.
Would’ve been more practical, apparently.
The last thing he registered was his own heartbeat, Mabel’s purring, and the quiet certainty that his life had just veered onto a road he couldn’t yet see the end of.