Chapter 3
T he entire cabin smelled of earth and a vague fruity scent. The berry-type smell was coming from the omega, but it was hard to make out her exact scent, given the layers of dirt, sweat, and the horrible burnt smell of her fear that coated the room.
One thing I had learned as a medic was that fear had a distinct smell. Working in trauma meant that I had come across some of the worst cases out there, people who were experiencing the most horrific day of their life, and I could distinctly remember how their fear emanated in the form of a potent smell. It was something that hadn’t hit my nostrils in years—until Carter had come bounding into the cabin with a passed-out omega in his arms.
When he had first rushed into the room, I thought he was carrying a child because they were so tiny. But after a quick inspection, there was no denying that she was a woman. Not only a woman—an omega . Despite the layers of dirt, she was beautiful. Her hair was matted, and she was clearly underweight, but there was something about her that called to me. At the sight of her, every single alpha instinct I had suppressed over the past few years had rushed to the surface. I wanted nothing more than to pull her into my arms and protect her from the world.
I couldn’t do that, though. I didn’t know who she was or why she was here, but I knew one thing for certain: judging by the bruising on her face, she was injured. While Carter got to work warming her up, I started checking over her body. Each new bruise made my stomach drop further and further to the floor. She had clearly been to hell and back. Her body was littered with scars and marks, and there was a distinct pattern of bruising around her wrists and ankles. I handled her with the utmost care as I examined every inch of her body, but underneath the surface, a rage simmered like no other. I wanted to find the fucker who had done this and put him into a grave.
When Dylan had mentioned that he had brought out the firearms, I was pleased. I wouldn’t have hesitated to grab one of them and shoot whoever had put this tiny, fragile creature in this state. Of all her injuries, I was most concerned with one of her elbows, which had swollen to double its size, and one of her feet. The cuts on her feet weren’t that severe, but her left ankle had swollen significantly and turned a deep purpley-red colour.
"She’s going to have to stay off this foot for a long time," I told Carter as I gently inspected the injury.
Carter nodded. "I assume she’d been running for a while, judging by the state of her, so she probably tripped over a tree branch or something. You know how bad the woods are out there," he said, the frown never leaving his face. His hair was slicked back from the rain, his cheeks pink. He had shed his coat and only wore his T-shirt and jeans, but he didn’t seem to care about the chill in the room; he only cared about the omega.
He wasn’t wrong. The woods that surrounded the cabin were dense, allowing us privacy and a kind of isolation we often craved.
When Carter mentioned painkillers, I started to do a mental inventory of what I had. I kept a fairly good stash at the cabin because I knew that getting snowed in or trapped by bad weather was a distinct possibility. Our second year of owning the cabin, we had been stuck for nearly six months, thanks to an epic snowstorm that had lasted what felt like decades.
I had painkillers and everything I needed to bandage up a bad sprain or dislocation. Broken bones would have been more tricky. I could potentially splint them, but that was also asking for trouble, because if I didn’t set the bone correctly, that could lead to potential issues in the future. The tiny omega had been through hell already; I didn’t want to add to her suffering by giving her lifelong issues with a badly set bone.
Her state of unconsciousness was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it was a relief because she wasn’t in pain while I was poking and prodding at her, trying to ascertain just how bad her injuries were. But, on the other hand, I couldn’t ask her how she got the injuries, whether she was allergic to anything, and most importantly, what her name was. I couldn’t keep calling her "the omega" in my head.
I turned to my pack mate, who was stoking the fire. "Hey, Carter, did she tell you her name?"
Carter placed the poker down next to the fire and turned to me. "She didn’t," he said. "I managed to tell her my name, but she didn’t return the favour." He laughed lightly. "She was sassing me more than anything."
That made me smile. Surely, it was a good sign that she still had the ability to sass Carter, despite her injuries. Maybe that meant her pain wasn’t too bad.
Once I had managed to look over all her injuries and treated them as best I could, I grabbed a damp washcloth from the bathroom and started running it slowly over her body. Her skin was caked in dirt, and she was freezing cold, so I had to make several trips back to the bathroom to rewarm the cloth. I methodically cleaned her body, doing my best to suppress the anger that rose every time a new bruise was exposed.
While I did that, the bed sank next to me as Dylan sat next to her head, a comb in hand. He picked up a lock of her hair and slowly started undoing the tangles. He didn’t speak as he worked, keeping his gaze fixed intently on the omega.