To say Doug was upset about the attack was the understatement of the year.
He was furious.
The whole pack went on lockdown, as the wolf who ran off had not been caught yet. A patrol went after the two guards who had taken the motorcyclist to the hospital. They hadn’t responded because they had been drugged and tied up, their vehicle found on a logging road about ten miles from where the attack took place. As I was being patched up in the Pack clinic, they were brought in and checked. Doc said they would sleep it off and be fine.
Remi was worse off than me, she had just left with Doug. Her arm had started to heal wrong, and it had to be broken and reset. I thought Doug was going to lose it, it took his boys David, Nathan and Derek to hold him back while Renee held her other hand. The sound of the break was sickening, as well as the grinding of bone, and she screamed in pain despite the drugs she had been given. I was glad when it was over and he was placing it in a cast. She would have to wear it for a week, werewolves healed much faster than humans after all. Her other wounds had been cleaned and superglued together on the way back to the clinic.
Finally, Doc called me into the room and I sat on the examining table. He put my injured arm on a rolling table and carefully removed the battle dressing. It was ugly; my forearm had deep bites on two sides, just below the elbow. There was lots of dried blood and scabbing. He gave me a local anesthetic and let it take effect before starting, because as he said, “this was going to hurt like a bitch when I go in there.”
Let’s just say the shot wasn’t 100% effective. He used cotton balls soaked in alcohol to remove the dried blood, then he softened the scabs with a wet bandage before ripping it off. “FUCK! That hurt!”
“I know, but one bad thing about clotting agents, they trap any germs in there. I have to get in there and clean them out good.” He had pulled over a lighted magnifying glass on a long arm so he could see better. “I can see some fibers in there from your shirt, those have to come out too.” He spend the next fifteen minutes digging around in the holes and pulling stuff out, before cleaning them with hydrogen peroxide. The smaller wounds he left alone, but some had to be stitched up. Finally, he was done and he wrapped it in gauze and tape. “Keep it dry, come back in two days and I’ll change the dressing and check for infection. The stitches have to be in for two weeks. The painkillers you already have for your thumb should be fine for this too.”
“Thanks Doc. I guess the bite didn’t give me my wolf back, huh?”
“Like I said, it can’t. If you were a normal human, the way you got bit in an attack, you’d have changed already.”
I got up to my feet and he walked me to the door; Renee was waiting in the chairs outside. “What are you here for, cousin?”
“Dad asked me to bring you to him when you were done.” She looked towards the house then back. “He’s had a little time to calm down, Mom told him off. He wanted to punish our guards, and she had to remind him that SHE told them to leave and SHE didn’t want them to come back with a human. She also may have said something about how he needs to pull his head out of his ass and focus on the attackers and not his own people.”
“Language, Renee. You’re too young to say stuff like that.”
“Really? Like my virgin ears have never heard anything like that at school, on TV or on the internet.” She huffed and walked me to the door. “I’m tired of being treated like a little kid, I’m big enough to fight. I think I proved that today.”
“Yeah, you did good, but it’s not like I’m going to let you drive my truck again for at least three more years.” I rubbed the top of her head as we exited the building and started to walk back to the Pack house. “Any idea what he wants to talk about?”
“I know we didn’t catch that one that ran from you. The trackers followed the scent, it disappeared at a trailhead parking area. Guy is long gone by now.” We climbed up the front stairs to the Pack house. “He’s trying to figure out how this happened.” She left me at his office door and ran off.
I knocked at the door and entered when he called to me. “You wanted to see me, Uncle Doug?”
“Yes, I have a few questions after talking to Remi and Renee.” He sat me down next to him on the couch across from his desk. “First off, I need anything you can tell me about the one who got away.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured him. “Young, under 25 I think. Good sized, bigger than most, probably Alpha or Beta bloodlines. I didn’t see any scars or identifying marks other than the white coloration on his black fur.” I grabbed a pencil and notebook from the phone on the table next to my side, and quickly sketched where the white patches were. “Bright green eyes were the most striking feature, they were like jewels, almost. He behaved weird, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he and another wolf were both attacking Remi. She was hurt already, he left her and charged me, just to put on the brakes and stand there staring at me. He was getting my scent. Remi took out the other wolf, and he just looked back and then took off running.”
Doug shook his head. “Why would he stop like that in the middle of a fight?”
“I’ve been thinking that he smelled I was human. There’s still rules against that.”
Doug leaned back and pinched his nose with his fingers. “Maybe. What did you think about the ambush?”
“It was well planned. The motorcyclist, since he drugged our guys, had to have been in on it. He was human, or Remi would have said something. They had wolves on both sides of the road, spread out so they could surround us but far enough away Darryl didn’t get his scent. They also staged the accident.” I sat back a little. “Shit, they knew we were coming, it’s the only answer.”
“How? You guys left twenty minutes after you came in here. Remi and Renee weren’t even going, unless…”
“They weren’t the targets.” I turned a little towards him. “They were after me.”
“How?”
“Let’s look at what they know about me. They know I might be here because we’re related and I’m not at home, but they won’t come on your land because that would start a war. They know the truck I drive, and they know about my surgery. They could have been watching the entrance to your land, waiting for me to leave.”
“That doesn’t give them time to get out in front of you and set up an ambush like that, unless they know where you’re going.”
“But how did they…” Fuck. They were waiting for me to call! “The appointment. There are only a handful, pardon the pun, of specialists out there who can do followup on something like this. They must have found out from the scheduling office at the hospital, I used my real name for the appointment.” I reached out with my good hand and set it on his knee. “I’m so sorry, I endangered both their lives.”