“Those are the only ones I can remember that are in pack buildings. Tell Nathan that Cam asked Jared to help. That should smooth his ruffled feathers.” Tim snapped his medical bag shut with effort. He caught Alec staring and shrugged. “Preparing for anything.”
“Fair enough.” He held the list in one hand and his phone in the other. “I’ll send them up to you as I get hold of them.”
“Make sure you stress the urgency.”
Alec smiled wryly. “Don’t worry, they’ll be there soon.” He knew how to get people to move.
Tim gave Seb a quick but passionate kiss goodbye, and Alec looked away, ignoring the pang of longing that swept over him. He moved past them and out into the corridor and started to make calls.
Tim came out shortly after, bag in hand. “I’ll see you up—”
The front door burst open and Gareth’s voice drifted up the stairs, full of urgency. Tim ran to the stairwell door with Alec hot on his heels.
They peered over the rail to see Gareth with two other shifters from his unit, Keira and Luke, hauling an unconscious, soaking wet, and unnaturally pale Jason up the stairs. His head lolled to one side, and Alec winced at the long gash across his neck that most definitely wasn’t healing. Is he even breathing?
Carrying him like he weighed nothing, they soon reached Tim and Alec. They slowed down a little, but Tim dashed in front of them up the stairs, calling over his shoulder. “I’ll go get everything ready. Keira, I’m going to need your help up there. Alec, get the rest of those people to sprint here.”
It’s as bad as it looks, then.
Gareth nodded in greeting as he passed and Alec returned it. “I’ll be up in a sec. Then I want to know everything.”
“See you in a bit.” They hurried past him, whisking Jason up to Cam’s flat, where hopefully Tim could work a miracle, because Jason seemed about as close to death as you could get without actually dying. Handily, Keira was on the list Tim had given him, so that was one less person to track down.
Alec called the rest of them as he hurried up the stairs.
The door to Cam’s flat stood open, and Tim could be heard inside issuing orders in his commanding doctor’s voice. Alec walked inside, closing the door behind him. Gareth and Luke were in the living room, and now that Alec got a better look at them, their trousers were wet up to the knee and spattered with mud. They stopped talking and turned to face him.
“Alec.”
“Gareth, Luke.” He nodded in greeting. “Where did you find him?” He glanced towards Cam’s bedroom where the others were. “Is he awake? Has he said anything?”
Gareth sighed and gestured for Luke to take a seat. “No, he’s not said anything. He’s been unconscious more or less since we found him.”
Luke cleared his throat. “He said one thing.”
“What was it?” Alec looked between them.
“He said, “Alec.””
“My name?”
“Yeah.” Luke glanced down at his hands. “That was it. But he said it like it was urgent, so I don’t think it was a mistake.”
Gareth took over. “Do you know him?”
“Not to speak to. He’s Mark’s beta, but I’ve never had a conversation with him.”
“So why did he mention you specifically? Unless he meant another Alec? One in his pack, maybe?”
“No.” Alec didn’t believe that for a second. “He’d recognise your scent. If he meant someone else, he’d have said their last name. This must have something to do with Mark.”
“What, though?”
Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? “Let’s hope he wakes up soon and can tell us.” He left them to go see for himself.
Cam’s bedroom was a hive of activity. Cam had his sleeves rolled up, tearing Jason’s clothes along the seams and carefully removing them, presumably so Tim could get at his injuries.
Currently, Tim was busy attaching some sort of tubing from Keira’s arm into Jason’s. He made her sit in a chair next to the bed, and Alec watched, half-fascinated, half-disgusted as Keira’s blood flowed down the tube into Jason. So wrong. Tim caught him staring, and whatever expression he wore had Tim rolling his eyes.
“If you want him in any shape to answer questions, then this is what he needs.”
Alec grunted and moved closer to the bed. “How bad is he?”
“He’s lost so much blood, his body’s struggling to keep him alive, let alone heal itself. We need to close some of these wounds, stop the blood leaking out of him, and take some of the pressure off him.”
Now Cam had removed the rest of Jason’s clothes, Alec saw the full extent of the damage. Fucking hell. “He looks as though he was mauled.” Leaning close to inspect the wounds, Alec frowned. Turning to Keira, he asked, “Where did you find him?” Alec noted the way she avoided looking at the tube in her arm.
She met his gaze and kept eye contact. “On the far side of the park, at the edge of the boating lake.”
“He was on our territory?”
“Yes. From the looks of it, he wasn’t followed.”
“Maybe whoever did this assumed they’d finished him off.”
Tim wiped at the wound on Jason’s neck, the blood still trickling out at a steady pace. “They almost did. I’ve no idea how he managed to walk at all, let alone get all the way here.”
“I guess that depends on where he came from.”
“Well, you can figure that out between yourselves elsewhere. I need room to work.”
Taking the hint, Alec moved back out of the way.
Tim knelt on the bed, alternately wiping and stitching the massive gash in Jason’s neck. The skin should be knitting back together, but nothing happened, and Alec found the whole scene disturbing.
A shifter should heal.
With Jason’s neck all stitched up, Tim moved down to the other smaller wounds over the rest of his body.
Alec had seen too many shifter-inflicted wounds to count and would recognise them anywhere. Jason had been attacked by more than one shifter. He picked up one of Jason’s hands, the claws still out, and examined it. Nothing was caught in them, no traces of blood, skin or cloth like he’d expect to see.
Jason hadn’t fought back.
Either they’d taken him completely by surprise, which Alec struggled to believe. Or he knew his attackers. “Let me know as soon as he wakes up.”
“Of course,” Tim replied, not taking his eyes off the patient. “His healing should kick in properly when we stop the bleeding and set those bones.”
Bones? Alec hadn’t noticed anything broken. He looked again, gaze drifting down over Jason’s body, and only then did he notice the odd angle his wrist laid on the bed. Further down, he winced at the bone sticking out of Jason’s shin that his clothes had hidden from view. Now virtually naked, Alec took in the extent of his injuries, and he had to agree with Tim. With his body struggling to heal itself, how had Jason managed to move at all?
He spared him one last look, then returned to the living area, where Gareth sat next to Luke, a hand on his neck, and Cam stood next to the fireplace.
Cam pointed at one of the chairs. “Sit down.”
Alec sat. He spared one last glance at the bedroom. “He should probably be in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“I mean, Tim’s good, but Jason looks close to—”
“I know that, Alec.” Cam fixed him with a hard stare. “I can’t let anyone outside this flat know he’s here without alerting Newell, and I thought we agreed that was a bad idea.”
Sighing, Alec slumped back into the cushions. “Sorry. I was just thinking aloud.”
“Please refrain, unless you have something constructive to add.” He softened the words with a wry smile, and Alec sighed.
“What the fuck do we do now?”
“Nothing. We carry on as normal.” Cam crossed his arms, radiating calm, and thank fuck, because Alec was anything but. “Until Jason wakes up, we have nothing to go on. As you saw, the coun
cil works on facts, and right now the facts are that Jason is badly injured, but that’s it.”
Alec turned to Gareth. The need to do something, anything, made his words come out sharper than he meant. “Did you scent any other packs where you found him?”
Gareth didn’t react to Alec’s tone. “He was half submerged in the lake when we got there, hard to tell with everything else all over him.” He glanced at Cam, and Alec had a feeling what was coming. “But no, we didn’t scent anything other than his own pack.”
“I fucking knew it!”
“Alec.” Cam’s voice cut through the room like a whip. “You know better than anyone not to jump to conclusions.” Alec bristled but said nothing. For all that his instincts screamed Newell was behind this. Cam was right. “We prepare for the council meeting tomorrow as though nothing has changed. If or when Jason regains consciousness, we’ll reassess as necessary.”
Resting his head in his hands, Alec took a deep breath and tried to focus on what needed to be done. The idea of going to get Mark lurked at the back of his mind, but Cam was right. Again. He couldn’t march into another pack’s territory without provocation. No matter how strongly he believed something was badly wrong, unanswered calls and texts wouldn’t cut it.
They needed Jason to wake up. And fast.
“What do you need from me?” He looked up, meeting Cam’s gaze, concentrating hard on matching his alpha’s calm. He needed to be better than this. It wasn’t only about him and Mark.
Cam addressed both him and Gareth. “You need to ready your teams to go tomorrow with little advanced notice. I don’t have a definite time yet, but I suspect it’ll be early afternoon. Gareth, bring Nathan and Jared. Alec, you’ll need to escort Felix, bring whoever you see fit.”
“We’re taking him to the meeting?” He probably should have expected it, but for some reason it came as a shock.
“Yes. The council will deal with him first, most probably.”
The wave of sympathy was unexpected and unwanted. Felix had brought it all on himself. The feeling refused to go away, and he had to ask. “Have they said what they’ll do with him?”
With a sigh, Cam leaned against the wall. For a split second he looked tired, but it was gone in a flash, the smooth exterior back in place. “No. And it’s not my place to ask. I never promised him a positive outcome, but nevertheless, I feel a certain responsibility for him.”
“Felix attacked our pack. He deserves none of your concern.”
Cam raised an eyebrow. “And yet I sensed your worry a moment ago.”
Alec huffed. Protesting was useless, Cam knew him better than most people. “Fine. I don’t like him, and he deserves punishment. But… now we’re no longer fighting.” Glancing up at the ceiling, Alec couldn’t believe he was saying this. “I don’t wish for his death.”
“Neither do I.” Cam pushed off the wall and stood up straight. “I suggest we leave Tim to his work. He’ll call if he needs anything. I’m going to see Mike and Daryl about tomorrow.” He left with a nod, and Gareth and Luke left soon after him.
Alec sat on the edge of the sofa, head in his hands.
His whole world had turned upside down in a matter of days, and he hated the lack of control that came with it.
Is this what the promise of a bond is like?
In the rare moments Alec had imagined it, he’d pictured a thrum of excitement building in intensity as the bond started to form. Trust unequalled, connecting him and his mate.
Not this hollow ache lodged behind his ribs and the gnawing worry that accompanied it.
Jared’s scent hit him, and he looked up sharply to see him walk into the living room.
“Alec?” Jared stopped, and Alec was surprised not to see Nathan with him.When Alec’s gaze drifted beyond him, Jared smiled. “I told him to calm down before joining me.”
“Not taking it well?”
Jared laughed softly, already rolling up his sleeve. “You could say that.”
For the first time in a long while, Alec sympathised with him. In Nathan’s shoes, he wouldn’t want his mate giving blood to another shifter either. It left him uncomfortable and off-kilter. “Tim’s in the bedroom, go on through.”
Tim’s voice carried down the hallway. “Hey, Jared. Come on, I’m just about done with Keira.”
“Keira?” Jared mouthed.
“She’s the same blood type as you, and she was already here.”
“Ahh, okay.” As he headed toward the bedroom, he glanced back over his shoulder. “If Nathan comes up— Never mind.”
“What?”
Jared drew his bottom lip between his teeth, then said, “He won’t handle seeing me giving blood to another shifter, so I was going to ask if you could keep him out here until I’m done. But maybe that’s not—”
“It’s fine. I’ll talk to him.”
“Really?” Jared’s eyebrows rose to his hairline, and Alec sighed.
“Yes, and I’ll even be civil.”
That made Jared smile. “Thank you.” He disappeared into the bedroom, and Alec marvelled at how easy that offer had come.
The thought of being in the same room as Nathan no longer made his wolf agitated, not that he was especially looking forward to it either, but some of the guilt and anger that accompanied all interactions with Nathan had eased.
Even with everything going on around them, or maybe because of it, Alec’s lips curved into a smile, and the weight he’d carried since the day he lost his whole unit got a little easier to bear.
Jared needn’t have worried. There was no sign of Nathan in the hours that followed. The other O-type shifters arrived, and Alec directed them into the bedroom to Tim. Wanting to be there in case Jason woke up, Alec stayed in the living room, his unit coming to him as they organised themselves for the journey to the council headquarters the following day.
Cam still hadn’t given them a time frame.
“Have you eaten?” Tim walked into Alec’s line of sight and stopped, hands on hips. “Because I’m pretty sure you’ve been sat there for the past four hours and I haven’t smelled anything edible.”
Alec looked up at him. “I’m surprised you can smell anything but blood in there.” He motioned to the now-closed bedroom door. “How is he? Any change?”
Taking the seat beside him, Tim yawned and settled back to stare up at the ceiling. “I’ve set his broken bones and closed all the open wounds we found.” He ran a hand over his face and let out a heavy sigh. “Fuck, Alec, there were a lot. I don’t know why whoever did it, didn’t finish him off, but they meant for him to die.”
“Not an accident then?”
“No.”
“But he’ll survive?” Alec curled his hands into fists, needing the answer to be yes.
“Yes.” Tim turned to face Alec but stayed leant against the back of the sofa. “The blood we gave him kept him alive while we fixed his body. Now he can start to heal.”
“How long before he’s conscious?”
“Hard to say. The last time I saw anyone in this state was Nathan, and he had Jared to help him.”
Alec hated not getting a straight answer. “Best guess?”
“I think you’re looking at the morning before you’ll get any sense out of him.”
Something about the way Tim phrased that sentence made Alec sit up. “Is he awake now?”
“Not exactly awake, but—” Tim grabbed Alec’s arm as he started to rise. “He’s drifting in and out of consciousness with the pain. Even if you could make out what he’s saying, you can’t trust it. Wait until the morning. Please.”
“I don’t want to fucking wait.”
“I know you don’t.” Tim eased him back onto the sofa. “But you’re going to have to.”
Alec grunted. All he’d done for the past few hours was wait. Wait for his unit to arrive, wait for Jason to wake up. He glanced down at his phone, sitting silently on the table. Wait for Mark to reply.
That last one sent a stab of longing throug
h him, and he rubbed at his chest to try and ease it.
Tim’s voice was soft when he spoke. “Like Cam said, there’s nothing we can do until we know what happened. Seb’s on his way up with food. I suggest you eat something and then go home and get some rest. You’ll need it for tomorrow.”
“But—”
“There’ll be someone here all night. I promise you’ll be notified as soon as he’s awake.”
“Fine.”
It was going to be a long fucking night.
At half past five the following morning, Alec’s phone buzzed wildly on the bedside table. He snatched it up and answered with a curt, “Yes?”
“Jason’s awake.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bleary-eyed, Mark leant against the headboard and glanced at the text on his phone. “Fuck.” They’d finally fallen asleep on Will’s bed in the early hours after finishing the bottle of vodka. He wasn’t hungover, thanks to his shifter genes, but he was knackered.
Will stirred beside him. “What is it?”
“Text from Wes.”
Sitting up next to him, Will peered over his shoulder to read.
Council meeting at 1pm. Be ready to leave at 8.30.
Will’s phone chimed a second later. They both looked over at it to see Wes’s name flash up with the exact same message.
“Why do I have to go this time?”
Mark shrugged. “You spoke to the council, maybe everyone who did is going.”
“Or maybe they want to keep an eye on us to make sure we don’t tell anyone.”
“Maybe.” That was more like it. Mark let his head fall back against the wall. “Nothing’s going to happen to Newell, is it?”
Will shuffled closer until they were touching, his warmth a welcome comfort. “No. I don’t think so.”
“And it’ll be our fault. Our lies will keep him in his position as alpha to do fuck knows what else to this pack.”
“We had no choice, Mark. You know that.”
He did know that, but that didn’t change anything or make him feel better. “No one else’ll know, though. They’ll think we’re as bad as Newell and Wes.”
Will was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “You mean Alec?”
Bitten By Desire (Regent's Park Pack Book 3) Page 19