Chapter 204: Medical Expertise
I wanted to argue further, but time was of the essence. Blaise quickly transformed back into his human form and gestured for me to take the front seat.
"I’ll look after him, Harper. I have more medical expertise than you. You sit in the front for now," Blaise said, and I felt my temper recede as I got into his recently vacated seat. I could not argue against his experience, even though I wondered how Blaise could possibly treat Darach when there was nothing to heal him with.
However, Blaise quickly entered the back seat and rummaged underneath, pulling out a large first aid box.
I didn’t even realize that was there to begin with. My face warmed in embarrassment as I watched Blaise begin to disinfect the worst of the wounds. Darach’s face was still paper pale, and he let out a weak, pained groan at Blaise’s tender ministrations. The smell of blood and pus was thick and heavy, and I fought the urge to gag.
It wasn’t as bad as Blaise’s surgery, but that was an awfully high, and highly awful, bar to clear.
"Don’t be ridiculous; I wasn’t jealous," Damon grumbled as he stomped on the accelerator, causing me to grab a hold on the seat belt for dear life as the mountain air rushed inside the car, dissipating the foul smell.
"Sure you weren’t," I said, raising an eyebrow as I glanced back at Damon. I had recognized Damon’s jealousy as well as I recognized my own, and through the course of wedding preparations, I had felt too much jealousy for my liking. "Whatever you say."
"You can’t do anything for Darach anyway. You didn’t even know the car had a first aid kid," Damon pointed out, sounding a tad bit too smug for my comfort. "Putting you with him would kill him faster."
I glowered, snapping my mouth shut. "You didn’t even want to save him to begin with." I grumbled bitterly under my breath, looking out the window.
Damon hissed, preparing to fire back another retort, but Blaise cleared his throat.
"Children, please stop arguing," Blaise said in a sing-song voice. "It’s bad for patient recovery. Focus on the road. One large bump might send Darach into the afterlife and crush my manhood too. Damon, do you think we can cut the journey down by an hour by getting Nicole to meet us partway? Every little bit counts. I don’t want to share the car seat with a corpse."
I panicked at Blaise’s words, immediately turning back to look at him. Despite his ominous statement, he seemed remarkably unbothered with the gory situation or the sudden burst of speed, squatting calmly in his full naked glory as Darah’s nude body took up the entire back seat, staining the expensive leather with blood.
If a stranger had seen such a sight, there’s no way we could have explained it away.
"Nicole can’t leave the pack. It’s not safe," Damon growled out, a vein jumping in his throat. "We’ll shorten the time by speeding up. Blaise, strap yourself down."
With that last word of warning, Damon floored the accelerator, sending us through the air with reckless abandon.
***
It was simultaneously the shortest yet longest ride of my life. I felt like I had nearly died a few times, when Damon had several close calls with the local wildlife, and Darach’s weak, delusional mutterings of pain didn’t help matters.
That poor man had been through too much at the hands of his family members. Darach had to live through this. We owed him that much.
Never had I been so happy to see the front of Fangborne’s packhouse before, and Nicole, angel of mercy that she was, was there waiting right in front, a stretcher next to her helmed by two other pack members.
She must have gotten the message from the brothers. I could breathe more easily.
Damon brought the car to a skidding halt right in front of them, the rubber tires squealing in protest at their rough treatment.
"Alpha Damon!" They saluted instinctively. "Welcome back!"
"Stop with this nonsense and help my brother take out that troublemaker from the backseat," Damon growled, storming inside.
Fangborne wolves had already seen their alpha’s nakedness, but they were unprepared for their beta to emerge nude from the car, covered in blood, carrying another naked, bloodier man.
"Beta Blaise!" They exclaimed, but Blaise already had things under control. He quickly deposited Darach on the stretcher and gestured for Nicole and I to follow him, highlighting Darach’s condition.
We made our way to the infirmary with every haste.
"He had several broken bones― his shoulders were dislocated a few times and deliberately healed and then dislocated again, fractures in his ankles, and he’s not healing as fast as he should be," Blaise listed off in a quick breath. "There’s a lot of wounds too, and they’re infected already, which is strange."
"They probably starved him, which hindered his recovery," Nicole noted, eyeing the severe line of Darach’s ribs as they transferred him from the stretcher to the bed. "He looks like he hasn’t eaten well in months."
"They didn’t have enough time to do it though," I pointed out. "We left him alone for less than an hour!"
"Wolfsbane poison then," Nicole said, a grim look on her face. Damon and Blaise had kept her and her mate relatively up to date with the happenings in Thunderstrike for her to form her own conclusions. "Either that, or his family might have already been hurting him the moment you returned from Hornstead. Maybe they’ve never fed him well enough to begin with."
I exchanged a horrified look with Blaise. That thought had never crossed our minds. Dahlia had worked her brother to the bone, but surely... surely they would have left him well enough physically for the wedding?
I couldn’t help but recall that Darach was never invited to our dinners, his seat was at the far end of the dining table.
Would Alpha Thorton have punished Darach for getting into that car accident and risking Blaise and my life?
He would.
"Nicole, you have to help him," I pleaded. "He doesn’t deserve to die here, after everything. He saved Damon from a fate worse than death!"
"I know, and I’ll do my best," Nicole said with a small smile. "Now, please leave the infirmary so I can get to work. I’ll let you know if anything changes."
