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Chuff.

I didn’t have the strength to translate.

Strong arms took over. Then there were more hands, these easing me away. “Come on, Hart.” This was Olsen. “Let’s get you looked at.” I turned to see what was happening, watching as several uniforms got to work, one finding a ladder and bringing it over so that someone else could cut the rope holding Elliot to the beam.

I couldn’t breathe.

Taavi stayed where he was, his head twitching as he looked between Elliot and me with his one sharp brown eye.

“EMTs are here!” a woman’s voice called.

“In here!” Smith called, and two EMTs with bags ran over, one of them immediately putting an oxygen mask over Elliot’s nose and mouth. Smith backed away, then came over to where I was slumped against the wooden wall of another stall, Olsen’s hands doing something by my side that hurt, but in a distant kind of way.

Smith took one look at me and called one of the EMTs over. Then he crouched in front of me. “He’s alive, Hart. You got to him soon enough.”

“Kay,” I managed. My eyelids felt heavy. I hadn’t had enough sleep.

“He’s bleeding pretty badly.” Olsen. I think.

A short, worried bark.

“Come here, buddy,” Smith said, presumably to Taavi. “Let’s keep you out of the way, okay?” A whine. “Okay, you can say hi, but then we have to let the EMTs work, okay?”

I felt a cold nose in my face.

I couldn’t focus on his sharp canine features. I reached up and tried to touch him, but my fingers felt funny.

“Come on, buddy. Let the EMTs do their job.”

I tried to stay awake. To say something.

I failed.

26

I neededanother blood transfusion and a bunch of IV antibiotics and more stitches. Believe me, if you can at all avoid ripping your stitches, you really,reallywant to. Because when you have a cut, there’s nice, healthy flesh to stitch together. When you rip the stitches, that turns into tattered, messy flesh, and now you suddenly need more stitches, a bunch of suture glue, and you have a much larger injury than you had before.

My parents were there when I woke up, although Taavi wasn’t. Smith had taken Taavi to get his mouth swabbed before he shifted back, so DNA from the guy he’d bitten was now in the system. Smith had then driven Taavi back to my parents’ house to change both bodies and clothes, and then had insisted on taking him to the treatment part of the ER because Taavi’d been on the receiving end of a crowbar and several boots. By the time I saw him again, his face was bruised and scraped, and he kept putting an ice pack on it.

My motherfreakedthe fuck out.

They let Elliot go before me, because he hadn’t lost much blood—most of the blood in his house hadn’t been his. My mother had been flitting between Elliot’s room and mine, so when he was released fairly late that night, she immediately brought him to see me.

He’d basically collapsed on top of me, sobbing, and I held him as tightly as I could. Neither one of us said anything, because we didn’t have to. He’d almost died, yes, but it was more than that. It was because he now had the very real experience of how his father had died. Because I hadn’t let him die. Because I’d literally held him up until I’d almost passed out. Because Taavi and I came for him and didn’t leave him to die. Because at least two of the men who’d killed him now had bite and claw marks that would make them pretty easy to identify, so his dad might finally get justice.

And we were still alive.

It was two days later, and I was back on the couch at my parents’ house, watching the New Year’s countdown for the East coast on TV. Elliot was on the floor, a bandage still around his throat, nestled in a pile of pillows. I was using Taavi’s lap as a pillow, and he was holding an ice pack to his face again—he had a contusion on one cheek bone, although he was overall in better shape than he had been when he’d gone up against a truck. His face had taken most of the abuse because he’d been chewing on the guy’s leg.

My mother had tried about a dozen times to forbid us from going back to Richmond. Dad did his best to talk her out of that, pointing out that I’d been stabbed and beaten here in Shawano. I chose to remain silent about the riot and the beating that had happened in Richmond. Taavi, although he shot me a meaningful look and pursed his lips, also kept his mouth shut about it.

In my lap, my phone buzzed.

Happy New Year! (A little early.)It was from Ward and had an attached picture of my cat looking absolutely murderous while wearing a tiny party hat in Jackson’s arms.

I laughed out loud, which of course both hurt like fuck and got everyone’s attention.

So the cat picture had to be shared, everyone commented on how cute Pet was, and my mother suggested I should pick up some fancy cheese to take back to Doc for taking care of my cat for over a month. It was a good suggestion.