Chapter 33: Ghost's Assessment
The screen door slammed against the side of the house with a sound like a gunshot. Ghost was already moving, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a folded canvas stretcher in his other hand. He didn’t run so much as devour the distance in long, efficient strides, his eyes missing nothing: the wolf’s position, the pattern of its breathing, the dark patches on the grass.
He dropped to his knees opposite Cain, the duffel hitting the gravel with a thud of heavy instruments. “Holy shit,” he breathed, not in awe, but in a flat, clinical assessment of damage. His hands hovered, not touching. The wolf’s amber eye rolled to track him, a faint growl stirring in its chest. “Easy. I’m not them.”
He was referencing Facility 9. They all did, when things got bad enough.
“He’s locked in,” Ghost said, his voice low and rapid. “The wolf’s running the show. Good. That’s the only thing keeping his human half from bleeding out internally or stroking out from that head trauma. If he tries to shift back now, his cardiovascular system will collapse like a rotten roof.”
“So what do we do?” Cain asked, his hand still a steady pressure on the wolf’s shoulder.
“We treat the wolf. Then we hope the wolf is strong enough to pass the fixed-up pieces back to the man.” Ghost unzipped the duffel, his movements precise. He pulled out heavy-duty shears. “Cain, I need your weight here. On his shoulders. He’s not in his right mind, and even a friendly touch can trigger a bite reflex when the brain’s this scrambled.”
Cain shifted, applying firm, solid pressure. The wolf flinched, a ripple of muscle, but didn’t resist. It was too tired.
Ghost went to work. The shears bit through the thick, matted fur on the wolf’s flank. He cut away swathes of it, revealing the torn flesh beneath—a deep, ugly gash that wept a slow, steady seep of blood. The smell of it, rich and metallic, filled the space between them. “Laceration from a blade, not a claw. Clean edges. Someone knew what they were doing.” His words were clipped, a report filed in real-time. He poured a clear antiseptic solution directly into the wound. The wolf’s entire body jerked, a full-body tremor of agony. A choked, whimpering sound escaped its clamped jaws. Cain shushed it, his own jaw tight.
“I know, brother. I know.”
Ghost packed the wound with a hemostatic gauze, applying pressure. “This is the easy part. The ribs are a mess. Probably pneumothorax on the left side. The skull fracture… I can’t image it out here. He’s got a concussion that would put a human in a morgue.” He sat back on his heels, wiping his bloody hands on a towel. His face, in the weak porch light, looked ancient. “We need to get him inside, on a stable surface. Carefully. If we jostle him too much and that rib fragment punches a lung, we’re done.”
“Stretcher,” Cain said, nodding to the canvas.
“It’s for humans. He’s twice the mass right now. We carry him.” Ghost looked toward the house. Two other pack members, Jax and Mara, were hovering in the doorway, their faces tense. “Jax! Mara! Get out here. We’re carrying him to the surgery room. You take the hindquarters. Cain, you’re on the left shoulder, I’m on the right. We move on three, slow and level. No dipping.”
They positioned themselves, hands sliding carefully under the massive, limp body. The wolf’s breathing hitched, becoming shallow and pained. “Easy now,” Cain murmured. “Almost there.”
“One, two, three.”
They lifted. The wolf was impossibly heavy, a solid density of muscle and bone. It let out a sharp, pained yelp that cut off into a whine. They moved in a awkward, shuffling procession toward the open door, a grim parade. Bunny appeared in the doorway, her face bleached of all color, one hand clamped over her mouth. Cain caught her eye and gave a minute shake of his head. Not now.
They maneuvered through the hallway—a tight fit—and into the back room Ghost called the surgery. It was just a reinforced utility room with a stainless steel table bolted to the floor and shelves crammed with medical supplies, both conventional and... otherwise. They transferred the wolf onto the table. The metal was cold. The animal shuddered.
“Out,” Ghost said to everyone but Cain. “I need space and I need quiet.” His gaze landed on Bunny, who hadn’t moved. “Especially you. He can probably smell your distress. It’s not helping.”
She looked like she’d been slapped, but she nodded, backing out, her eyes glued to the dark grey fur matted with Ghost’s antiseptic.
The door clicked shut. The only sounds were the wolf’s ragged breaths and the clink of instruments as Ghost laid them out. An IV line, modified for canine anatomy. A portable ultrasound machine. Vials of drugs.
“Hold him still,” Ghost instructed. He found a vein in the wolf’s foreleg, slipped the catheter in with practiced ease, and taped it down. He hung a bag of fluids. “This’ll help with the shock. Now let’s see what we’re really dealing with.”
He ran the ultrasound probe over the wolf’s ribcage. The grainy image on the small screen showed the chaotic stutter of the animal’s heart, the dark, swirling shadow of blood in the chest cavity. “Hemothorax. Left side. That rib’s floating.” He prepared a long, thick needle attached to a tube. “Going to drain it. This will hurt.”
He inserted the needle between the ribs. The wolf, which had been lying in a stupor of pain, suddenly erupted. It tried to surge upward, a raw, snarling twist of fury and terror. Cain threw his whole body across its shoulders, pinning it down.
“Coyle! It’s Ghost! Stand down!” Cain roared into its ear.
But it wasn’t Coyle hearing him. It was the wolf, and the wolf was back in a white room, on a steel table, with hands that hurt it. The amber eyes were wide, blind with flashback panic. Its jaws snapped, missing Cain’s face by inches.
Ghost worked fast, the tube filling with dark blood. As the pressure eased, the wolf’s struggle weakened, subsiding back into trembling exhaustion. Its panting grew slightly less desperate.
“That’s it,” Ghost muttered, sealing the tube. “That’s it. Just us, you dumb animal. Just your pack.”
For the next hour, Ghost worked with a focused brutality. He sutured the gash. He injected broad-spectrum antibiotics and powerful anti-inflammatories meant for their kind. He taped the rib cage as best he could, creating a makeshift stabilizing wrap. He checked the wolf’s pupils repeatedly with a penlight.
Finally, he stepped back, peeling off his bloody gloves. He looked spent. “That’s all I can do. The rest is up to him. The wolf has to decide to heal, and then it has to decide to give him back.”
Cain ran a hand over his face. “What did this?”
“Trained people,” Ghost said, washing his hands in a sink. “The blade work is professional. The impact damage to the skull and ribs… that’s from a fall, or being thrown. A hard throw. He was outnumbered.” He looked at Cain, his eyes grim. “He got jumped. And he was alone because he was chasing a lead on that safe house, wasn’t he? The one he’s been obsessed with.”
Cain didn’t deny it. The guilt was a cold stone in his gut. He should have been there. Should have insisted.
The wolf on the table let out a long, sighing breath. Its eye opened halfway, fixing on Cain. The wild, panicked light was gone. In its place was a deep, ancient exhaustion, and a glimmer of something familiar. It knew him.
Its muzzle twitched. A low, almost inaudible sound emerged, not a growl, but a rumble shaped by a will that was finally, faintly, more Coyle than beast.
It was a single, slurred, word formed around a wolf’s tongue and broken teeth.
“Kellan.”
Then the eye closed, and the wolf sank into a true, deep sleep of healing, the name of the man who did this hanging in the sterile air between them.