“Let’s get home,” I say, steering Amelia toward my truck, but she pulls from me.
“His head needs looking at.” Amelia moves to toward the fire pit where Gus stands, looking unsteady on his feet, blood pouring down his face.
“Baby!” I grab her and scoop her up in the air by hooking an arm around her waist.
“He might need sutures,” she argues, struggling to get out of my grasp. “Mason! Put me down!”
I set her on her feet. “This isn’t necessary, wildberry.”
Cade, Sean, and Greyson have closed in, and the kid seems to be settling down.
“You got a first aid kit, Roxy?” Amelia calls out.
“This place? You’d better believe it. But don’t worry about him, a shift or two and it’ll be good.” She waves.
“Come on, let’s get a look,” she says to Gus, who is squatting to grab his clothes from the ground.
“At what?”
“Cover up so I can have a look at your head.”
“Why?”
“Your head is bleeding,” Amelia says, talking to him but looking the other way. “And I’m a nurse, I’d like to help, but that might be easier to do if I can’t see your junk.”
“One sec, little lady,” he holds a hand out, putting space between them, and then he shifts.
“Still bleeding,” she says, looking at his wolf with astonishment, but backing up until her body hits mine. I wrap my arms around her, and she melts into me.
Gus’s wolf is large and menacing-looking, this not being helped with all that blood on his face. “That’s probably a deep cut,” Amelia says again. “It’ll definitely need sutures.”
The blood is really pouring from his face.
He shifts in quick succession multiple times and then back as man, he wobbles. He looks exhausted. He stumbles toward the bar and Amelia follows, so I’m right behind her.
“I’m all right. I’m-” Gus stops at a mirror near the restrooms. “Oh fuck, that is a lotta blood.” Much like a cartoon character, Gus promptly hits the deck, passing out.
Me and Sean help him up onto a chair and as he comes to, Amelia has already dug into Roxy’s first aid bag. While she applies pressure to the wound, asking him questions, talking to him in a calm and comforting voice, she seems mostly sober. Sober enough to slip into nurse mode, I suppose. And I like this. I like seeing that my mate is nurturing and handles herself well in a crisis despite indulging all day long.
“Why didn’t he heal? The gash wasn’t that bad,” Linc asks. “What he cut it on?”
“You two went tumbling into that pile of firewood,” Bailey puts in.
“Fuck, bro, I’m sorry,” Linc calls out.
“It’s okay, Linc. I’m good,” Gus says, waving it off.
“Head wounds bleed like a mother,” Amelia mutters while lifting the towel she’s using as she assesses the wound. “And alcohol thins the blood, so…”
“Shifting should’ve helped,” Linc says.
“Don’t worry about it, Linc. You played fair,” the still-pale Gus waves it off, “I’m just not good with seein’ blood.”
We all already know this about Gus. Only alpha I know who, when we were teenagers, would hunt game, take it down, then get queasy because he saw blood.
“Is the clinic accessible right now?” Amelia asks. “We could do with a sterile environment for me to stitch him up.”
“I could do with a drink,” he says.
“No booze,” Amelia denies. “Someone get him some water, please.”
“Got it,” Roxy calls out.
“Water?” Gus mutters.
“No pouting. Right now, you’re the patient and the nurse is the boss.”
“She’s bossy. I like her,” Gus says to me.
I snicker.
“I’ll phone Cat,” Bailey has her phone in hand.
27
Amelia
“Time to go. Now,” Mason says.
“But…”
“Now,” he repeats, or more like… growls. He looks aggravated.
“Uh, excuse me, Doggo –” I start to protest but my next thought is cut off at the knees when he scoops me up over his shoulder and is on the move out of the place.
And this is not good because my stomach bottoms out as the ground gets closer to my face and I’m thinking I might vomit straight down his back.
It’s after one in the morning and he’s taking me out of the medical clinic, toward his truck. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to everyone. A half dozen people followed us to the clinic where Cat stitched up Gus.
I was willing to do it, and felt perfectly capable but as I’d been drinking, I deferred to her and watched her do it. She did compliment the work I’d done on the wound so far, though. I don’t know what sort of medical training she has versus myself; Gus probably won’t have much of a scar when she’s done. She did a good job.
They kept mulling over (and with concern) the fact that shifting didn’t take his wounds away. A pretty useful skill to have. And it explains why Mason transformed multiple times after I bear-sprayed his face.