Claiming Treasure

Alpha Carson Nygaard’s POV

Triple Falls, Cascade Pack Territory

The combination of the fall and the cold water on my torn skin was a combination I never wanted to experience again.

The pool was deep and cold, just above freezing with the snowmelt from higher in the mountains. I pushed through the shock of the water entry, swimming with the current instead of fighting it. I popped my head up out of the water, and Luna was with me. I saw Heather floating face-down about ten feet away.

Swimming over, I grabbed her and rolled her face up. She wasn’t breathing, but I had to get her out of the water first. Wrapping my right arm over her chest, I kept her face out of the water with my chest as I swam on my left side for the shallow water under the cliff.

“Alpha!” It was Angelica from the cliff above.

“Get help to me, and make sure Doc knows she’s been bitten,” I sent to the Pack.

“I’m ten minutes out, and I passed the message to Beta Carl,” Thomas said. “They are sending vehicles to the forest service road.”

“Make sure they have a stretcher and something to warm her up.” I got close enough my feet could touch bottom, and I stood up and carried her out of the water in my arms. Her right arm was hanging at an angle, obviously broken, but it was the drowning I had to handle first. Setting her on the rocky shore, I checked her, and she wasn’t breathing. I started my first round of CPR.

Angelina showed up during the second set; she was torn up from the fight, but she ignored the pain as she scrambled down the narrow trail. I finished the compressions and gave Heather two rescue breaths; after the second, she started to cough up water. I rolled her on her side as Heather drew in a breath, then coughed more of the cold water out. I sat back on my bleeding legs and sent a thank you to Luna as she started to breathe on her own. “Get those wet clothes off her,” said Angelina as she set down the coat that Heather had tossed aside.

I pulled off her boots and pants, then shifted a claw and cut the top from her. “She needs a splint for her arm,” I said.

Angelina went off to find something as I pulled the dry jacket onto the cold and unconscious body of my mate. She returned with two pieces of wood, and we used them and her shoelaces to keep her forearm straight. I carefully put her arm through the sleeve. “We have to get her out of here and get her warm,” I said.

“Shift, and I’ll hold her on top of you,” my Beta said. I shifted, my wounds tearing back open, and the pain cutting through as I changed forms. I ignored it, crouching down while Angelina picked my mate up and set her on my back. She kept her in place as I stood, her arms and legs hanging down on either side of me, her head on top of my shoulders. “Take it slow going up the trail. We can’t let her fall.”

I started for the winding trail that led out of the narrow canyon as Angelina followed, keeping a hand on her Luna, so she didn’t slide off. Warrior Thomas showed up just before we reached the top of the trail. “Help is on the way, Alpha. How is our Luna?”

“Cold,” I said. “Find some grass to lay her down on.” He waved me over to a place in the sun, and I got down on my belly in the center. Angelina pulled her to the ground and tucked in behind her to warm her up. Thomas laid over her bare legs, and we warmed her while we waited for help to arrive. I was linking with Doc, letting him know everything that happened and what our injuries were.

When help arrived, there was a lot of it. I sent warriors to track the wolves that had fled while the rest helped us. Doc was among them, running with Frank Grimes, who was carrying Doc’s emergency bag around his neck as he ran up in wolf form. “Get her on the stretcher,” he told the other men. The rescue stretcher was unique to werewolves; it started as an aluminum wire-mesh rescue litter, but added at each corner was a harness. It allowed the litter to be carried by straps that went around the shoulders of four wolves, or it could be carried by two or four in human form.

Thomas and Angelina got up, and Doc quickly examined her before three of them gently lifted her onto the litter, wrapped in warm blankets. Doc cut away the splint and fastened a better one as the men strapped her in place. “We’ve got to get her back; she’s hypothermic and in shock. Probably a good thing, it will slow down her reaction to the bite,” he said.

Four wolves each took a corner, holding her a few feet up between the group. They started off for the vehicles while Doc checked us over. “You look like hell,” he told me. “Can you make it to the road, or do I need to send a team back for you?”

“I’m going with my mate,” I said as I got up. I was covered in blood and felt weak from blood loss, but I’d make it.

“I can go slowly,” Angelina said before she shifted. She whined in pain as she was torn up from her fight.

“Stay with her and take the Jeep home,” he told some of the remaining wolves. I limped off, stretching out my muscles until I was in a painful run. The road was on the other side of the river, and the bridge we’d installed was a good five miles downriver. Doc ran ahead to catch up to his Luna, while four warriors stayed with me. No one was going to forget that we were under attack, with enemy wolves on our territory somewhere.

“Where is Beta Carl,” I asked.

“Directing things from the Pack House and angry as hell,” one of the warriors said. “All non-combatants are locked up in the Pack safe room, and there hasn’t been an attack there yet. We’ve left wolves staggered along to relay messages.”

“Good. Get a message to Alpha Coral that some of her men were involved in the attack. Then get Alpha Chase on the line, I need to talk to him about the bite.”

“We’ve been talking to him,” Frank said as we reached the bridge. “Doc is making preparations to change her.”

I ran across the bridge to the cargo van that Doc used as a makeshift ambulance. Frank and I shifted and climbed in the back; as soon as the door closed, we were moving. Doc was hanging a bag of blood, and I could see four more units on the warmer. “What are you doing?”

“Saving her life,” Doc said. “Heather was bitten multiple times by a werewolf, and the reaction is starting. She’ll be dead by morning if I don’t do this now.”

“The blood will counteract the normal human reaction,” Frank said. “It will also boost her healing.” He pulled out a blanket and handed it to me. I quickly wrapped it around my body.

I knew what he’d been through, and a chill went through me as I realized what I would have to do. “Heather’s going to have to change.”

“Yes, she is,” Doc said. “If she wouldn’t want that, you need to tell me now. I can keep her comfortable and make her death as painless as possible.”

My wolf pushed forward at the thought. “NO! She’s MINE and she has to live!”

“Then this is what we have to do.” He inserted the needle and started the drip; he’d used a large-bore needle so it would go fast. “This is only the second time we’ve done this; we don’t know how much blood is needed, but Frank got five pints, so that’s what I’ll do. Once her blood pressure recovers, I’ll remove a pint for every pint I give her.”

Frank had connected the monitors to her, and I could see the vitals were low. Blood pressure was eighty over forty, pulse 100, and oxygen 90%. Doc put an oxygen mask on her as we bounced down the forest road. “I have to give her a mating bite like Colletta gave you?”

“Yes. The blood was enough to heal me and start the change, but I got stuck. I would have died without it,” Frank said.

“The change will kill her babies!” My hand went to her belly, where the twins were.

“Her babies might be dead already, from the fight or the fall. Yes, the babies will not survive the change to a wolf. They are too young to be viable. I’m sorry,” Doc said. “We need to focus on saving our Luna.”

“DAMMIT!” I was mad at the attackers, I was furious at the Council, but mostly I was angry at myself. I’d brought her to a remote part of the territory with only Angelina as protection. Our little picnic was going to cost her the twins.

“Sit down, Alpha. Let me look at your injuries.”

“They’re not important.”

“I can do nothing for her until it is time to change bags. Let me see.” I lowered the blanket, and he poked around. “Looks like I have some cleaning and sewing to do,” he said.

“Angelina is as bad,” I said. “Take her first.”

He’d just hung the second bag when we arrived at the Pack House. Men were waiting to carry the stretcher to Medical, while Carl was waiting for his mate to arrive. “Alpha, the Pack House area is secure. The trail of the attackers led over the mountain to a trailhead; they escaped in vehicles.”

“One was from Blue River, I recognized him,” I said.

“They all were. Alpha Coral reported one Beta, five Warriors, and three Omegas missing from her Pack. All of them were on probation when they disappeared. She is investigating, and has been in contact with Alpha Rori.” We stood waiting, hearing the last vehicles approaching. “There’s more. Alpha Rori got a call from Beta Vic and his wife Spider Monkey. She was the one who hacked the Council server.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said. “That was Spider?”

“She found a recording in the files and played it for us. Councilman Millner was talking to a man in the Blue River Pack. He was upset with Alpha Coral for killing his son, and he directed the attack on you and your mate, sir.”

“I’m going to deep-fry his nuts and make him choke on them,” I said as I fought a shift.

“No, you’re going to be with your mate, just like I will be with mine,” Beta Carl said. He was at the door as soon as it stopped, lifting his mate out of the back seat. She was in human form, covered in cuts and bites, and they kissed before he started carrying her in.

I went ahead, opening the clinic door for them. “Put her down over there,” Doc said to Carl as he handed her a syringe. “Inject her with this for the pain. Clean her wounds and glue the shallow ones closed with superglue.”

Doc gave me the same injection, then walked back to Heather’s bedside. He cleaned and sutured the bite wound, then used a portable X-ray to check Heather’s broken right forearm. “Alpha, you stand on that side and stay out of the way. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“I’m not leaving her side,” I said.

“Fine. Hold your mate’s good hand and watch her face, not me,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I have to reset this break before it starts to heal wrong. It’s going to hurt a lot, and I don’t want you attacking me for hurting her, plus I don’t know when she’s going to wake up. Keep her calm if she does.” I sat next to the bed on a stool, leaning forward to push her dark hair away from her bruised face. Doc was right; I didn’t want to know what those crunching sounds were. Satisfied, he applied a brace to keep it from moving. “This bag is almost in; I’ll hang the next unit, then I’ll start patching you up.”

“Is it working?”

“Her vitals have improved, and her body temperature is a little higher than normal now. She’s doing well, considering she drowned before you brought her back. She’s got some strength to her.”

“It was nine on three, and Heather killed four of them,” I said proudly, as I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Took out two rapid-fire in seconds before the third bit her gun arm.”

“She will be a good Luna for us, but now she needs to rest while I fix up her mate. Lie down on that gurney, on your stomach.” He went to wash up.

I moved the gurney close enough I could hold her hand, then laid down. “By Luna, Alpha Carson, you’ve got to stop losing fights. I’m getting too old for all these stitches,” he teased as he brought his supplies over.

“Four on one and I killed one,” I said.

“I killed one at the beginning and fought to a draw with the second,” Angelina said. “OW!”

“Sorry, love, but there was dirt in there,” Carl said apologetically.

Doc didn’t apologize as he cleaned, rinsed, and glued or sewed up the mess that was my back, shoulders, and legs. It took him about twenty minutes to finish me, then he went to check on Angelina. “Nice work, Carl,” he said. It was another ten minutes stitching up the deeper wounds on her.

By this time, the third unit of werewolf blood had gone in. Doc started a line to remove blood from Heather’s left foot while the fourth unit of blood started going in. “Her vitals are stable, she should be waking soon,” he said as he pushed the gurney over, lowering the rails between us.

“The babies?”

“You know what is going to happen, Alpha. It would be better for her if the miscarriage happened now.”

I knew what the outcome was, but I didn’t care. “Check the twins anyway. Get Heather one last ultrasound picture before they are gone.”

He had no choice, as I’d made it a command. “This isn’t a good idea, Alpha.” He pulled over the stand with the portable ultrasound and spread the gel on her baby bump. I watched the screen, seeing the pair still active and moving. “Well, they aren’t stressed now, but when she changes…”

“I know.” I scooted over until my side and leg were touching Heather, then Doc put some blankets over both of us. “Pray for her,” I said.

“We’re all praying for our Luna,” Beta Carl said. “Get some rest; I’m having food sent over.”

“Carl?”

“Yes, Alpha?”

“Find out who the mole is. Bring me the traitor who gave up their Luna.”

“Yes, sir. ” He kissed his sleeping mate and left the room.

I fell asleep to the beeping of the monitors, hand in hand with my love.