This story is fictional, I'm sorry (actually I'm jelous) if it resembles your life in any way shape or form. Constructive criticism is welcome. If gay relationships offend you, then "How did I manage to start reading this story?" is a good question to be asking yourself. However you're still welcome to read it!
This story is owned solely by Gaco and may not be copied by any means by any unlicensed individuals, groups, or organizations.
Copyright 2020 Gaco. All Rights Reserved.
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Chapter 28
I woke up, very groggy, in our bed. Someone had replaced the shredded sheets from days ago. I had started to think it was a new mattress as well, but I could scent that the one we were on top of was still our own. Someone must have flipped it as I could not feel the gouges torn by my claws during our mating. I turned to Bryce and examined his still sleeping form. I still could not feel him in my mind. Glancing at the clock I could see that it was already past noon. With his shifter healing he should be awake by now, my wolf thought. I rolled over so that my body was pressed up against his side, kissing his shoulder softly before laying my head down on it. I focused on forcing his body to heal itself and I felt the gentle warmth that accompanied that process flow from my body into his. I was not very experienced to this type of healing, but something told me that the deep pit of cold I could feel within him, swallowing my warmth, was not supposed to be there. I sighed after a few minutes and pulled back when Bryce's condition was unchanged.
I pushed the comforter and sheets off of my body, making sure not to disturb those still covering Bryce, and stood from the bed. After getting dressed I headed out into the hall and nearly ran straight into Justin's chest.
"Morning." I said, still wiping the sleep from my eyes.
"It's afternoon already." He said with a small smile. "How is Bryce?"
"Unchanged." I responded with a frown. "I attempted to heal him before getting up but it's like there is something inside preventing it from working."
His frown matched mine at this pronouncement. "The three that we brought with us last night are also all still out."
"I should check on them." I added, knowing that with Bryce out of commission I was the only one in the house who could heal them. Additionally, I wanted to see if they responded to the healing the same way as Bryce.
Justin nodded and led me downstairs to the second floor. The bottom two beds in the bunkroom had two of the men from the same room where had found Bryce the night before. The third was on a cot against the wall near the door where a dresser once sat. I went to the man on the cot first. I pulled back the sheet enough to uncover his bare chest and placed my hand upon it, directly over his heart. I closed my eyes and focused for a few moments, attempting to force his body to heal itself. As soon as the heat began beneath my hand I recognized the cold pit sucking away all of the heat the healing process generated. I shook my head at Justin as I pulled my hand back and stood. I quickly repeated the process on the other two men before turning back to Justin.
"They're all the same as Bryce." I said softly before explaining the pit of cold to him in more detail.
"Could it be something in their blood?" Justin asked. "My first thought when they would not wake was that they had been drugged. I found unhealed needle marks on the arms of these three."
"I don't know." I replied. "I don't have enough experience healing like this to be certain of anything. I feel like I should be able to force their metabolism to be higher to burn off any drug or compound, but it is blocked."
"What if..." I paused in thought. "What if Seth mixed silver somehow with a drug designed to keep shifters unconscious?"
"He doesn't have the knowledge to do that himself." Justin quickly said. "But... It does seem like a valid hypothesis. How would we test it though, or even treat it?"
I went back over to the man on the cot and sat next to him examining him once again. I could not detect a foreign scent, but I had not experienced many scents as a wolf since my first shift, and definitely no scents of drugged shifters.
"Does his scent smell unusual to you?" I asked Justin. "Can you smell any drugs or silver?"
"I don't think silver has a smell." Justin said and shrugged. "I can't detect anything."
I frowned in response and took the hand of the unconscious man I was sitting beside.
"Get me a clean towel or washcloth." I ordered.
Justin grabbed a white washcloth from a stack of linens on the top of one of the bunks.
I grimaced, hoping that my plan would work, and quickly transformed my right index finger into a were finger and claw, slicing it across the man's wrist.
"What the hell!" Justin exclaimed.
"If there's something in his blood we need to get it out." I said as I pressed the washcloth firmly against the wound.
As the white cloth quickly blossomed red Justin moved over a trashcan with a scowl. He placed it beneath the cloth as it soaked through and began to drip. The faint yet foul scent of sickness and burning flesh was suddenly apparent and I leaned down to sniff the washcloth closely to check that it was indeed the source.
"Do you smell that?" I asked.
Justin merely nodded. I began to grow troubled, however, when the cut continued to bleed and did not seem to be healing on its own as should have happened by that point. I had expected to have to cut his wrist multiple times.
"This is taking longer than I expected to stop bleeding." My voice terse with worry.
"It's possible whatever it is in the blood is stopping him from healing. It would explain why they all still look like they've been worked over so hard." Justin replied as we watched the blood continue to flow through the washcloth I still held against the wound and into the trash can.
"Perhaps you should try healing him again before he bleeds out." He added bluntly after a moment.
I nodded and concentrated once again on healing the man in front of me. I could feel some of the warmth of the healing process making it to his core this time, but it was not yet enough to repair all of the damage. I focused all of my will instead on attempting to will his body to create more blood, not wanting him to die before all of the poison had left his body. This seemed to speed the process along as I could feel more and more warmth reaching his core, and less of the deep cold which had previously saturated it. Before long the color seemed to return to his body and I watched as the bruising and swelling which had marred his face receded. His eyes flickered open, though he still appeared to be dazed as I pulled the wash cloth back from his wrist and saw that it too had healed. I set the washcloth into the trashcan which was now half filled with foul smelling blood.
"Your hands." Justin said softly, looking down at the hand I had used to hold the washcloth in place during the healing.
Justin quickly grabbed a clean towel and handed it to me and I used it to wipe the blood off my hands, only to notice that they now appeared to be raw anywhere touched by the blood which had left the mans body.
"What the hell were they injected with?" I asked, staring at my hand which looked like it had been burned by acid.
"Nothing Seth could have come up with on his own." Justin said once more with certainty.
The man next to me groaned and reached his hand up to his head.
"What... Where am I?" He asked, eyes suddenly alert and darting between Justin and I.
"Why don't you fill him in while I try and clean up my hands." I said to Justin before I stood and headed towards the door.
"Thanks." Justin groused before he introduced himself and began to explain what had led up to this moment.
I headed to the second floor bathroom and was once again disgusted by how dirty the shared bathroom was kept. I quickly washed my hands with heavy amounts of soap, attempting to get every bit of blood and poison off of them without rubbing it into my skin more.
By the time I returned to the bunk room to check on Justin and the man I had healed, Justin was explaining the pack to him.
"And this is Tom." Justin said as I walked in the room. "He's our... Well I guess the best thing would be to call him our co-alpha."
My eyebrows raised in surprise, as we had all so far danced around my official position in the pack after it became apparent that I was so much more powerful than all of the others, including likely even Bryce.
Justin gave a tiny shrug in response before introducing us.
"Tom, this is David. David, Tom." Justin said
"Hello." David said as if unsure how he wanted to be here.
"David, can you tell us anything about the other two here or how you came to be in the warehouse where we found you?" I asked, waving a hand towards the other two men still unconscious in the room.
"I never got their names." He said softly. "I only saw them for the first time on the night that we... That we... On the full moon."
He stammered again before looking down at his wrist that was still covered in blood and looked to be in similar condition to my hands before I washed them. I glanced at my own hands and saw that they were rapidly healing now that they were clean.
"Do you remember how you got there?" I asked, pressing as I was sure he was getting ready to shut down as he remembered the events that had led him to this point.
"I was leaving them gym late one night and some guy I had never seen before stepped in front of me. I turned to the side to go around him and before I knew it another had stepped up behind me and I felt a searing pain in my neck. The next thing I knew I was in the warehouse, in some type of meat locker." He said in a haunted voice, his eyes never leaving his hands.
I could sense that we wouldn't get any more out of him for now so decided to help him out before Justin began to ask for more details of the warehouse.
"Why don't you take a shower." I interrupted Justin who had began to open his mouth. "It will be good to get the grime off of you and to get that poison off of your hand and wrist. I believe your body is strong enough now to purge the rest of it from your system without assistance."
Justin frowned but nodded after a moment and guided the large man towards the bathroom. I headed to the entertainment room to find Zeke and Jackson watching Alexi and John locked in a pitched battle in a fighting game. As soon as I was noticed Alexi paused the game.
"Tom." Alexi said with a nod, and the rest of the pack followed suit with nods of their own.
"Hey guys. Everyone doing alright?" I asked as I came to stand behind the couch everyone was seated at.
"As well as can be expected, considering, I suppose." Jackson said and was echoed by a chorus of grunts in agreement.
"Zeke, could you help me with Bryce?" I asked. "We have a cure but it's messy and I could use some help."
Zeke nodded and stood, following me back upstairs to our room when I left with a wave to the rest of the pack. As we reached the stairs leading up to the third floor I heard a cheer coming from John in triumph. It sounded like he had won his match.
"I was actually hoping you could help with more than manhandling Bryce and cleaning up blood." I said to Zeke as we entered the bedroom.
Bryce was still on the bed where I'd left him and it appeared that he hadn't even twitched in his sleep.
"What's up?" Zeke asked. "I'll do anything I can to help out."
"First I'll ask you to try and identify the scent of the contaminant in Bryce's blood." I said as I picked up Bryce's unconscious form and carried him to the bathroom.
I frowned when I analyzed the best place to do what I wanted and realized that Bryce was still naked and would likely get cold quite quickly without any protection.
"Go get the comforter off of the bed, would you?" I said quickly, adjusting my grip on Bryce.
While I had no problem supporting his weight, he was still over half a foot taller than me and such a tall and limp form was awkward to carry for more than a moment. Zeke returned and threw the comforter on the floor when I indicated where he should do so with my foot. I gently set Bryce down on top of the comforter on the floor next to the tub and wrapped him in it as much as possible. I took his right arm and laid it over the edge of the tub, making sure that it would reach far enough over the edge so that it would not cause a mess when the work began. Zeke watched as I situated Bryce and sat next to Bryce's arm which was laid out straight over the edge of the tub.
"What scent did you want me to identify?" Zeke asked as I took Bryce's wrist into my hand. "I can't detect anything unusual from Bryce."
I nodded and shifted my right hand into a paw once again and sliced through Bryce's wrist, slightly deeper than I had with David now that I was certain this would work.
"Uh..." Zeke said unsure of why I had injured Bryce. "He's uh... Bleeding."
"That's the point." I laughed at his horrified expression. "And the scent, you should be picking it up now. I've never smelled it before. Justin wasn't sure what it was either."
I watched as the blood began to flow into the tub and set Bryce's wrist down to drain for a few moments as I walked over to the sink and washed my hands once again to ensure I didn't have a repeat of the reaction from earlier. Zeke took my place next to Bryce and sniffed softly at the blood flowing from Bryce's wrist before his eyes went wide and he shot up.
"That's wolfsbane!" He exclaimed. "The poison is refined from the roots of the plant and is a powerful sedative to shifters even in low doses. I've read online that there has been work on a synthetic compound made with the same chemical structure as the active ingredient in the poison. If managed correctly it could result in what we're seeing here."
"Would it cause burns to the skin when exposed?" I asked a trail of Bryce's blood began to reach the drain and I quickly disrobed and wrapped myself in the comforter with Bryce.
"No, as far as I know only silver would do that." He said distantly as he thought of an answer. "Or fire I suppose!"
I nodded and focused my will into Bryce and encouraging his body to increase blood production far above normal levels. I could sense his wolf beginning to stir within his mind.
"Hold his arm so that he doesn't try to move it until it's healed." I directed Zeke, my eyes still closed, focused on my task.
I felt Bryce wake with a start and felt as one arm wrapped around me and the other attempt to move from the tub as Zeke struggled to keep him from moving it.
"Hold still." I said into his mind as our link flared back to life.
I marveled in wonder as it felt as if part of my mind, body, and soul were suddenly connected once more. The wolf in my mind greeted his as if they had been separated for a lifetime, excitedly dancing around one another in our minds in their excitement to reacquaint with one another.
"Tom? Is that really you?" Bryce responded after a moment, the thumb of his free hand lightly brushing across my chest where it rested.
"I'm here, love." I responded, leaning back into him more. "We found you and rescued you after Seth's goons crashed into your car and dragged you away. We thought you were dead."
"He's stopped bleeding." Zeke informed me, unaware that Bryce was now fully conscious.
"I..." Bryce squeaked as he attempted to speak before coughing roughly from his dry throat.
"Zeke, could you wet a washcloth so I can clean the blood from his arm, and then bring Bryce some water?" I asked as I slid from Bryce's embrace, much to his displeasure.
I moved around to the edge of the tub and once again stopped Bryce from moving his arm which was still wet with his contaminated blood, dripping much more slowly now into the tub below.
"Don't move yet." I commanded. "Your blood is laced with poison and silver and we don't want to get any on us. It's like acid on our skin."
"Acid?" Bryce asked over our mental link. "That was in my blood? Seth was so deranged when he brought me to the warehouse, but I was sure that you would find me. How long has it been?"
"It's after noon the day after the attack." I responded, accepting the warm soapy washcloth from Zeke with a nod of thanks and began to clean up the blood on Bryce's wrist. "We made it in and out with no casualties, and managed to rescue three other shifters who were being kept in the same conditions as yourself."
I finished cleaning the blood and threw the washcloth down into the tub to be disposed of later. I rose and walked over to the sink one more time to scrub my hands quickly before the silver in Bryce's blood began to damage my skin again. I watched in the mirror as Zeke silently handed Bryce a bottle of water before leaving the room, the soft click of our bedroom door told me had left and decided to give us privacy to reconnect.
Two hours later I had brought Bryce up to speed on everything that had happened. I told him of my suspicion that Seth had obtained the poison used to keep the shifters sedated from an unknown third party as well.
"We'll deal with that when they show themselves, I guess." Bryce said with a sigh.
I kissed him softly on his lips and pulled back with a blinding smile, overjoyed that he was alive and with me once more, and pulled him from the bed.
"Let's get some food in you and then we can see about the final two shifters that require treatment." I said as I took his hand in mine and led him to the door after we were dressed. "From now on we do everything together."
"Yes, mate." He cooed before pulling me in for another kiss, hands sliding down my body to grind himself into me with a moan of pleasure.
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