Survivor

 

Head in his hands, Mac slumped in the worn plastic seat outside the medical room door. Goose bumps peppered his flesh as he sat topless in the hall, fingers wrapping in his short dark hair, he stared unseeing at the faded lino between his shoes as his mind struggled to comprehend the past 12 hours.     

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Green eyes. Parallel to his own due to her position. Dim and barely focused, staring at him from behind a patchwork mask of bruising and swelling. Before her head flopped forward, and she slumped against his body.  He had moved quickly, shouting his betas as he snapped the chain connecting her to the ceiling with his bare hands, his wolf surging against his skin, lending him his inhuman strength. Carrying her skeletal frame close to him, he barked and growled orders as he moved as fast as he could without jolting her body. 

  The drive had been dangerously fast, Sam swerving through the thankfully sparse traffic as Mac cradled the bloodied body to his own, trying to find a way to check her vitals without contact to traumatised skin was near impossible but he managed to locate a faint pulse in her neck and focused intently on monitoring its regularity in order to prevent him shouting his frustration at their speed. By the time they arrived and entered the Packs medical ward, the bleeding wounds that striped her body had oozed into the fabric of his shirt, fusing the material to the girls flesh forcing the doctor to cut Macs shirt of his body before he could place the woman on the gurney. He had then been hustled out of the room by a frantic nurse and forced to wait outside. 

  It was not until 4 hours later that the doctor had came outside to inform the alpha of her condition. Although temporarily stabilized she had a fever caused by infection in her many open cuts, was severely dehydrated and malnourished and lacking blood. The more worrying situation was the amount of broken bones she had suffered. In disbelief Mac listened as the doctor told him of her broken ribs and wrists, arm and hip, shoulder and thigh. All of which, thanks to her faster were healing, had already began to knit together. Good in most cases, except her wrist and shoulder, where the position she had been tied and held in had caused the bones to twist as they set. Teeth gritted, Mac listened as he was told the only way to save her arm was to rebreak it before it had chance to calcify further. Nodding his consent, even as his nails cut bloody crescents into the palms of his hands, he watched helplessly as the doctor returned to the room. 

  Through the walls he heard the murmuring of the doctor, then the loud crack of bone, and the scream. The bloodcurdling scream. 

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He barely noticed his pack coming and going throughout the night, ignored their hushed questions to Sam, who had silently stood vigil with him until the doctor had come and informed them of the successful flushing and stitching of wounds and casting of her rebroken wrist. He had released a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding and then dismissed his beta with a nod of his head, feeling the reassuring hand on his shoulder before he heard the footsteps walk away. The door to the room swung open and his eyes flung to it, as a nurse came down and moved swiftly down the corridor. Straightening Macs gaze flicked to the room the girl was in, unattended. 

  Quietly entering, his nose was assaulted by the sterile smell of disinfectant barely masking a undercurrent of sour infection that caused his nose to twitch uncomfortably. His eyes focused on the white swathed small frame laying almost weightlessly upon the sheets, the soft beep of the machines attached to her in sync with the gentle rasp of her breath as she slept her drug induced sleep. Moving directly to her bedside he stared down at her black and purple mottled face, his gaze drifting to her body covered in bandages. How had such a small being taken so much physical abuse? His wolf watched through his eyes and whined softly in his head, taking control of Mac's hand and reaching out to stroke her cheek in a feather-light caress. 

  He watched her for a minute or so, blankly, relief and hope that he had saved her in time, she could, no WOULD pull through this. She would survive. Rage followed swiftly on the heels of relief. Here, broken and half-dead on his pack's hospital bed, lay the lucky one. Out of 14 they found, she was the only survivor. 13 innocent men, women and (His wolf snarled viciously in his head, teeth snapping and hackles raised at the memory of the bodies) children had been tortured and murdered, on Alex McNallys Pack land. His backyard. He wanted to know why. And more importantly, he wanted revenge. His wolf threw back its silver head, and howled its fury, as with one last glance towards the bed, the alpha turned and stalked out of the hospital.