was so dominant in her thoughts that when she caught a flash of white the split second before she would’ve gone into the shift, she thought she was imagining things. But no, it was Kenji’s T-shirt that had caught her eye. He had a limp wolf in his arms, and he looked like he was about a second away from collapse. Garnet and Revel took off into the rain at the same instant, heading straight for him.
Revel gathered his sister’s wolf form into his arms, while Garnet wrapped an arm around Kenji’s waist, pulled one of his own arms over her shoulders, and all but dragged him to the den. “Close the door!” she yelled to a couple of juveniles who’d come over with mops, clearly on cleanup patrol.
“Yes, sir!” They hurried to shut out the driving rain.
Garnet, meanwhile, was struggling to keep Kenji going. “Where are you hurt?”
“Just exhausted,” he said, his voice a little slurred. “Carried Pia all the way.”
And he’d done it in what had felt like a gale-force wind. No wonder his body was searching for a place to collapse and rest. “You sure you’re not hurt?” She’d never seen him this wiped out.
“Cut on face, but that’s it.” It came out mumbled.
Since her quarters were closer than the infirmary, she dragged him there and propped him up against the nearest wall. And saw that the “cut” on his face was more like a gash; it was bleeding all down his cheek. The wound on his stomach, on the other hand, had stained his torn T-shirt a pinkish red in the time it had taken her to get him to her room. “Kenji!”
Following her gaze, he looked down, blinked. “Huh. Can’t feel that.” Then he slid down the wall to collapse into a sitting position on the floor.
Garnet bit back her fear, quickly checked his pulse while trying to put pressure on his stomach wound. Blood continued to pulse out, slow but steady. Skin chilled and water dripping into her eyes, she managed to dig out her phone with one hand, called the infirmary. “Kenji’s got bleeding wounds,” she told Lorenzo’s assistant, Gavin. “I need medical help.”
To her surprise, it was Lorenzo who entered her quarters only minutes later.
“Pia?” she asked as the healer put down his medical kit and knelt in front of Kenji.
“Heavy bruising, broken leg.” The front of Lorenzo’s shirt was damp, no doubt from his examination of Pia. “The break’s a clean one—Gavin can easily set it. I’ve made sure she has no internal injuries.”
Pushing up Kenji’s T-shirt to expose the muscled and bloody plane of his abdomen, he asked Garnet to hold up the sodden material while he shone a light on the wound, then scanned it with a handheld device. “This isn’t as bad as it looks,” he murmured in his native Spanish before switching back to English. “A deep gouge, no impact on his internal organs.”
Garnet felt no relief at Lorenzo’s words, not with Kenji slumped bleeding in front of her. Tangling her hand with Kenji’s to reassure her wolf of the steady beat of his life, she faced Lorenzo’s profile. “Then why is he out?” Kenji was a lieutenant, with the attendant strength. If it was a simple scratch, he’d have shrugged it off, kept going.
Ignoring the snarl in her tone with the ease of long experience dealing with scared and worried wolves, the healer checked the back of Kenji’s head. “Knot, just as I suspected.”
Ice cracked through Garnet’s veins. “You knew he hit his head?”
“Pia regained consciousness just as Rev got her to the infirmary.” Lorenzo continued to work, using his healing abilities on Kenji’s head wound. “She shifted, said Kenji saw her fall into a gully, came down to bring her up—he asked her to shift so she’d be easier to carry.”
Garnet hated seeing Kenji so still. Kenji was never still. Kenji was wicked smiles and color and infuriating flirtation. “Did he fall in the gully while going down to get her?”
Lorenzo shook his head, the silver in his hair glinting under the light. “He slid down part of the way after skidding on the mud. There were rocks on the slope, according to Pia.” Frowning, he shifted position slightly so he could better access Kenji’s head wound. “I’m guessing he whacked his head on one. Stomach injury probably happened when he pushed through the damaged trees at the bottom of the gully—Pia crashed straight into them. The sharp end of a broken branch could’ve raked