Rough (Wolf Ranch 1)

He winced, trying to sit up and look at the injury.

I pushed him back down, although he wasn’t going anywhere with the strap around his waist. “Take it easy, champ, you’re losing blood.”

He gave a half grin as his face turned pasty. His blood pressure was most likely dropping, and he was going into shock. I needed to get him stabilized right away. As his lashes flickered, he mumbled, “Guess you’re not going out with Abe for coffee, huh?”

What? He had a hole in his chest and was worried about me going out with Abe? “Guess not. Hang on for me, okay?”

But it was too late. He’d lost consciousness.

Heart thundering in my chest, I hustled into the ambulance with him and took over the insertion of the IV needle into his arm as the paramedic settled an oxygen mask over his face.

Boyd Wolf was probably the cockiest cowboy in the west. It was his job to get on the back of a bull, but it was my job to save him when he fell off. I’d do everything I possibly could to do so.

3

BOYD

I blinked, looked around. Where the fuck was I? Sterile walls. Beeping monitors. Antiseptic scent. Shit. No.

I couldn’t be in a hospital. I’d barely gotten scratched when that bull nicked me with his horn. It had hurt like fucking hell, but it hadn’t been so bad. Just a little blood loss. A big hole in my chest. I’d seen Audrey in the stands—my wolf ready to show off for her—and was prepared to focus on the ride, all eight plus seconds, and then get back to her. Get in her. But then I’d seen Abe set his hand on her shoulder, and I’d focused on that. The way his fingers lightly gripped her. Felt her heat, could breathe in her sweet scent. I’d thought of that, only that. Not the big ass bull I’d been riding on.

Was she interested in Abe? Had she liked his touch? I’d wondered about that, then I’d been pissed as hell. No fucking way. My wolf had screamed at me, “He’s touching her! Get his fucking hands off her. Now!”

Abe would’ve had more than a broken finger before the night was out, an entire hand, except the bull had kicked just right, and I’d gone flying. I was used to falling off. Hell, I did it on purpose often enough, so people wouldn’t wonder as to why I was so fucking daring. It was the fact I knew I’d never get hurt that made me champ. Even a horn in my torso couldn’t keep me down for long.

What was bad, and sad, was that I’d fucking passed out. I’d planned on jumping off that gurney before it ever made it into the ambulance, track down Abe and tell him he could fucking forget Audrey even existed.

Not that Doctor Blue-Eyes would’ve let that happen. She’d been there within seconds of me hitting the hard packed dirt and began to treat me as if I were human.

She’d touched me. I’d felt it through the pain. My wolf had, too.

Hell, if getting her to focus on me was to get gored by a fucking bull, I should have done it earlier in the night. I remembered her squeezing my hand as she jogged beside the board they’d strapped me to. Vaguely, I remembered her next to me in the ambulance, speaking in those low, clipped tones to the EMTs. Stern. Authoritative. Bossy as fuck. That little slip of a female had given orders like the most ruthless of alphas.

I was good at sensing people. It was the shifter in me. Audrey had been worried… about me. And I remembered liking how that felt. She cared and if that didn’t do something funny to my insides.

I fought the drugs pumping through my veins and opened my eyes once again. I had no idea how long I’d been out and that was bad. My body was healing wolf-quick, and anyone could have noticed. I knew exactly nothing about hospitals since this was the first time I’d been in one, but it looked like they were going to do some kind of procedure, maybe even take me to the operating room. Watching doctor shows on TV clued me in to that possibility. A nurse in blue scrubs had her back to me, arranging instruments on a tray, then stepped out of the room. Like whatever was planned was going to happen.

I stifled a groan as I tugged the IV needle out of my arm and disconnected the monitoring equipment.

The last thing I needed was to expose my species to human doctors, especially the ones in my own home town. Revealing what we were was against pack rules. The easiest way to do that was to get them to cut me open.