Chapter 5: Stitches

The clinic's back door buzzer went off at ten past eleven.

I was alone in the building, mopping the surgery floor, and the sound made me drop the mop.

I looked at the security screen.

Gareth stood on the step with his right arm wrapped in a bloody hotel towel.

I opened the door a hand's width.

"You can't be here," I said.

"I know."

"The emergency hospital is nine minutes that way."

"I know." He swayed a little. "I didn't want a hospital."

"I wanted to see if my hands would stop shaking if I was near you."

"And?"

He held up the left one.

It was shaking.

I let him in.

I sat him on the steel exam table under the bright light and unwound the towel.

A long gash ran down the inside of his forearm, deep and ragged and still bleeding.

"What did you do?"

"I put it through a window." He watched me work.

"My wolf came up today for the first time in five years, and I didn't know how to carry it."

"I was on the motel balcony. It just wanted out."

"It wanted out through a window."

"It wanted you."

I kept my eyes on the wound.

"You're not a dog, Gareth, and I'm not a doctor," I said.

"I'm going to clean this and put in stitches, and it's going to hurt."

"Good."

"That's an odd thing to say."

"It's been five years of nothing," he said. "Hurt is a start."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Three Alphas Who Denied My Triplet Babies Came Back... from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.