Howl Down the Moon
Where had the sun gone? Yes, it was fall, and the days had been growing shorter, but for it to be nighttime already, it had to be…well…damn. Scrubbing a hand over his face, Doctor Randal Forrester realized that he’d once again forgotten to take a dinner break or lock up at a reasonable time. Standing, the pang of pain that shot through his lower back was a reminder that he’d also been sitting too long. So much for following the instructions he gave his patients. Leaning back, he stretched until he felt something pull, before bending to touch his toes, a series of pops running down his spine, providing instant relief.
​
His stomach rumbled, so he shut down his computer and made sure a printed copy of tomorrow’s schedule was placed front and center on his desk. A lite day, provided there were no emergencies, maybe he could get some fishing in. A little sunlight, a little relaxation, it wouldn’t do for the pack’s only Doctor to end up sick himself.
Times like these, when he was restless and eager to spend time in the woods, he wished Doc Washington hadn’t retired. Not that the elder hadn’t deserved it, he’d devoted more than forty-seven years to healing and tending to his pack. Just made it difficult to take a break when he was always on call.
One last walk through the offices, just to make sure he’d turned all the lights off. Moonlight streaming in through the window of his counseling space, slashed across fur that didn’t belong there. Flipping on the light revealed a gray and white stuffed goose which had been accidentally abandoned earlier in the day. Picking it up, he relocated it to his office, before shooting Gabe a quick text message to let him know Raine’s goose was here. Knowing the man the way he was coming to, he’d beat Doc to the door in the morning to collect that goose for his mate.
Honestly, he wasn’t surprised Raine had forgotten it. They’d had a tough session, with Raine slowly trusting him enough to open up and talk about the conflicting emotions he was currently struggling with. His secretary had left hours before, shutting down the front half of the clinic, which was why Doc was almost startled out of his skin to hear rustling coming from there.
Irritation and outrage bubbled to the surface, and he stalked towards the sound, intending to give some drug seeking wolf a piece of his mind and an offer of counseling. Instead, he found Mister Meow batting around a crinkly cat toy, the fluffy orange cat fixing him a look like what? when Doc illuminated him with his phone. How many times, how many, had he told Stephanie not to let that damned cat in, even if it was after office hours and all the exam rooms were closed. It didn’t matter that she vacuumed the carpet each morning, either. A clinic was no place for a cat!
Sighing, he knelt, clucking his tongue at the cat, intending to catch it and put it back out where it belonged when several raps on the front door drew his attention. Grumbling, he threw up his hands and marched across the room, yanking the door open only to have the wolf on the other side spill into the room. They’d have hit the floor if Doc hadn’t reacted quickly and caught them.
A low, rumbling groan escaped the dark clad form as Doc carefully shifted them in his arms and carried them to the nearest exam room. Wavy strands of golden-brown hair, shot through with flaxen and white streaks, spilled out from beneath the black hood, half obscuring the wolf’s face. Doc brushed it back, the heat beneath his hand indicating a fever. Flushed and sweaty, their eyes were closed, their breathing heavy and labored. Doc ran a thermometer over their forehead, the instrument display reading 108.4. Dangerously high for a wolf, risking brain damage for a human, but the chances of it being human was near impossible.
The eyes beneath the closed lids were hickory-gold and dilated when he shone a light into them. Their clothes smelled of cedar, pine, and rot, like an infection raging out of control. Doc gently unzipped the hoodie and peeled up the t-shirt beneath, gasping when he saw the red, swollen bite on the other wolf’s side, oozing pus from places where it wasn’t packed with the remains of some kind of poultice. The skin around the wound had rotted away, making it clear to him this wasn’t recent, but the wolf itself wasn’t known to Doc.
​
Odd, but not necessarily alarming. In the six years he’d lived among the Pacific Northwest pack, he’d come to learn how spread out some members of the pack chose to live. It made sense that one who lived near the outskirts might not have had a need to seek him out until now. It was also quite possible that this was the new mate of a pack member, but a quick inspection of the wolf’s wrists revealed that they were no bondmarks on either one. So much for that theory.
​
Carefully stripping the other wolf, Doc checked the rest of his skin, finding the silvery thin skin of barely healed scars all over the body. A fight then? At least the rest were closed. With how jagged many of them were it was impossible to tell what kind of teeth made them, but the one thing Doc was certain of, those wounds were caused by teeth.
​
Retrieving sterile saline, peroxide, and bandages, he brought an emesis basin and tall stool to the exam table. How the hell this wound had gotten so bad was what he wanted to know. Bites, even ones from their own kind, tended to heal quickly, unless there was an underlying medical condition, but if there was, then why hadn’t he heard of or treated this wolf before?
​
Bending his head to the task, he began flushing out the wound: dirt, herbs, pus, blood, and dead skin sloughing off into the basin, without any reaction from the other wolf. There was no telling how long this fever had been raging. A turgor test revealed that they were severely dehydrated, the skin he pinched taking several seconds before it went back to its normal shape. Damn. Setting aside his debridement tools, he made short work of hooking up an IV to get some fluids into them.
Once it was flowing, he resumed the long, arduous task of cleaning the wound. If his back wasn’t aching before, it was now, and the wound still bubbled and fizzed when he poured peroxide on it.
“What bit you?” Doc pondered as he worked. “Another wolf or something else? Why wouldn’t you seek medical attention before it got this bad? I assure you there is nothing in this clinic that is more painful, or dangerous, than this wound you’ve allowed to fester. Are you trespassing? I suppose I’ll have to alert the elders, if that’s the case, once I’ve finished treating you. It wouldn’t be fair to drag you in front of the council when you are still so ill.”
The other wolf’s breathing was growing easier, and the shudder of breath when they inhaled was beginning to happen less frequently. Without having a history on them, Doc couldn’t risk injecting any antibiotics to help fight the infection.
A low groan drew his attention away from the wound, to where eyelids fluttered, revealing eyes framed by long, full eyelashes that almost looked fake.
“Hey, do me a favor and wake up for me?” Doc said, speaking directly into the other wolf’s ear. They whined, eyes opening for about three seconds before slamming closed again.
Shaking them gently, Doc encouraged them to keep trying. “Come on, you can do better than that. Focus on me. That’s it. Do you know where you are?”
They licked cracked lips and tried to swallow, voice so raspy on the first attempt, Doc couldn’t make out anything but garbled sound. He quickly fetched them a cup of water with a straw and urged them to lift their head and take a few sips.
“Slowly,” Doc cautioned, sliding one arm beneath them to help support them. Apparently, slow wasn’t in their vocabulary because Doc was forced to pull the straw away as the other wolf began to sputter and cough. “Little sips. Take your time. That’s it.”
When the cup was empty, Doc eased the other wolf’s head back onto the gurney and set the cup aside, taking up his saline wash again.
“So let’s try this again, shall we?” Doc asked as he began flushing the edges of the wound thoroughly, in the hopes their healing factor would begin to help them close. “Do you know where you are?”
“C-clinic. W-wasn’t sure I’d make it.”
“You almost didn’t. I was about to close up. If you’d been a few minutes later, I might not have found you in time to help. When did this happen?”
“Got bit last week; the others closed; that one, I couldn’t keep it clean. Gashed it on a rock and got some mud and stuff in it. Tried to make a poultice, but I don’t think I did it right. The book is kind of difficult to read.”
“What you should have done was come here immediately. What bit you?”
“Another wolf.”
“Why?”
“He was pissed.”
“I imagine so, but that doesn’t give me a reason, just a mental state.”
The other wolf hissed as the saline flooded into their wound, body tensing. Doc cut some necrotic tissue away, still waiting for the answer.
“Will you at least tell me your name and if you’ve been treated here before?” Doc requested. “It would help to know what, if any, medications you might be allergic to.”
“I dunno.”
“Which part don’t you know?”
“The medications thing. I’ve been here before; it’s just been a long time.”
“So you’re a member of this pack?”
“Yeah.”
“Your pronouns?”
“He/him.”
“Okay, now how about your name?”
Another sigh, before he went from looking straight at Doc to studying some spot on the wall.
“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, but you will have to tell the council if I have to call an elder to confirm your identity.”
“Luka,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Ahh, so that’s why he balked at giving it up. Doc was sure that was what kept him from seeking medical attention sooner.
“Was it worth it?” Doc asked as he finished cleaning the wound and applied sterile dressing.
“What?”
“Putting your hands on someone who didn’t want you.”
Luka sucked in a breath and let it out in a huff. “It isn’t what you think.”
“Really? So you didn’t tell the wolf you grabbed that you could protect him better than his mate could?”
“He was sick and out there alone…” Luka stammered. “I was trying to help.”
“Help yourself, you mean.”
“He wasn’t being looked after. I was trying to make him let go of the tree so I could take care of him.”
“Do you know what the word no means?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what the words get your hands off me mean?”
“Yes!”
“Then why didn’t you do it?”
Luka groaned as Doc rolled him on his side so he could finish putting the tape in place. “He was disoriented, confused; he looked like he was about to pass out.”
Doc made sure the tape would hold, then retrieved some gauze to cover it further, not that any of it would do any good if Luka couldn’t keep it dry.
“You might have been able to convince me that you were only trying to help if you hadn’t said the things you said in the process,” Doc said.
“Was true,” Luka muttered. “Saw Raine have to defend Gabriel to those other wolves, and I heard how he protected him from a bear too and almost died. Then he’s out there alone, sick, and I thought, ‘Who’s watching out for him?’ He’s beautiful, strong, brave, everything any of us would want in a mate. I just thought he should have someone to protect him for a change.”
When Luka put it that way, it almost seemed noble, and Doc could tell from the conviction in Luka’s voice that he truly believed he’d been helping, right up until the point when Gabriel had torn into him.
“Regardless of what you thought, or what you felt, you don’t have the right to touch someone who doesn’t want you to touch him,” Doc stressed. “According to pack law, you assaulted him, and his mate was within his right to use violence to defend him. While I prefer seeing wolves solve their problems with words instead of bloodshed, I don’t mind the extra work when someone is clearly in the wrong.”
“So, you’re saying I should have kept walking past him and left him there like everyone else?”
“No. I’m saying you should have thought of a way to help properly. Like asking him what was wrong, helping him sit down, and waiting with him for his mates to get there. The bond marks on his wrists are bright; no way you didn’t see those,” Doc said. “You could have alerted the rest of the runners when you saw him fall back. His brother-in-law was out there. All you had to do was speak up.”
Luka sighed heavily while Doc ran the thermometer over his brow again, glad to see his temperature was already coming down.
“I wasn’t on the run.”
“Then what were you doing out there?”
“Going to see the lanterns.”
Well, that confirmed Doc’s suspicions that Luka lived well outside of town, but if that was the case, then how in the world had he ended up on Doc’s doorstep alone?
“Your actions were reported to the council,” Doc informed him.
Luka gave a little shrug at that, rankling Doc with his flagrant disregard for pack rules and authority.
“And you don’t care in the slightest, do you?” Doc asked.
“If the council knows what I did, then the fact that Raine was alone and unprotected is on record too. Now if something happens, the council will know it wasn’t the first time.”
Okay, now that was just odd and mildly threatening. It looked like dinner was going to have to wait until after he’d sent Luka on his way and reported the conversation to whichever head elder was on duty tonight. Joy.
Merrrrow.
Oh yeah, and there was still the cat.
Luka rolled, falling off the exam table to see the cat. He landed on all fours though and knelt eye to eye with Mister Meow and merrrowed right back at him. The marmalade tabby flicked its tail and stalked toward him, arching its back to run its fur along Luka’s jawline, making him laugh and rub fluffy ears before skritching beneath Mister Meow’s chin. It earned him purrs—loud, eager ones that Doc had never heard him make.
“Never heard of a wolf with a pet cat before,” Luka said. “Kinda cool in a weird and slightly twisted way.”
“He’s not my pet; he’s more like a barely tolerated mascot that my secretary seems to have forgotten is not supposed to be indoors.”
“It smells like frost out there,” Luka said. “Even if he curled up in a leaf pile somewhere, he’d still be cold. What harm does it do for him to sleep in here at night where he can be comfortable?”
“This is a clinic, not a vet’s office,” Doc grumbled. “There isn’t supposed to be fur everywhere.”
The moment those words left his mouth, Doc wanted to smack himself. Clearly, Luka grasped how utterly ridiculous the statement was because he was holding his side, laughing, and grimacing at the way the wound pulled.
“So, what do you say when someone gets carried in here in wolf form? ‘Shift so you don’t get fur on the floor?’” Luka asked, an edge of sarcasm in his voice that hadn’t been there before. His color was improving too. Doc suspected he was on the mend now that the infection had been cleaned out. Good. The sooner the bite closed, the less likely it would be that he’d have to see this infuriating wolf again.
“That’s beside the point,” Doc replied, attempting to wave it off while Luka looked up at him with eyes that were more wolf than human. For a brief moment, Doc felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room as Luka cocked his head to the side and Mister Meow rubbed his cheek and nose against Luka. Doc felt his insides go soft as he stared down at the scene, words like adorable and sweet flittering through his mind as Luka closed his eyes and sighed contently as Mister Meow continued to rub along his face and neck.
The mushy feeling was instantly replaced with revulsion and bile. To touch or attempt to steal another’s mate was one of the vilest, most despicable things one could do to another wolf. That he’d waited until Raine was at his weakest when he’d attempted to take advantage spoke of his cowardice too. As far as Doc was concerned, Luka was a pariah. A beautiful, smoldering, outcast who needed to take himself back to the wilderness and stay there, since he couldn’t be trusted to act responsibly.
“Can’t he stay in?” Luka asked softly.
“He can stay. You need to go. I would suggest that in the future you keep your hands to yourself,” Doc stated in a harsh tone. “And keep those bandages dry or you’ll be right back here.”
“I’ll try.”
“Do better than try. I’d like to avoid the unpleasantness of having to spend a single second more in your company,” Doc informed him and watched the frown lines appear between Luka’s eyes. His mouth widened into a small O, and Doc realized then that it had taken Luka longer than it should have to understand what Doc had said to him.
Luka glanced down at his side, then back up at Doc, some of the brightness in those gleaming eyes having dimmed, replaced by a sadness that left Luka looking young and vulnerable. It was gone in a flash though, replaced by a look that read to Doc like he’d just solved some sort of a puzzle. He fumbled for the pockets of his hoodie, having to stand to get what he was after.
“I can pay,” Luka said, pulling something from his pocket and holding it out to Doc, who took it more on instinct than actual interest.
“I don’t care,” Doc said. “You could offer to build the pack a state-of-the-art clinic to rival the most prestigious of human hospitals, and I still wouldn’t give a damn. What you did to Raine was not okay, and the fact that you can’t seem to understand that tells me the council should seriously reconsider letting you remain on these lands. Now get out!”
Pointing toward the door, Doc stood glaring at Luka, fuming at the audacity of the wolf to think he could buy atonement. Unlike a human doctor, Doc wasn’t bound to an oath that he would help any and all who needed it. He was the pack doctor, and that’s who he’d taken an oath to care for, not a wolf who’d proven he didn’t belong in a pack in the first place.
Head down, Luka headed out the door, not necessarily steady on his feet, but that was his problem. Perhaps being truly banished and made an outcast would teach him to think before he did things. Slamming the door behind him, Doc made certain to engage all the locks. It was only as he headed back into the exam room to clean up that he realized he was still clutching the hard object Luka had dropped in his hand.
Opening it revealed a hunk of wood with an intricately carved possum, her three babies on her back, standing out prominently. A stunning piece of artwork, Doc stared at it, admiring the details, turning it every which way to see the detailing of each tiny claw carefully wrapped around the branch the mama was perched on. Something caught his eye. At first, he thought it another intriguing piece of the carving, until he realized that this new detail was on skin, not wood, and his stomach dropped. There, on his wrist, was the beginning of a bond mark. It should have been a moment of elation; instead, Doc traced his fingers over it, wondering how the fates could be so cruel as to give him a mate his ethics would never let him claim.