Still nothing.
Fuck.
Footsteps below caught his attention, followed by the scent of alpha.
Several alphas.
Jason looked down to the see Alpha Jones running towards them with two others in tow. They carried a bag and a stretcher between them, and Jason’s heart sank to his stomach. They were expecting it to be bad, and he knew it was. The amount of blood alone told him Daryl wasn’t healing.
But seeing that they were expecting the worst—he’d never seen a shifter carried on a stretcher—
rammed it home.
“Jason?” Alpha Jones called up to him. “You need to come down, so I can get up there and have a look at him.”
The thought of leaving cut deep, and a low growl bubbled its way out. Even horrified that he’d growled at a council member, Jason couldn’t force himself to move. His fangs dropped down and he growled again, one hand snaking out to grab Daryl’s ankle. The touch of skin on skin soothed his wolf, and he closed his eyes, breathing in deep, trying to regain some control.
“I know you don’t want to leave his side,” Alpha Jones’ soft, calming voice filtered up to him.
“And normally I’d never ask you to, but I need to get a look at him. We have to get that tree out of his chest and get him down from there, and I can’t do it with you in the way.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Please, Jason, let us help him.”
“Jase,” Daryl’s quiet murmur caught everyone’s attention. “’S okay.” He coughed, face screwed up in pain, and a line of blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.
No.
Forcing himself to let go, Jason climbed down, heart rate through the roof and hands shaking. He hit the ground too hard, and his leg buckled.
Alpha Jones caught him and quickly lowered him to sit down. “Stay off that leg, please. We’ll get Daryl sorted as quick as we can.”
Jason could only sit and watch as Alpha Jones climbed up onto Daryl’s branch, the other two waiting underneath, presumably to break Daryl’s fall if need be. He heard Alpha Jones asking all sorts of questions, but Daryl either didn’t reply or the answers were too quiet for him to pick up. He heard the coughs though, and the groans of pain, each tearing through him like knives.
And the blood continued to drip.
“We need to get this thing out of him and clean the wound,” Alpha Jones called down to the others. “He’s got enough to heal as it is and having this fucking stuck in there isn’t helping.”
The urgency in his tone tugged a whimper out of Jason. He clamped his eyes shut and dug his fingers into the ground to stop himself from trying to get back up there.
“Shit.”
The muttered curse had Jason looking up to the tree, meeting Alpha Jones’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, Jason.” He shot a brief glance at Daryl. “He’s going to be fine, as long as we get him down from here so his body can do what it needs to.”
The words offered some relief, but he wouldn’t relax until Daryl no longer had a gaping hole in his chest. “How do we do that?” he asked, looking from Daryl to the ground, some eight or nine feet below.
“Quick and dirty.” Alpha Jones sighed, then ran a hand over his face. He addressed the other two alphas. “There’s no easy way to do this, and we can’t wait any longer. I’m going to lift him off the branch and lower him down to you.”
Jason looked at the awkward way Daryl’s body was splayed out on the thick branch. “Won’t that make him worse?” Surely they needed to be extra careful with him.
“It might,” Alpha Jones answered. “But we don’t have a lot of choice. If we don’t get him down, he’s going to lose too much blood, and there’ll be nothing anyone can do.”
Jason clamped his mouth shut and let them get on with it, Alpha Jones’ words stealing his breath.
There’ll be nothing anyone can do. . .
He watched, heart in his mouth, as Alpha Jones slid his hands under Daryl’s back and tugged him upwards. The sound it made was sickening. Stupid enhanced senses meant Jason heard everything as
the tree branch went through Daryl’s body. Thank fuck Daryl seemed to pass out after a couple of seconds. That one pained cry had been enough for Jason; he couldn’t handle hearing any more.
