Damn!  For the first time Mandy regretted not being a wolf.  If she were, she would have gone after Tyler for sure.  Heavens, she would have been able to use the pack link to talk to him!

“So,” Cassy asked gently, “does this mean you are talking to him again?”

Mandy frowned.  “Well I would, but he is not exactly here right now.”

“Don’t get sassy with me girl.”  Cassy warned her playfully and Mandy rewarded her by attempting a smile.

Cassy got up and pulled Mandy into her arms and hugged her tightly.  “Want some coffee?”

“No thanks.  My parents don’t know I am here.  I have to get back home.”

“Sure thing honey.” 

Mandy hugged Cassy back hard before leaving.  She rushed until she was back inside her home, her father just having entered the kitchen.

Rudi glanced at his youngest child curiously, but as soon as he got a whiff of Cassy’s scent on her, he knew she had gone to see Tyler.

“So, how’d it go?”  Anxiously he waited for her to answer.  He could not smell any of the other Grey’s on her, so he was dying to know what had happened.

“He got called away early this morning.”

“Oh.”  Rudi smiled at her sympathetically.  “At least he shouldn’t be away that long.  He usually just does his thing and then comes straight back here for you.”

“I suppose a few more days won’t make that much of a difference.”

Mandy tried smiling at him and immediately he pulled her in for a hug, folding her in his warm arms.  He laughed when she tried to talk, her words muffled against his chest.

“What is it with people and hugging me today?”

“I suppose you look like you might need it.”  As he released her, he took her face in his hands and looked at her.  “Are you going to see him when he comes in again?”

Mandy only had time to nod before Wade thundered into the kitchen, demanding his breakfast with a pleading look on his face.  Breakfast turned out to be more lighthearted than it had been in a long time and Mandy left to prepare for school in an easier state of mind.

Actually getting to talk to each other proved to be more difficult and complicated than originally anticipated.  Tyler was being called away more frequently as well as a lot further than before, making it difficult for him to take some time to go home and visit.

For a long time the only times he went home, was for an hour or two at the most, and more often than not, these hours fell either late at night, or during school hours.  The odd times when he was there after school hours, Mandy happened to be at one of her human friends, or when she was busy at school practicing a play she was in.

Two months before Mandy’s sixteenth birthday, he was home with his cousins and he was looking forward to at least spending some uninterrupted time at home.  And with Mandy.  His mother had told him that Mandy had come looking for him and the news was such a relief that it nearly made him dizzy.

She had let some of the wall she had built up down a bit and he had been able to sense her to some degree, so when she got nearer after school, Tyler eagerly went to wait for her; Ricky tagging along to finish their discussion.  He knew the exact moment she saw him waiting, because the wind sounds he associated with her swept up in a flurry.

When the car stopped, she all but pushed the poor girl sitting next to her out in her rush to get out and he had to fight not to burst out laughing, that was such a typical Mandy thing to do.  She took a few steps before their eyes met and she rocked to a standstill; her eyes searching his.  Blushing slightly she grinned up at him shyly and when he smiled back at her, she lifted her foot to walk towards him. 

Then, three things happened simultaneously.

The soothing rain sound that was Sam, Ricky’s mother; stopped so suddenly it left him reeling.

Brian’s normal busy bee sound escalated to such a level that Tyler thought he would go mentally deaf from it.

Thirdly, Ricky nearly went wild.  When Tyler came back to his senses, Mandy was kneeling in front of him and he saw that he had fallen down.

He frantically looked around to find Ricky and he could just see him in wolf form, slipping out of his view between the houses in the direction of his pack.  Torn, he looked back at her and then in the direction Ricky had just disappeared into.

With a shaking hand Mandy eased the frown on his face.  “Go.”  She said as her hand curved around his face.  He hesitated, but she nudged him.  “Go!  He needs you.”

Pulling her into a hug on his way up, he crushed her to him desperately.  When she softly told him to go once more, he growled in frustration as he let her slip out of his arms.  Not giving himself the chance to look at her again in fear of turning around back to her, he ran after Ricky; his feet replaced by paws in a single stride.

Within no time his paws were eating up the distance and he started closing the gap between him and Ricky and before long, they were running side by side.  No words were exchanged as they pushed themselves relentlessly onwards to Ricky’s home.

Brian was too frantic to answer any queries thrown his way, and Ricky had to contact Graham to get information.  All they could get from him was that Sam had been involved in a car accident that left her body so broken and mangled that she was rushed into theater as soon as the ambulance got her to the hospital.

They reached the town closest to the pack and luckily Genna had taken some extra clothing along for them and when Graham met them at the outskirts of town, they dressed quickly and drove to the hospital in silence.

They arrived outside her hospital room in the intensive care unit shortly after the doctor accompanied Sam in after surgery.  They only missed the first few words he spoke to Brian.

“… and every one of her organs has major damage.  We did as much as we could considering her condition, and to tell you the truth Mr. Grey, I did not expect her to survive the surgery in the first place and I hate telling you this, but you have to consider the possibility that she will not survive the night.”  A soft sigh could be heard from inside.  “Her heart alone is so battered and bruised that it should have stopped a long time ago.  I do not know how it can still be beating.  And if her heart managed to recover, I do not know if it would help.   She had lost so much blood and had a reduced oxygen intake that I fear her brain may be damaged.  To what extent we will not know.  If she survives, we will do further test to determine the extent of the damage.”

After some soft instructions to the third person in the room he left and Tyler saw a young and tired looking man come out of the private room.  Brian and Sam’s kids as well as Tyler stood up from their chairs, ready to fight tooth and nails to see Sam, but when the doctor nudged his head at the room; letting them know they could all go in, they knew it must be bad.

Tyler sucked in a ragged breath when he saw her.  She was whiter than the pristine sheets she was lying under.  There were so many tubes and pipes running into her body and covering her face that it looked like one of those macabre movies where the victims are sucked dry of all their blood by a multitude of pipes.

Brian was so focused on Sam he did not notice them until Nicola pressed herself against her father’s tall frame.  He brought his arm up to hold her tightly, but waited for the nurse to leave before turning to the others.  One by one the kids joined their father and Nicola in a group hug; drawing strength and giving comfort to each other; leaving their minds wide open to share their grief and desperate hope.  It was only when Tyler moved closer to the bed that Brain noticed him for the first time.  A flash of an idea came and went so fast that he did not have time to think about it.

Tyler however, did catch it.  With Brian’s mind being wide open, he had full access to every fraction of a thought that crossed his mind.  Brian’s idea was wild, outrageous and absolutely crazy, and if they could lay their hands on a rabid wolf, it could, just maybe, it could actually work.  Couldn’t it?

As one part of his feverish mind ran through the same scenario over and over again, the other part thought about how they were going to get a damn rabid wolf into the hospital in the first place.  At first he was too preoccupied with the complete craziness of this idea, that he did not recognize the soft tickling in the back of his head.

{Idiot!}

Tyler’s mind froze.  Why was it that his wolf only ever came out to insult him?

{Because you’re an idiot.}

{Why do you keep on doing this to me?}

{Because you seem to have lost all ability to think coherently.}

{Wow, that’s a big word.  Do you actually know what it means?}

{When you insult me, you are insulting yourself.  You are aware of this, aren’t you?}

{And I could say the same!}

A long silence stretched out even longer.

{So did you just pop in to insult me, or did you actually have a contribution to make?}

{Why do you think you need a rabid wolf?}

{To bite Sam and infect her, then I can bite her to cure her.}

{Perhaps we should just try to bite her first and see what happens?}

Tyler did not think twice.  “Brian?”  He spoke as quietly and gently as he could, but he still managed to startle Brian and his kids when he spoke.

“Yes Tyler?”

Tyler fidgeted, not knowing how to start.  “Do you think if I tried, you know; what you thought about just now?”

“What I thought about …?”

“Yes.  About me biting Sam.”

Ricky eagerly grabbed hold of Tyler and tried to push him closer to the big clumsy bed Sam was lying on.

“Wait!”  A concerned Genna stopped Ricky from forcibly trying to move Tyler who was still staring at Brian.

While Ricky excitedly told his siblings what Tyler was speaking about, Brian and Tyler were staring at each other, both of them trying to figure out if this was the right thing to do.  Whether it would work, or back fire on them.

“If we don’t try … You heard the doctor.  She might not even make it through the night.”  Brian stood alone now, shaking at the mere thought of a possible tomorrow without Sam at his side and he nearly crumbled.

The day he met her for the first time, when she was hanging upside down on a flimsy rope in a tree ran through his mind.  He relived the endlessly long moment he saw, really saw her and recognized her as his mate.  All the moments they shared after that, their first ride on his motorbike when she drove them; the first time she softly kissed him goodnight after their date with the rest of his brothers.  The way she accepted him without freaking out, too much; and then practically treated him like a bloody dog.

That made him bark out a laugh, but it came out as a broken sob in stead.

“Do it.”  The words left his mouth and he fell down into a chair beside the bed, and if it weren’t for the fact that the room was full of werewolves, no one would have known he had spoken.

Tyler took one step and he was next to the bed.  His first instinct was to grab her arm, but both of them were already full of pipes and bandages.  After tugging the sheet up, he exposed Sam’s lower legs and Brian gasped as Genna and Nicole whimpered. 

Sam’s legs were swollen and tinted a sickly blue-green with surgical pins in at least three places they could see.  She also had a bandage covering most of her upper thigh and blood was seeping through.

Tyler was debating biting her on her foot when he thought of just opening up the bandage and licking at the open wound on her thigh.  That way at least he would not be causing any additional trauma and he would leave no marks for any one to find.

When he started working on the bandage, Ricky came over to hold her leg up a bit so that he could work quicker.  Graham went to stand at the door so that he could listen for any footsteps.  Luckily this room was at the end of the corridor and they should not be getting too much traffic down here as the room opposite them was unoccupied.

At last the wound was open and Tyler bent his head over her, but then changed his mind.  Stripping out of his clothes, he let them fall at his feet.  Not in the least concerned that someone could walk in and catch him like that.  His pants had not even hit the floor and a large wolf stood in his place.  As gently as he could, he lifted himself onto his rear legs and put his front paws on the bed, close to where he was going to be working.

Tyler started licking at the edges of the wound first and worked his way in to the deeper gash.  When he thought he felt the blood flow to the wound lessen, he gave one deep bite to allow his saliva to penetrate deeply into the fleshy part of her body, as close to the main artery he could get.  He continued licking over the bite mark until the bite wound had sealed.  He moved lower down her leg and licked around the incisions were the pins penetrated her legs.  Ignoring the bitter taste of the antiseptics, he rather concentrated on not gagging or getting his wolfy tongue stuck in the screws attached to the pins.

He licked and licked until he had covered all the open wounds on both her legs, and then he dropped down from his precarious perch on the bed.

After he dressed he stood next to his cousins as they alternatively watched their mother and then the monitor beeping away as it announced every time her endlessly big heart clung to life.  When the tension had escalated to an unbearable level, Nicole cracked.

“If you won’t say it, I will.”  Taking a deep breath she kept glancing at the beeping monitor.  “Is it just me, or are the squiggly lines getting longer?”

No one dared to speak, too afraid of getting their hopes up.

It took another hour before Graham spoke up.  “Guys, please tell me I am not the only one to see that.”

Still no one spoke and it was not five minutes later that the same nurse came in to check up on Sam.  The moment she saw the monitor, she checked it.  Then she meticulously checked all the electrodes attached to Sam’s chest.  With a puzzled look on her face, she slapped the monitor around.  As soon as she realized what she had done, she cringed and hurried out the door.

Not ten minutes later the doctor came back in, the nurse hot on his heels pushing a new monitor in front of her.  The doctor greeted the family absentmindedly as he checked and rechecked the monitor and electrodes.  Finally he decided to change the monitor, just to be on the safe side.  His obvious frustration increased when the new monitor showed the same results.

Eventually he turned towards Brian to explain all the commotion.  “There is a slight improvement in her heart, but I still urge you not to get too hopeful.  I have seen too many similar cases where conditions improve, only for the patient to pass away as soon as their relatives start thinking there is a chance or to wake up with little or no brain function at all.”  Avoiding their eyes, he ducked out of the room and gave the nurse further instructions on a number of patients.

All night the family sat up and watched as her heart grew stronger.  And as her heart grew stronger, so did her breathing.  With that came a huge improvement in her color.  And yet there was no movement in her body.

As the day grew later, all of the Grey brothers and their families arrived to show their support and every last one of them remained hopeful for a full recovery after they were told what Tyler had done and what the results were.  For almost a week the whole family took turns to sit with Sam and one of her kids or Brian.  They were never alone.

When Sam’s condition had improved so much that she was no longer on life support, they removed all the tubes and cables except for the IV and the electrodes that announced to the entire ward how healthy her heart was.  After a long battle with the doctors, Brian eventually got them to agree for them to take Sam back home.

The moment she was settled, Brian called Tyler in to the room.

“Please …”

Tyler wasted no time in removing his clothes.  Tatters floated to the ground as the wolf stalked towards the bed.  Brian pulled the sheet off of her completely and Tyler began biting and licking the wounds closed.  After two hours he was parched.

Brian held a robe out towards him and after Tyler shifted, he thanked him and opened the bedroom door for him.  He turned towards his wife, pulled off most of his clothing and got into bed next to her.  He gently pulled her into his arms and held her tightly while he slept.

For another week they hoped, and stubbornly included her in as much of their family life as they could, knowing that she used to love it when the whole family came together.  In the afternoons, they would take her outside and let her lie on a soft blanket of the grass while they did nothing but sit and talk and reminisce.

There was no indication, no warning.  No way to prepare for what was to come.

The first crack sounded like a shot from a pistol.

After that, things got a little hazy and everybody present would most likely end up telling a different story of what happened then.

If anybody would bother to ask Sam, she would have told them that she started hearing a faint buzzing.  Hardly even there until it grew louder and louder until she could make out that she was hearing words until eventually she could make out individual voices.  Voices that sounded a little strange to her even though they were familiar to her.

She battled for such a long time to open her eyes that she got a head ache from it.  Then the head ache started spreading throughout her whole body until it felt as if she was being torn apart at the seams, caught in a vicious tug of war between two forces pulling at her from opposite ends.

The sound of her bones breaking confirmed her belief that she was stuck in the middle of a hostile game of tug of war and she scrunched her eyes shut in the hope that it would soon go away. 

When the violent sounds eventually stopped, she opened her eyes to a new world.