Argent's Wolf [NaNoWriMo 2020]

Chapter 3

The nails hurt more coming out than they did going in. In hindsight, Ross making sure that Milo couldn't bite saved them both a lot of pain and trouble. There was no way that Milo could have endured it without chewing. As it was, he clamped his teeth together and locked his jaw. This didn't stop Ross from making threats as Milo struggles became more and more violent.

"Do you want me to put these back in?" the man demanded, his travelling voice making the promise sound much more sinister, as if he was inviting the option. Maybe he was. 

Milo whined, tail tugged between his legs and on the cold tiles again because he kept moving the towels away with this wriggling. 

"Then stop moving! This is the only way to get them out, and your thrashing is making it far hard than it needs to be," Ross warned, dropping the one he'd managed to yank out to the side. It rolled away, smearing the tiles with blood. He cleaned the paw carefully before spraying it with iodine. The sting from that was considerably less than anything less that happened. Ross put some padding over the wound and wrapped it up carefully.

One paw done, Ross pinned the next paw and his pliers. He growled as Milo tried to pull it back. He stopped but couldn't stop from tensing as Ross grabbed the silver nail with the pliers and pulled. It didn't move far. Ross wriggled the bolt out with patience, and Milo gave up wanting to cry. Ross repeated his actions, cleaning, disinfecting and wrapping up the wound. As a wolf, without the silver stopping him, the holes would heal, but with silver in his system, his paws were at risk of infection. 

"You're lucky that they didn't soak these in wolfbane," Ross chided as he lifted Milo and moved him so he could get to the final paw. "You should heal quickly enough once the silver is out of your system."

Milo didn't feel lucky. He was as far from lucky as one could be. Nothing about what he'd endured over the last few days or whatever he was about to endure suggested his luck was not any good at all. 

The final nail out, Ross repeated his actions. Milo's heavy panting filled the room as he tried to get his body under control. Ross petted him, moving him back onto his lap and letting his fingernails scratch in all the right places. Ross didn't say anything but only shifted once some of Milo's trembling faded.

"Can you shift?"

Milo shook his head. Not like this, not while exhausted, in pain and with silver poisoning.

Ross made a soft sound of disappointment. Milo didn't have time to process that before Ross's arms gathered around him and dropped him in the waiting bath of warm water. He yelped embarrassingly from surprise rather than pain or fear. He slipped and thrashed in the bathtub as he tried to get his aching paws under him to no avail. Arms circled him and held him steady above the water, laughing. A touch deeper than Roddy's, but the sound was familiar.

Leonard's laugh was more of a belly laugh as rare as it was. 

"I got you, King. Let me get the blood off you, and I'll get you some water, "Ross promised, shifting him so he was partly hanging over the edge of the bath. Panting for breath, Milo stayed and let Ross wash him down. He wanted the blood off his fur and skin. It itched. It was his. Focusing on breathing, Milo once again tried to assess the situation. 

The same question refused to be pushed away,

Was Ross planning to hurt him?

So far, all he'd done was treat Milo's wounds and put a muzzle on him to avoid earning his own. Why bother if he was going to kill Milo? All the threats and attempts of blackmail, this treatment wasn't what any of that had been promising. Aside from a comment or two, the hunter had been almost nice to him.