Running With Wolves Ch 02

Thank you all so much for the positive feedback. It makes it such a pleasure to write this story, and I will be sure to try and get the chapters out in a timely fashion. I want to give a big thanks to my new editors mordbrand and MarieFlower for editing this chapter for me and weeding out the errors. I hope you all enjoy this chapter! All comments and messages are welcome, don't feel shy about telling me how you feel.

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Waking up in a strange place was not new to Dominic.

Waking up in a strange place and not knowing how he got there was not new either.

Waking up in a strange place and not knowing how he got there and waking up to see the face of one of the men that had attacked him? OK, maybe not so totally new, but this situation was definitely new.

When he first opened his eyes, all Dominic could see was a boy sitting on a comfortable looking chair next to him. There was a beeping to his right, most likely a heart monitor, and quiet talking on the other side of the door. Whoever the person was, he looked like he was distracted and hadn't realized Dominic was conscious, so he took the opportunity to take inventory of the room.

An I.V. was connected to his inner left arm, the tube feeding what looked to be a bag of fluids into his body. To his right was the boy, a small table for guests, and the monitors. Farther down was a movable table stationed over his feet and a small cabinet in the far right corner. It would pass for a hospital room to anyone else, but Dominic had been a frequent flier to the local hospitals as a kid and this was not one of them.

It was too bare. No attached bathroom, the only machines were the roll around respiratory monitoring system that had a layer of dust on it, and the door had a latch on it with no window. Even the chair was off; A woven fabric with real wood arms. There was no way this was a real hospital.

The realization kicked his brain into high gear. This wasn't a hospital, he wasn't safe, and the stranger wasn't a total stranger. He was one of the men that had been stealing his truck, had attacked him, and shoved him into that van.

He needed to get away.

Panic takes hold easily when the mind is foggy. In this case, it surged forward causing Dominic to snap his head towards Flint.

Once he confirmed what he already knew, Dominic yelped and rolled in the opposite direction of the threat, landing on the floor with a dull 'thud'. Pain like he hadn't felt in years coursed through him and he lay immobile from the intensity.

"Oh Luna are you ok?!" Flint jumped up and ran to the other side of the bed. "Here let me help you! You shouldn't be moving around like this-" When he placed a hand on Dom's shoulder, he wasn't prepared for the reaction he got.

Dominic felt the contact and out of pure muscle reflex his body turned over and his leg flung out to land a swift kick to Flint's breast bone. Flint fell back, winded, and Dominic took the opportunity to grab the I.V. stand with his left hand to use as a weapon. It hurt too much to move his right. The needle in his arm had been torn out in the scuffle, bruising the tissue so deeply that it would take weeks to heal.

That was how the others found him; sitting on the floor pressed into a corner, I.V. stand in hand, with Flint crouched at the end of the bed catching his breath.

"Stay the FUCK away from me! Who are you people? Why did you bring me here? I said stay the fuck BACK!" Flints hand was tagged by the rod of metal when he reached out to try to calm him. "Why am I here!?"

A deep baritone voice filled the room. "I understand you are scared. This is not how things should have gone and for that I am sorry, but let's not make it any worse. Put the weapon down. You will be left unharmed, just put it down." The man that spoke reminded Dominic very much of Ben's father Sergeant. That hadn't been his real name, just what he had demanded everyone call him. He had similar short brown hair and thick bridged nose, his eyes were the kind that always looked placid, and his mouth had a slight down turn at the corners that pointed towards the angles of his square jaw. It was odd to see him in an expensive fancy suit and not something made of military camo. He was far taller than the other man had been though. This guy was almost freakishly tall.

"All due respect, sir, but I think I'll keep it." Dominic did lower it slightly, however.

The newcomer nodded "That's fair." He moved slightly forward, tapping Flint on the shoulder to direct him out of the room. "I think it would be best if just you and I talked alone for now. Flint, go to your mother. Everyone else as well. I will be fine alone with him." Outside in the hall there was a loud shuffling of feet. One voice stayed behind.

"Orion?"

"I will be fine love; he is no threat to me." After a brief hesitation a pair of heels clicked away. The man closed the door and took in the surprisingly calm looking Dominic sitting in the corner.

Not trusting the newcomer, he settled farther into the corner.

"Your wife?"

Orion moved slowly to grab the chair from the other side of the bed, moving it until it was stationed between Dominic and the door. He was boxed in. "Yes, her name is Sol. As you heard my name is Orion. Orion Rivers. May I ask your name?"

Dom hesitated a moment, considering lying to the man. It didn't seem like a smart idea. "Dominic. Just Dominic. Why was I brought here? This isn't a real hospital."

Orion unbuttoned his jacket, folding it and placing it over the back of the chair before sitting and crossing his legs. He was very intimidating, even sitting. "That is a more complicated question than I think you are ready to hear the answer to. I will say that you are correct, this is not a true hospital. You are in the private emergency clinic at what is known as the Mayfield Estate, and you were brought here because you were badly injured," he motioned to Dominic's immobile right arm cradled in his lap, "but you are safe now."

Dominic raised his eyebrow at that, though it was hard to see with the bangs. "Pardon me if I doubt that very much. Your men attacked me when I tried to stop them from stealing my truck. Are you aware of that?"

Orion nodded. "They told me just before you woke."

"Then don't bullshit me and try to tell me I am safe. I am far from safe."

Orion sighed, but nodded his head. "I suppose after the introduction you've had to my pack you would feel that way." He uncrossed, then re-crossed his legs. "The boy you held a gun to was my youngest son, Flint. He was also the one sitting with you. The man who first hit you is my oldest son, Hale, and the man whose arm you broke is named Cliff. They regret very much how that situation unfolded. They had no real intention of harming you."

"So bashing me with a pipe and slamming me into my truck was supposed to, what, be a gentle tap? How unfortunate for me." Orion didn't respond. "I'm assuming the reason I was brought here is because you want to convince me not to press charges. Give me back the truck and everything that was inside and you will never hear from me again. Just bandage me up and I'll be on my way."

"That's not quite right, but a close guess. You will be staying here for quite some time."

"I want to leave."

"I'm afraid that is not possible."

The pole rose up again. "Then kindly go fuck yourself and leave me alone. I have no interest in talking with my kidnappers any further."

Orion smirked, not unkindly. "You truly are going to be an interesting development. I am glad you were brought to us." He stood briskly, the pole following his every move. "Doctor Brigid Rivers will be coming in after me. She is a kind woman, and her only interest is to heal. Allow her to look you over once again so as to make sure you did not further injure yourself. I have some things to attend to, but I will soon be back to answer your questions. I truly want to see you happy here Dominic." Orion placed his coat over his arm and turned to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob to address Dom once more. "I know it is quite a lot to ask, but please do not allow your previous encounters to create an inflexible bias against us. All of this was truly unintended and had things been done with the proper protocol you would have never been put in this position. Have a good rest and I will see you in the morning." With that he opened the door and walked away. 'All things considered, he was very nice for a kidnapper.' Dominic thought as he watched the man leave.

The voices started up again, and a few minutes passed before a woman entered through the open door. She was a tall woman, 5'7, and beautiful. She had long light brown in a low ponytail and eyes that were golden hazel. He seemed to have seen a lot of that recently.

"Hello Dominic, my name is Doctor Rivers. I understand that you do not feel comfortable, but would you please put the I.V. stand down so I can help you up onto your bed. You really shouldn't be moving around so much." Doctor Rivers put both hands up in a complaisant manner.

Dominic evaluated her a moment. She was kind and he had no doubt that, even if he wasn't at full strength, he wouldn't be able take her easily. He stood the pole back in its proper place.

"Thank you Dominic."

*

She had been right about the not moving part. Without the adrenaline coursing through his body, Dominic could feel every broken bone and scrape on his frame. His nose had been broken, but was reset in its proper alignment. His ribs, luckily, were just cracked even with the struggle and fall out of bed.

They still hurt like a bitch whenever he tried to take too deep of a breath though. His back stung with road rash from when he had spun to pin Cliff down.

The worst wound he had was the broken scapula from Hale hitting him with a pipe. He couldn't move his right arm without a shooting pain all the way from his wrist to his entire upper back.

That was going to be the biggest obstacle in getting out of this crazy place.

After Orion left, Brigid, or 'Doc Rivers' as she preferred to be called, had helped him into bed since he was too sore to do it on his own. She checked his vitals, put in another I.V. with some light pain medication, tucked him in, and left to go get him food.

'Very much the mother hen, that one.' He thought as he remember what she had sent for him.

Dinner was brought to him on a dolly. It consisted of a Caesar salad, cream soup, cut up steak (most likely so they wouldn't have to give him a knife), garlic mashed potatoes covered in butter, cheese, and bacon, shrimp in garlic butter, crab legs, venison, salmon with a lemon bur blanc sauce, poached lobster in cream sauce, a side of seasoned vegetables, fruit, and for dessert candied walnuts, bread pudding, some sort of warm fluffy sugar-infused bun (which was delicious), and a pudding cup. They had told him they weren't sure what he would like.

Fucking rich people.

When he got up to use the bathroom out in the hall, he saw two men standing outside his door. Guards of some kind. They said they were there to make sure he was safe, but Dom wasn't buying it. They were there to make sure he didn't leave or do something ridiculous like kill himself.

Dominic lay in his bed, putting together the last portion of his plan. 'Ha, let's see them try.'

At one end of the short hall in-between the two rooms were the large bathrooms; a dead end with no windows or vents large enough to crawl out of. On the other side it opened up expanding into a much larger rectangular room. In it were three beds sticking out along one wall just like an emergency room, three doors, one on the left that presumably led to the rest of the facility, and another with a window at the end of the beds which led to an office, next to the exit, and an unknown mystery door. In one bed was Hale, asleep with an I.V. of his own.

Whatever was in his looked to have knocked him out cold.

It took some convincing, a call to Doc Rivers, and the promise of a smoke break, but Dominic was able to get the guards to let him take a walk outside, feigning a mild case of claustrophobia.

They escorted him of course, but he wasn't going to run.

The doors were automatic, and led to a covered paved drive. There was a garage door to the left of the hospital doors and the entrance was to the right. If you didn't pay attention you would miss the tinted sliding doors and you would assume the drive was an entry to an underground parking lot. The small hill to the right led to a gravel drive and curved around the corner. Orion hadn't been lying when he called this place an estate. It looked like a Beverly Hills movie star's summer home.

The massive front lawn was cut in half by a driveway big enough for two cars to drive side by side, with a roundabout at the end in front of the house with a large wolf statue in the center. The howling wolf was standing on a large boulder, two other wolves howling with him on lower rocks. With the water flowing around it looked as if they were standing on rocks in a river. At the end of the drive was a gate. No guards, just a security camera rotating back and forth at ten-second intervals. Like that would stop him. Turning around he had made a loop past the secret hospital entrance and was able to see at least four vehicles, ranging from an Escalade to a Ferrari, parked in a parking area just past the entrance. That was all he could see before being ushered back inside. Apparently they didn't want any of the guests to see him walking around with an I.V. stand and wearing a borrowed pair of black sweats and white t-shirt. Wonderful, there was a rich people party going on.

Once back in his room, Dominic took a better look around. There wasn't anything that could be used as a weapon, but there was the cabinet. Hopefully what he thought was inside would be there.

It was locked with what looked to be a very old lock. Not a problem.

'I guess they just don't know all the things you can do with a decent fork.'

The walk had tired him out, so after a nurse came in and added more of the light pain medication to his bag of fluids, he closed his eyes to get some rest.

It felt like only a few minutes later when he woke up again. In reality, according to the clock on the guest table it had only been an hour. The insomnia wouldn't let his mind shut off for more than that no matter how exhausted or drugged. It was 12:50 in the A.M., no better time to try out his plan. More than likely the adults were still partying, but it would no doubt wind down soon. He needed to act now.

Being as quiet and calm as he could, Dominic sat up Indian style and reached under the cushion of the chair to retrieve his tools.

Along with dinner, they had given him an assortment of silverware, including a tiny delicate fork to get the difficult bits out of the crab shells and smaller pronged forks for his salad and deserts. He had made a mess of the dishes, and they hadn't been worried because they didn't give him anything that could have been used as a weapon, so they hadn't checked if anything was missing.

He proceeded to bend the tiny fork back and forth, but the heart monitor on his finger was in the way. Looking at the monitor, he reached down and unplugged it. They had turned off the sensor for when his heart was within normal rhythm, so there was no sudden silence that someone would notice. With that fixed, he again began bending the head around until the tiny flat piece of metal came off, leaving the stem. He inspected it, making sure it would be thin enough before putting it on a napkin on the portable table, then grabbed the fork with the smallest prongs and bent one back using the edge of the guest table as leverage.

Sliding off the bed, he paranoidly flipped over the soft slippers they had given him along with the new clothing so that the felt side was down, bending the rubber heel backwards so he could slip his feet in and tip-toed to the door. As he moved, he felt a tug. The I.V. was still in his arm, so he picked up the stand and carried it with him, assuring that the wheels wouldn't squeak. He left the lights off so they would think he was still asleep. The light from under the door was just enough to guide him.

He closed his eyes and listened. The men were still out there, talking about the guests and playing what sounded like a card game. Who they saw that night, old friends they recognized, the hottest ones they wanted to get into bed. They were plenty distracted.

Still not wanting to risk discovery, he very carefully moved to the cabinet and slid the makeshift picking tools into the lock. It was a tight fit, but it was all he had. It was difficult holding the piece with his right hand because moving that arm was extremely painful, but he could manage as long as he didn't move it too fast.

Dominic began praying again, and set to work.

With the clumsy tools, it took longer than it would have Jarod or even Garrett to get the lock undone, but after one more turn, there was a barely audible rotating sound of the latch coming undone. He almost cried in excitement.

"Did you hear that?" Dominic froze. How could they have heard that? He barely heard it!

There was a snort from down the hall, Hale shifting in his sleep.

A pause. "Oh don't be so jumpy. The human is asleep. Relax, Alpha Orion put us on this 'cause he knew we could handle it."

"I still don't get why he would put two Thetas on this guy. He took down Hale AND Cliff. Broke their bones and almost got away! Have you ever heard of a human taking down a wolf before? I haven't. So why doesn't he have Thunder and Storm on him instead of us?"

"You know why, dumb ass. Your move. He needs all the Betas keeping an eye on everyone upstairs. That many Alphas in one room and there is bound to be at least one good fight. Just go already! Doc Rivers said the sedation will work up to six hours on a human his size, she double checked and everything. Relax its going to be a slow night."

Dominic hoped not. These people really were nuts.

There was no squeak as the cabinet door opened. Inside there was exactly what he had hoped for.

Inside were syringes filled with all kinds of tranquilizers, pain killers, and any kind of medication that would be needed for a critical patient within the first hour of their arrival. Stuff like this would usually be locked away in specially designed lock boxes that could be rolled around with coded locks and all kinds of extra supplies. With it being such a small facility they didn't need to have a box to wheel around, they just kept it all in one stationary location.

Picking up one syringe at a time, he lowered it into the light and read the labels.

'Damn, what are they trying to do? Kill someone?' Most of the syringes were high dose tranquilizers. The kind of stuff that could put a couple horses down no problem. Why would they need such high doses? They really were crazy ass rich people.

After some searching, he struck gold. Tranquilizer in a form similar to an EpiPen meant for when a patient was beyond reason and uncontrollable. The plan just got a whole lot easier. Dominic crept back to his bed, I.V. stand in hand. Once sitting back on the fluffy mattress (rich people have all the nice things) he gently lifted the I.V. stand and laid it across his lap, removing the fluid bag. The bottom and top both unscrewed off, so wrapping a portion of blanket around the base to quiet any noise, he began twisting. It was slow work, but soon he had a short portion of the center pole separated and the two bigger pieces on the bed at his feet. The guards were still talking and playing cards.

Now the fun part. Dom gently grabbed the butterfly portion of his needle and tugged. He bit down hard on his lip so as not to make a sound. When it was out, he flexed and removed the sharp tube of metal and placed it on the table along with the rest of his tools. No point of losing track of something and paying for it later. He then grabbed the pole, syringe, and tubing and began combining the three together in a spear-like fashion. Without having to worry about a plunger, all he had to do was make sure the pen didn't slip when pushed against a leg.