“She’s alive. She’s strong. She fought him off of her. She fought hard. There was no evidence that she was raped, thanks to her determination. Because you told me you had sex with her last night, I gave her the more advanced pregnancy test, but it hasn’t been twenty-four hours. Her body is flooded with hormones, so we treated her as if she were pregnant. I’ll give her another test tomorrow, because if she’s pregnant that will determine the pain medications we can give her.”

Elijah shook his head and took a deep breath to let it out. Of course she could be pregnant. With her leopard rising, both the cat and the human were fertile at the same time. He’d been so out of control he hadn’t thought about anything but being inside of her.

“She has four cracked ribs and another one fractured,” Doc continued. “The laceration on her hip and leg is the worst. It took us hours to close that one. Michelle, a friend of mine, is an amazing plastic surgeon. She spent a long time on Siena’s face as well as all other surface closings. The four rake marks on her back are deep, and she’s going to experience pain for a long while. She was lucky. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to punish her, but he didn’t want to kill her.”

“Her leopard didn’t accept his,” Elijah guessed.

“I would say that’s what happened,” Doc agreed. “The puncture wounds indicate he tried to cement a relationship. The fact that the male leopard raked her like that, it wasn’t a marking, it was a punishment, a leopard out of control when he’s denied what he wants.” Doc’s dark eyes pierced Elijah directly. “Her leopard was already bonded to yours, yet there was no mark on her from you.”

That wasn’t exactly true and Elijah knew it. He had marked her with his teeth, with his hands. His marks were all over her and probably deep inside as well.

“What are you not telling us?” Elijah prompted.

“Infection is bound to set in,” Doc said. “We have to anticipate that. We flooded the wounds with antibiotics, but this is a cat and those lacerations are deep. Very deep. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“You’re not happy,” Jake observed.

Doc sighed. “She lost a lot of blood. We gave her transfusions and we’ll blast her with a cocktail of intravenous antibiotics, but you need to be prepared.” He stood for a moment, head down, and then he looked up, his eyes meeting Elijah’s.

For the first time Elijah could see the leopard in him. That fierce nature.

“Whoever did this to her needs to be . . . eradicated. Gone. For all time. It’s not right. She’s a young girl. I’ve never been so angry in my life.”