Thinking back, I knew I’d been acting weird from the moment I smelled the blood. It was like a switch had been flipped in my head. “I can’t explain it. I feel strange, so does my wolf. I just need to make sure she’s all right.”
“Dude,” Sebastian said, frowning deeply. “You’re talking like you found your fated mate or something.”
I looked down and saw that I’d taken her hand again. Even Doc was glancing over at me suspiciously. What Sebastian said couldn’t be true. The woman was human. It wasn’t possible for a shifter to be fated to a human.
I smelled the air again, and there was something else in her blood. Something that wasn’t entirely human. A hint of something else.
Fear and curiosity filled me. I didn’t say anything else. Instead I watched Doc work, and wondered who and what this strange woman was.
MADDY
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a massive whitish blur. Blinking, my vision slowly cleared and I realized it was the ceiling. My whole body felt heavy, like a thick wet blanket was holding me down. My head felt groggier than usual. I was typically a morning person, but it was like my brain was trying to swim out of a deep pool of water.
Still, it was nice to be awake. The dream I’d had was not something I wanted to experience anymore. All those weird shifters beating the shit out of me. Why had I dreamed something so fucked up?
My thoughts stopped on a dime. The ceiling didn’t look right. It was smooth, cream-colored drywall. My house had awful, bright-white popcorn ceilings. I’d been thinking of scraping it all off for more than a year, but hadn’t gotten around to it. My heart rate spiked the second I realized I wasn’t home. Where the fuck was I?
Trying to lift my arms, I found they weren’t held down by a blanket like I thought, but were still super heavy. My mind cleared a bit, and I remembered my dream hadn’t been a dream. That it had all really happened. Those guys had come back into the bar. They had attacked me. Was I…had they taken me back to their place? Was that where I was? Alarm set it-a thick, unflinching panic.
A tiny moan escaped my lips, but I wasn’t able to form words. My head was starting to throb, too.
Before I could do anything else, a man in a white doctor’s coat leaned over the bed. He glanced down at me and lifted one of my eyelids with a thumb, opening the eye much further than I wanted. He flashed a penlight into the eye twice. It felt like someone had shoved an icepick into my brain. He was a shifter. I could feel the strange electric buzz on my skin where he touched me. It was one of the reactions I always had when I was near one. I’d never known anyone else who reacted that way, but it was the way I knew for sure. There was also that strange sense of otherness they had that I couldn’t put a finger on.
The realization made me even more scared. He was a shifter, which meant the fuckers who had tried to kill me really had kidnapped me. I must be in one of their complexes. A lot of shifter packs had their own doctors. Those who didn’t had shifter doctors who worked in regions and made house calls. At least, that’s what I’d heard.
My hammering heart was like a bass drum beating away in my chest. I moved my jaw and thought I could finally manage to speak.
“Whhh.” The first sound I made was like a whisper of air, nothing else. He was checking my other eye with the flashlight. I swallowed and tried again. “What’s…happening? Who are you?”
He clicked off the penlight and straightened. “My name is Doctor Carter. I’m the doctor for the Lorenzo wolf pack. You’re in my clinic.”
I coughed and my vision went blurry for a second. I was worried I would pass out, but I got myself under control. “So, you guys are the ones who attacked me?”
He frowned in surprise. “What? No, no, no. You misunderstand. You were attacked by a group of unknown shifters, yes, but that wasn’t the Lorenzo pack. The Lorenzo alpha and his friends interrupted the attack and chased off the perpetrators. They probably saved your life.”
With each moment that went by, my head cleared a little more and I was able to think. One thing he said made no sense. “If I was that bad off, why didn’t you take me to a real hospital?”
Doctor Carter shrugged. “I had all the equipment here to fix you up. Some stitches and a pint of blood? Another IV for fluid and a heavy dose of pain meds? All here. Now, as for why they chose to call me first and not 911? That’s something you’ll have to ask Nico.”
“Who’s Nico?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mention his name before. Nicolas Lorenzo, the alpha of the Lorenzo pack. He’s the one who helped rescue you.”
I struggled to slide my arms underneath me, trying to lift myself off the bed. I needed to get out of here. Abi was probably worried sick about me. Had they locked up the bar? Jesus, all the money in the register could be sitting there for anyone. I sat up, and the whole room seemed to tilt sideways. Overcome with nausea, I lay back down, gingerly resting my head back on the pillows.
“Easy there,” Carter said. “You aren’t going anywhere. The stab wounds on your sides were fairly deep. Nothing major, but it took a few stitches to fix. You’ve got a pretty good concussion, too. You’ll be out of commission for a couple of days at least. I need to keep an eye on you until I’m sure everything is okay up there,” he said, nodding toward my head.
“But my business??”
“Nico has quite a bit of pull around here. I’m sure if he took the time to bring you to me, he’d have someone make sure the bar they found you in is fine. Don’t worry about that.”
I sighed, exhaustion rolling across my body. I was in no condition to go anywhere, but it was hard to admit. I looked at the doctor and slowly shook my head. “Why did those guys attack me? I never did anything to them.”
The penlight disappeared into his chest pocket. “That, I’m afraid, is the million-dollar question we’ve all been asking.” He paused. “How do you feel? Pain-wise?”
I was honest. “Pretty bad. My sides hurt.”
“Okay. I’ll have my nurse get you another Vicodin, but a smaller dose than last time. I don’t want you getting dependent.”
I nodded, and he left the room. I didn’t feel like I was in danger. There was no way to know for sure if he was telling the truth, but it felt like he was being honest.
A nurse came in a few minutes later with a small plastic cup. I took the small pill from the cup. As soon as I swallowed, I realized that it might not have been the smartest idea, but it was too late. Plus, the pain in my sides was getting worse by the second. The nurse left without a word, and I lay there. Ten minutes later, the drug kicked in. It was like someone was pouring warm honey all over my body. My eyes fluttered shut, and I drifted into sleep.
More Kickass Werewolf Reads
Dive into our collection of free werewolf romance novels—where fierce Alphas, daring heroines, and heart-stopping twists await. Every story burns with forbidden desire, loyalty, and destiny. Don’t wait—here’s a world where love bites hard and nothing is stronger than the call of the mate.
Leave a Reply