Krissy

I pulled into my attached garage, shutting off the engine as the garage door slid down into place, trapping me in with the wolf.

Exiting the relative safety of the cab, I made my movements as quick, quiet and purposeful as I could, for fear that it might rouse the beast before I had a chance to examine its injuries. I kept a small kit of medical supplies for emergencies stashed on one of the shelves. I grabbed it, walked around to drop the tailgate…and hesitated. That was one big-ass wolf, one that was undoubtedly in a lot of pain. If I climbed up next to it and started poking and prodding, it could end up the last thing I ever do.

I've gone this far.

Taking an even, calming breath, I dropped the tailgate and lugged myself over to the lupine's side. It was still breathing, more evenly now. I managed to keep my hand steady as I reached out to stroke its ruddy fur. It felt softer than I would have guessed. Upon closer observation, the cuts in the wolf's skin were scabbed over as if they were a day old instead of less than an hour. Had it been prey to repeated abuse? Trapped perhaps? But why then was I not finding a single injury that looked fresh? After a fall like that, some of these older wounds would surely have reopened, at the very least.

The wolf whined and I held my breath. My hand froze where it rested on the wolf's flank.

That's when it kicked in, the mojo I had with all my pet clients.

It was more intense than it had ever been before. It wasn't just a general sense that something was wrong, I could physically feel through my touch what the wolf's injuries were. Cuts and bruises (obviously), three cracked ribs, a minor skull fracture and the worst of it was he—yeah, I could tell it was male now—he had a broken right femur. Snapped in half like a pencil. He was very lucky he didn't have a spinal injury.

Stranger than my boost in perception, I could tell wolfie was already healing at an impossible rate. That posed a problem. His broken leg was out of alignment, if it wasn't set right it wouldn't heal properly and at this rate I didn't have much time to act.

Wolfie whined again. Shit, he was starting to wake up.

I dug into my kit and pulled out a syringe and a sedative. I did some quick mental math as I drew some of the liquid through the needle's tip, hoping it would be enough to keep the wolf knocked out for a little longer.

Sorry big fella, don't need you snapping at me while I save your leg.

Just when I was about to administer the shot, the wolf's eyes popped open and he flipped over. There was a flash of shiny white canines as he snapped his jaws in my direction. I yelped and jerked backwards, dropping the syringe, but I was pinned between the wolf and the wall of the truck bed. I should have known better than to make eye contact with a wild animal, yet I was unable to look away.

The wolf bared his fangs, snarling…and stopped. Something like recognition registered in his eyes. His mouth closed and he moved back. The air around his body shimmered and fur melted away to caramel flesh.

A familiar and very naked man sat in front of me.

JASE?!

Jase

The scent of the sedative registered in my brain and I remembered Mort and Malcolm. At first I saw only red, ready to fight. But then the wondrous aroma of the four seasons makes its way past my rage and I see Krissy, paralyzed and staring at me.

My wolf retreated, corralled by her fear, I shifted and those brilliant green eyes looked at me with disbelief. She tried to speak, managing nothing more than a few sputtering sounds. The fear appeared to be gone, however confusion remained. As my own pulse slowed, hers remained heightened, her breath still heaved like there was a weight on her chest. It seemed as though she hadn't known I was a shifter, most likely didn't know she'd been amongst a pack in the last twenty-four hours. Guess it was time to enlighten her and figure out where that left us later.

I moved to offer her a reassuring touch but winced when my body rebelled painfully in several places at once.

The physician took over when she saw me recoil, confusion turning first to concern, then determination, on her face. When her hand came up to my shoulder I was thankful she was ignoring my nudity. Her close proximity caused an involuntary lustful reaction.

At least one appendage was in working order.

"Your leg," she fussed.

I covered her hand on my shoulder with mine, shaking my head. "It's fine. I heal really fast."

She shook her head emphatically in return. "No, no, I understand that. I can feel it happening. That's the problem. We need to reset the bone properly. If we don't you could end up with a limp or nerve damage or worse."

I was skeptical. There was also no way I was going to drop the topic of how it was she could feel my injuries healing.

She looked up at me pleadingly. "Please. If I don't set it now we'd have to re-brake it."

I studied her for a couple of heartbeats and then conceded. "What do you need me to do?"

She instructed me to brace myself against the truck so I reached back and gripped the roof of the truck cab as she rearranged herself to sit at my side with her legs stretched in front of her, facing me. Then she slowly wrapped her left arm under my right leg at the knee and shimmied forward to both bend her knees and brace her feet up against the truck beside me. She looked at me carefully.

"It's going to be a sharp tug and twist and it's going to hurt like hell. It's important you keep still, understand?"

My wolf bristled at a female bossing him around but in this moment I thought it was sexy as fuck. I didn't hide the smirk as I nodded to the doc.

Krissy took a deep breath. "Three, two, one—"

A snarl escaped my throat as a new shock of pain ripped through me. By the way Krissy tensed I guessed my eyes may have turned wolf for a second as well. And I was pretty sure I left indentations in the truck top afterwards. But the pain was gone as fast as it had come and I had to admit it felt like it was healing a lot better after.

Krissy's eyes glanced away from my grateful face, right at my rigid dick next to her arm. She blanched, quick to untangle herself from me and scoot back. She hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her body.

I looked at her, apologetic, inwardly cursing my wolf. "I'm sorry. You just seem to have that effect on me."

"You're a werewolf." Her voice was soft and to the point.

I let my face go blank. "A wolf shifter. Yes."

"Is that why someone tried to kill you?"

I scowled at Malcolm's face in my head. "They weren't trying to kill me. It wasn't an accident either." I told her, anticipating her next question. Then I had a question of my own. "How did you find me?"

She frowned. "You found me. You fell into my truck. That wasn't on purpose?"

I shook my head. "I was just trying to get away. I let myself fall from a cliff."

Her eyes widened. "I saw two people. What did they want from—"

I pulled her to me in a flash, forcing her to straddle my legs. I was ignoring her question and the alarm in her face. "Did they see you? Could you have been followed home?!"

"No! Jase!"

The fear was enough to force me back. I eased my grip but couldn't bring myself to let go. Instead I started to rub my thumbs where they rested on her arms, murmuring another apology.

"What do they want with you?" Krissy repeated. "Jase, who were they?"

"Shifters."

"Like you?"

I shook my head no. "Not wolves."

She waited for me to elaborate.

"Someone is out there, someone with a twisted plan to create their idea of the perfect race of shifters, we think. He's paying shifters to kidnap other shifters for their DNA…and other things."

Krissy looked horrified. "Why don't you go to the police?"

I laughed bitterly. "Even if they knew about us they couldn't help. And don't you even think about saying anything. Humans CANNOT know about us."

Confusion returned to her eyes as she caught the inflection in my voice. "Us?"

She knew I wasn't merely referring to shifters in the general sense of out in the world.

Right. Here we go.

"Krissy, where is the male that marked you as his mate?"

"Come again?"

"The cougar shifter that gave you the mating bite, where did he go?"

The frown creasing Krissy's forehead slowly lifted as she put pieces of something together in her head. Her hands moved to grip the hem of her shirt and she shakily lifted it, exposing her waist.

Just above her right hip was a faint scar. Bite marks.

Her voice was faraway. "I got lost in the woods, when I was four. I was attacked by a mountain lion."

My eyes darted from the scar to her face. "Four years old?!"

The whole reason it was a mating bite was because a unique serum coated a shifter's teeth while mating, at a reasonable post-pubescent age. There was no way Krissy should have been thought of as a fated mate at four years old!

"What happened to the lion?"

She let the shirt drop back down. "Uh, t-the park rangers, they were looking for me. Heard my cries. They…they shot him."

"In the head?"

Krissy nodded.

"And the body stayed a cougar? Didn't turn into a man?"

Krissy shook her head. "That's not something anyone would forget."

"You would if a leech wanted you to." I muttered.

"A what?"

"Vampire."

Krissy blinked. "Oh. Of course there are vampires."

"The cougar must have been moon mad. He didn't even realize he was marking a child." It was like nothing I'd ever heard of happening before, but it was the most plausible explanation.

My wolf was elated at the revelation. To him it meant Krissy was all his to claim properly.

But how could I consider taking a mate with a bounty on my head?

I had to leave her the moment I was sure she wasn't in any danger.

A new kind of pain speared through me.

But I 'm here, next to her, for now.

Krissy

Jase was looking at me strangely. Actually he wasn't even really looking at me, more like through me, like he was lost in thought.

"What's moon mad?" I asked to try to rouse him.

It worked, his eyes refocused on me. "If an alpha doesn't find his mate, he'll go wild, shift into animal form and remain that way permanently." Jase reached out and tucked a hair behind my ear, as if he just needed to touch me as he broached the subject. "He'll lose his humanity. Then it's up to the pack to take care of him. They'd have to kill him."

"The pack?"

Jase was still caressing my face, stirring up newly familiar embers. "Mmhmm. Most shifters either remain solitary or stick to their own kind. Wolves run in packs."

The wheels started turning. "Tank? The other bouncers?"

Jase smiled lightly. "All wolf shifters."

A movement against my leg reminded me Jase was both naked and inexplicably turned on. Though he still had me in his grasp, he let me go when I awkwardly moved out of his lap and climbed down from the back of the truck. I could feel his eyes on me once again. He watched as I rummaged through a laundry basket on my dryer and came back to the side of the truck holding up a pair of scrub bottoms.

"I wash the technician's scrubs too. She's a little more full figured. I doubt they'll be long enough in the leg but you wont need to tie them up at the waist like I would. They'll be snug but they'll cover you."

Yeah, that smile he flung at me as he accepted the fabric was definitely wolfish.

"Thanks, Doc."

I blushed. "So should it take your femur long to mend? I mean, I know how long it would take a normal person, or rather, normal wolf to heal. Werewolves, however, are a mystery."

Jase thought about it as he carefully examined his right leg. "A couple hours, I think. Couldn't you just use that mojo of yours on it?"

I smirked at the use of the word mojo. "It doesn't work like that." Then I frowned. "I don't think."

Jase's face turned scrutinizing. "What are you hiding, Krissy?"

"What? Hiding?"

"You're something other than human."

I narrowed my gaze on him. "Am I? Like what?"

Jase's expression was almost sad somehow. "You smell like shifter."

"You mean like the cougar that bit me." I assumed.

Jase shook his head. "No, your scent isn't like any shifter I've ever come across. No one else in the pack recognizes it either."

Not knowing how to respond, I had a different question. "Is that why you're telling me about shifters, because you think I am one? Because humans aren't supposed to know about you?"

Jase merely shrugged.

I let out an exasperated sigh. "I've never turned into an animal, Jase."

"Not all shifters can shift. Not anymore." He searched for the right words. "We're not supposed to tell humans what we are, but shifters have mated with humans. Having only one shifter parent leaves the chance of a shifter kid at fifty-fifty. Truthfully there aren't that many shifters left out there."

I offered him a sympathetic face. "You think maybe that's why this loony guy is trying to make shifters?"

Jase rubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know. Maybe."

Suddenly very tired and a little uneasy, I mirrored his action, adding a deep breath. "Listen, I could really use a drink and something to eat. Think you could sit still and let your body heal here for a bit? I promise to bring you something, anything you want."

Jase smiled ruefully. "Sure. Just remember I'm a carnivore. And can I ask one more favour?"

I nodded, waited.

"Can I borrow your phone? I need to warn the pack about the shifters that did this. Let them know I'm okay."

When I hesitated he added. "I promise to keep you out of the conversation. At least for now. If I ask for latitude, Garrett won't push."

I relented and fished my cellphone out of my bag, handing it to him. I noticed he reached his hand out far enough that his fingers "accidentally" stroked along the back of my hand when he took the device, sending delicate tingles up my arm.

Must be a shifter thing.