Heart of the Wolf (6 page)

Numb and stiff, Bella couldn’t even move to put on the jacket that the man had tossed to her. Still, the fleece helped warm her.

The men ran across the pen to the moat from the shorter concrete wall on the opposite side. “Watch my back, Randolph, in case Big Red or Rosa get any ideas. If either injured the woman, they may still feel threatened.”

“Rosa must be sleeping in her den. Big Red’s sitting in the corner watching us.”

“Keep an eye on him. I’ll lift the woman to you.”

He sat at the edge of the moat, turned, and eased himself down. When his feet hit the ground, he whipped around and ran to her. “Are you hurt?”

Trembling so hard that her teeth chattered, she couldn’t croak a word.

He ran his flashlight over her and then helped her into his jacket. “She doesn’t appear to be injured, but she’s half frozen.” He covered her lap with the other jacket. “She’s got hypothermia really bad.” Lifting her off the rough pavement, he carried her to the older man, who was leaning down with his arms outstretched.

With the two men’s heavy jackets covering her, her body warmed some while she lay on the rough concrete above the moat, yet she still shivered out of control, craved sleep, and could barely focus on much of anything.

Vaguely, she worried about being caught, about freeing herself from her current predicament, about hiding before Volan found her.

Suddenly, more shouts erupted and running footsteps headed toward the patron’s safety railing across the moat.

“Is she injured?” Thompson hollered from the iron fence.

“It appears she’s just hypothermic,” Mack shouted back. “Her pulse is awfully slow. She has some scratches but doesn’t appear to have been bitten or to have broken any bones.”

Mack rubbed her hand while Randolph wrapped his coat around her legs. The door squeaked open, and she turned her head slightly when blond-bearded Thompson dashed into the pen, his blue eyes worried.

Yanking off his coat, he laid it over her. He touched her cheek with clinical concern. “Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

She stared at him, hearing the question and vaguely remembering that he’d shot her with a tranquilizer and incarcerated her here.
That’s
how she’d gotten in here. The men’s faces wavered in front of her, and she blinked her eyes slowly, trying to focus.

“What’s your name?” He turned to Mack. “Has she spoken at all?”

“We heard her screaming and yelling. By the time we located her, she was crouched against the wall of the moat and hasn’t said a word. She’s barely conscious.”

“The ambulance is on its way,” Thompson said. “What about the wolves?”

“Big Red’s sitting over there watching. Rosa must be sleeping in the den,” Randolph said.

Thompson crouched down in front of her and touched her wrist. “Miss, what’s your name? What happened?”

More flashlights wavered in the night. More men were shouting, issuing directions to the wolves’ pen. Bella blinked when two policemen in their blue uniforms hurried into the pen; then she closed her eyes, wondering how she was going to extract herself from this mess.

“What happened here, Mr. Thompson?” one of the policemen asked.

Thompson explained all he knew and then reached over and held Bella’s hand. “She’s ice-cold.”

The men piled two more coats on top of her.

“Most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in the fifteen years I’ve been a night watchman,” Randolph said.

“Damn,” Mack said, tightening his grip on Bella’s other hand. “Here come the media.”

Before Devlyn could step on the gas and leave the cop behind in the dust, Argos grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

The policeman spoke into his radio. “You’ve got what?” Then he leaned into the open SUV window and said to Devlyn, “Got another call. Slow it down, will you, bud?”

“Yes, sir,” Devlyn said, as amicably as he could. His hands still clutched the steering wheel with a death grip.

The policeman nodded and then hurried back to his car, shouting to the other officer, “Problem at the zoo. You’re never going to believe this.”

Devlyn glanced at Argos, whose tanned face had turned gray.

When Devlyn finally reached the zoo’s main entrance, he shut off his headlights and drove into the zoo’s lower parking lot. But the sight of the police cars’ and an ambulance’s flashing lights washing the area near the zoo’s entrance in a prism of color sent a splinter of ice into his heart. She would live. The cold or some animal’s injury — if minor enough — wouldn’t kill her, but how in the hell was he to secret her away?

“When the ambulance leaves, follow them to the hospital,” Argos said, as if reading Devlyn’s mind. “We can more easily slip her out of there than we could have here.”

Sitting in the dark, like when the pack went on a hunt, they waited quietly for their prey to appear. The thought of hunting Bella sent a surge of heat through his system, a longing he had no business feeling, a lustful desire for her he could never fulfill.

The paramedics rolled her out to the ambulance; her red hair spilled over the stretcher, the blankets burying her under the covers. Devlyn could only imagine how close to death she’d come. His anger boiled deep inside. How could she be so foolish as to leave the pack like she did? This is the kind of trouble she’d get in for it. She needed a pack leader to keep her in line. No, not the pack leader...
him.

Despite the knowledge that she didn’t want him, or any of his kind, she was tied to him — bound together not only by the fire that killed her family, but by something deeper, more primal. He sought to rise above the darkness that filled him with wanting — with the soul-wrenching yearning for the little red wolf. But part of him wouldn’t submit.

Argos cleared his gravelly throat. “We’ll all go into the hospital and try to create some distraction so that we can remove her. Until then, I’ll let you find out where she is and how serious her injuries are. If she’s too bad, we may have to let her stay overnight and take her out sometime after that.”

Still brooding over the circumstances of her captivity, Devlyn had every intention of moving her tonight. Their own healers could take care of her much better than the human doctors could because of the many years they’d practiced medicine. Devlyn and his packmates had to remove her before anyone discovered too much about her. But it was more than that. He wanted to hold her tightly in his grasp again, to reassure himself that she was safe in his care. He wouldn’t wait a second longer than necessary.

They followed the string of police cars escorting the ambulance to the hospital, their blue and red lights flashing against the blackness. The drive seemed interminable. But finally the ambulance pulled into the brightly illuminated emergency entrance, and Devlyn veered away from the circus of police cars following in the ambulance’s wake. Seeing the main entrance, he parked near the doors; the lot was fairly empty because of the lateness of the hour.

Before he could jerk his door open, Devlyn spied Henry Thompson headed for the emergency room doors, his stride quick and determined.

“Damn it to hell,” Devlyn swore under his breath.

He hated for any man or
lupus garou
to get close to Bella, but especially some idiot who was in love with wolves. Would Bella mistake Thompson’s wanting to help wolves with desiring to have her?

Devlyn shook his head and fisted his hands, still unable to understand what she could see in human males. Yet he had every intention of making her realize how mealy a human male was, how lame and weak and fearful their kind was, and, worse, how dangerous they could be.

“What’s wrong?” Argos asked, his voice harsh with worry.

Devlyn motioned with his head toward zoo man Thompson. “He’s the one I talked to about removing Rosa from the zoo. He’s going to wonder what the hell I’m doing here.”

Argos watched Thompson disappear inside the hospital and then let out his breath. “Then you can stay in the vehicle.”

Devlyn jerked his door open. “Like hell I am.”

Chapter Three

The smell of antiseptics wafted in the room, and the air conditioner poured out of the vents, intent on putting patients into a deep freeze, Bella was certain. Feigning sleep, she lay quietly in the hospital bed, the highly starched sheets scratchy against her exposed backside where the gown opened up. The white woolen blankets, piled four or five high fresh out of a blanket warmer, buried her, raising her internal temperature. But the knowledge that she wasn’t safe yet chilled her all over again.

The room remained quiet, all except for the sound of hearts beating nearby. once she was hooked up to the I.V., the medicine whooshing through her veins, heating her blood, the nurse left the room. But Thompson and the doctor stood silently watching her.

“Does she have any injuries, Doctor?” Thompson finally asked.

“Just hypothermia. As low as her temperature was, it’s a good thing your staff found her when they did. Another couple of degrees drop and she wouldn’t have survived. She hasn’t revived yet and it might be a while before she comes to, but as soon as she does, you can speak with her. But not too long. She needs to rest. However, most likely she’ll be incoherent at first — effects of prolonged hypothermia.”

“Thanks, Doctor. I’ll only speak to her for a moment.”

She didn’t believe him for an instant. The way Thompson had hunted her in the woods was reminiscent of a bull dog, determined, dependable to a fault, not someone easily thwarted.

Footfall sounded, moving across the room and out the door. The doctor?

His pungent cologne preceding him, Thompson moved closer to the bed. Why did human males wear such gaudy-smelling perfumes? Their own musky scent smelled so much more enticing.

Taking a deep breath, she was glad her kind’s unique DNA structure shifted with the change — perfectly normal wolf DNA when they wore the wolf coat, and human DNA when they turned back into their
homo sapiens
form. Thompson touched her hair, sending a curl of warmth through her. The toasty, thin blankets helped, but his touch caused a different kind of heat, the kind that stirred her longing to mate.

“Miss.” Thompson’s voice was deep, rugged, and concerned. He reminded her of a mountain man she’d once met, caring the same for nature’s habitat, the same aura of wildness surrounding him, except that the mountain man wanted to be left alone with no human contact. Thompson was different.

“Miss,” he said again.

She didn’t respond. This wasn’t the time or place to seduce him. Later she’d work her charms on him. He cared for Rosa. Wouldn’t he care for the human side of her, too?

His fingers touched her cheek and she craved opening her eyes to see the expression in his gaze. Was it longing? Lustful? Did she intrigue him a little?

“Can you tell me what happened to you?”

The sound of boots tromping toward the room caught her attention. Two men entered. She concentrated on the smell of them, different colognes, just as heavy, just as nauseating.

“Officers,” Thompson said.

Her heart rate shifted to higher gear.

“Mr. Thompson,” one of the policemen said. “Has she come to?”

“Not yet. The doctor said it might be awhile.” A chair slid over to the bed.

Great.
She had a whole mess of observers, like at the zoo.

“What do you think happened?” one of the policemen asked.

“No telling, but I’m not leaving until I know. Thanks, by the way, for keeping the media out of it for the moment,” Thompson said.

“You’re welcome. We might have an attempted rape or even an attempted murder case here. Don’t need the media involved quite yet. On the other hand, she might be mentally ill.”

She fought making a face at them.

“I considered that.” Thompson grasped her wrist, the strength of his touch spiraling through her like a gigantic heated wave. “Pulse is... well, a little rapid, but definitely better than nearly nonexistent. I thought she was too far gone there for a while.”

A cell phone jingled in close proximity to Thompson. She held her breath, fearful that his staff would inform him someone had stolen Rosa from the wolves’ pen.

“Thompson here,” he said.

Too much silence followed. The seconds lingered like minutes, yet Thompson didn’t speak a word. The suspense was killing her. When no one conversed further, she opened her eyes. Thompson stared at her with raw disbelief.

She swallowed hard, the moisture in her throat all but gone.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “The little lady just came to. I’ll ask her where Rosa is.”

The hardness in his face and the grim set of his mouth and jaw indicated losing Rosa had angered him.
Good.
Then if he wanted her back, he could promise his undying love to her and —

“Call you right back when I have some answers.” He snapped his phone shut and then furrowed his brow. “What were you doing in the wolves’ pen?”

Gone were the kid gloves.

What the hell was she supposed to say? Her mind was slightly muddled still and any fabrications she might have conjured up weren’t coming to her readily.

Wondering what the police officers’ take was on the situation and wanting to avoid Thompson’s steely-eyed glower, she glanced over at them. Both mid-thirties, one taller than the other with questioning green eyes, both dark brown-haired.