Ryan turned to Jake. “Where are Marilee and Becky now? They’re both sick with this crud. If they’ve got it, we don’t want them returning to their pack and carrying the virus there.”
“What if they brought it from their pack?” Jake jerked his phone out of its pouch and punched in a number. “Bertha? This is Jake. Marilee and Becky were staying at your bed and breakfast, right?” He frowned and then stared at Ryan. “Hell. All right. I’ll tell Darien and give Ryan the word.”
Jake hung up and punched another button.
“Darien,” he sighed. “We’ve got more trouble.”
Carol finished removing the bullet from the third wounded man, although concentrating had become an effort as soon as Ryan and Jake left the operating room to discuss some new trouble with Darien in private.
Matthew said, “Wonder what else is going on.”
Carol took a deep breath. “Nothing good, we can be sure.”
“You did it with him, didn’t you?”
She glanced up from stitching the man’s wound closed. Matthew looked slightly annoyed, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “If you mean Ryan and I are mated, yes.”
“He’ll expect you to leave right away. To move to Green Valley. To take care of his people.”
“I’m staying here until we resolve this.” Beyond that, she hadn’t really thought of leaving. Just that she’d be Ryan’s mate. Why hadn’t she even considered it? Did they have a hospital in Green Valley? Certainly not one that was run by werewolves, she imagined. Would she be able to get a position? Should she even try, considering her shifting problem?
She ground her teeth and sighed. “Like you heard Jake say, if we’re all infected because we’ve been exposed to this, we can’t go spreading it to other packs.” She figured that went without saying.
“He won’t think that, Carol. He’s a pack leader. His place is with his pack. He’ll want to be there in case this hits his people. His sister and his aunt are there. Family takes priority. You wait. If one case of this sickness hits Green Valley, he’ll want to drag you back there pronto.”
She finished with her patient and was about to reply that Ryan wouldn’t be that way when Nurse Charlotte came in for her work shift. Jake accompanied her, but Ryan wasn’t with them.
Carol had a bad feeling about that.
Charlotte sighed heavily. “Looks like we have an epidemic of our kind getting sick and then not being able to shift back to their human forms. Now the humans think the wolves are invading Silver Town and the surrounding area. So they’re taking up guns to get rid of the menace.”
Jake shook his head. “Five men have already been arrested and thrown in the slammer. One said something about Darien being a wolf lover, and Darien just smiled in a sinister way. None have lawyers, so the court will appoint them.” Jake gave an evil smile.
“All werewolf lawyers. They’ll get the maximum fine—$20,000—five years suspended hunting license, and sixty days in jail for harassing wildlife on private property, carrying loaded weapons in a vehicle without a permit, firing across a road, and anything else witnesses will attest to.”
“Lupus garou witnesses,” Carol said, half commenting, half questioning.
“Exactly. Silver Town is werewolf run, and we plan to keep it that way.”
Carol chewed on her bottom lip and rubbed her arms. “Someone needs to take care of Doc Weber and watch him around the clock.”
“I’ll do it,” Charlotte said. “You run along now. My shift. You’ve already worked yours and more hours than you ought to have.”
“Thanks, Charlotte. Hopefully you’ll have a quiet night.” Carol left the hospital with Jake, flanked by Mervin and Christian. She expected Ryan to be waiting outside the operating room, but he wasn’t.
“Where’s Ryan?”
“He and the sheriff had to question Marilee and Becky at the bed and breakfast,” Jake said as he walked her to his truck. “When I called Bertha to learn if the women’s pack members were sick, she said a man had infected the two women to get back at Darien. Only now the man won’t give them the cure. This isn’t just a normal virus.”
“It’s not just a mutation of some sort that affects our people?” Carol’s head spun with the ramifications. “Some sick bastard bioengineered this?”
“Yeah, and then Miller gave it to them to infect our pack. Connor paid the lupus garou scientist to come up with the plague. Becky and Marilee wanted to start their own businesses, and Connor was going to give them a hefty sum for carrying the plague to our gathering. The only satisfaction any of us have is that Connor and some of his pack have come down with it. The women will have the same trouble dealing with it.”
Ryan drove into the parking lot, parked next to Jake’s vehicle, and hurried out of his truck. His jaw was hard, his eyes dark. The news wasn’t good.
“Did the scientist make a vaccine?” Carol asked both Jake and Ryan.
“That’s what we’re trying to learn.” Ryan hauled her close and held her tight as if he’d been away for eons. He brushed her cheek with his lips and then said to Jake, “We’re headed back to the house.”
Jake had an odd look on his face and didn’t move toward his own truck to follow them.
“Jake?” Carol said.
He frowned at her. “You saw me shift and not be able to change back.”
He finally seemed to believe her. “Maybe I’m wrong,” Carol said. “Maybe I just see you shift, but like everyone keeps reminding me, I don’t see the end result. That you shift back.”
But Jake’s expression remained dark.
She patted his arm. “We’ll find a vaccine. And a cure.”
“And this damned Miller,” Ryan said, hauling Carol into the truck. “See you at Darien’s place.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Jake said.
As soon as they were on the road, Carol said to Ryan, “I wish I hadn’t told Jake what I’d seen.”
Ryan shook his head and tugged her close. “We’ll get this under control.”
But behind his words she was certain she heard the worry that they might not.
“Darien’s going to be pissed about us mating when we didn’t say anything to him about it beforehand.”
Ryan let out his breath, wanting Carol away from this nightmare immediately. “Even more so when I tell him that you’re coming home with me tonight.”
She looked up at Ryan as if he’d lost his mind, and he knew as soon as she did that she wasn’t going to agree with his plan. But he had his own pack and his own place. Staying as a guest at Darien’s wasn’t in the plans. He had to investigate Connor and Miller’s hideout, but he thought that if Carol was with his pack, Connor and North and the rest of them would never learn of her whereabouts and she’d be safer.
“I want to take you home with me,” he said, a little more amenable this time. He hadn’t even considered she might object.
“I have to stay and figure out a way to cure this. Unless you have a doctor in Green Valley who might have some idea of what to do.”
He sure wished he did. If the doctor had been a lupus garou, he might have helped. But as a human, he couldn’t.
“No, Carol, he’s human.”
“Human?” She said it like the man was an alien just arrived from another planet when she’d been strictly human herself not that long ago.
“We can’t allow him to learn what we are.” Ryan was unsure why the fact the doctor was human distressed her. Unless she’d had high hopes he could help with this.
“You didn’t see Doc Mitchell change in a premonition, did you, Carol?”
Chapter 25