Nikolai’s Wolf: Chapter Six

Nikolai was surprised he made it as far as the porch without being scented. The smell of blood was overpowering. Both he and the she-wolf were covered in it. Though her bleeding seemed to be lessening, it hadn’t completely stopped. He walked up onto the porch and called out, “Alex, it’s Nikolai. Open up.”

The door opened immediately. With one all-encompassing glance, Alex took in the sight of Nikolai and the bloody, wounded wolf in his arms. “Please enter, Nikolai.”

Pushing the door open with his shoulder, Nikolai strode past Alex. He barely acknowledged the others in the room. “I found her down by the ridge. She must have been attacked. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Place her over here. Carol, go get my supplies while I take a look at her.” Sweeping the throw off the back of the couch, Alex laid it on the floor in front of the fireplace.

“You say you found her out by the ridge?” The question came from the other male wolf.

“Yes. You won’t find any sign of her attackers there now. I checked before bringing her to you. From what I could see, she must have dragged herself quite a distance before her strength gave out.” Nikolai’s gaze never left the wolf being examined on the floor. He had been strangely reluctant to put her down. His body was tense, waiting, for what he didn’t know.

The female wolf that must be Carol came back with the requested supplies. As Alex moved to clean her wounds, Nikolai gave warning. “Be careful. I had to place her under compulsion before I could get close enough to her to help. She was very defensive and half-crazed with pain.” He watched closely as Alex tended to her injuries, ready to snatch her away should the doctor make a wrong move.

“While many of her wounds are severe and need stitching, none are life-threatening. She’s already beginning to heal,” Alex informed them.

Nikolai frowned. If the wolf was already healing, how severe had her injuries originally been and who was responsible for them?

“Do you recognize her? She doesn’t smell like pack,” the other wolf asked Alex.

“Yes, I know who she is,” Alex said. “She’s not one of ours. Her name is Shannon. She belongs to the Sparrowhawks. Her brother’s the alpha.”

Nikolai made a mental note to check out the Sparrowhawks’ pack.

“Are you going to contact him? Tell him what’s happened?” Carol questioned.

Alex shook his head. “We don’t know what happened, but until I do, this stays between us. We’ll keep an eye on her and protect her while she’s healing. She would heal faster if she could shift, but she’s lost too much blood.”

Nikolai approved of Alex’s answer. Any predator, especially an alpha, who failed to protect those under his care didn’t deserve to be notified.

“We have got to keep this from getting out,” Alex continued. “The pack wouldn’t normally be a problem, but this is a small area and news travels fast. We can’t take a chance on word getting back to the wrong ears.”

Alex stitched up the worst of her injuries and poured some kind of liquid on them. Then he injected her with a shot of something. Finally finished, he removed his gloves as Carol quietly began to clean up. “She needs to be watched for a few hours.”

Putting what was left of the supplies back in the bag, Carol responded, “She can come home with us. She’ll need clothes and stuff. If we’re keeping her presence a secret, we won’t be able to send someone to her home to pick up her things. If necessary, I’ll tell the pack I need some more items for Kiesha. Let them believe you got her size wrong.”

“Do whatever you think best.” Alex turned to Nikolai. “Is there any way that she could be tracked here?”

Nikolai briefly made eye contact with the alpha before returning his attention to the wolf. “No, but I’ll backtrack and make sure.”

“Thank you. You have the gratitude of the Raven pack for bringing her to us.” It was a formal way of saying that the Raven pack was now indebted to him.

Nikolai politely nodded his acknowledgement of the debt, though he wasn’t particularly concerned with vamp/shifter politics and shifter protocol at the moment. He took one more lingering glaze at the she-wolf he’d rescued before striding out the door.

Outside, Nikolai breathed in deeply of the night air. Opening his senses, he gathered information from the wind. The evening was quiet, the animals of the forest still as if they recognized the predator in their midst. Other than himself and the people in the house, the woods were empty.

He shape-shifted into a large raven, flew back to the spot by the ridge where he’d found the she-wolf, and made sure her whereabouts couldn’t be traced to Alex. Then, compelled beyond all reason, he tracked the she-wolf to the home where she was resting, using her mental signature as a guide. Masking his presence from her caretakers, he turned into mist and entered the home, reforming himself at her bedside.

As he slowly circled the bed, examining her from every angle, he asked, “Little wolf, why do I find you so fascinating?”

How had she managed to spark his interest after all these years of ennui? There was nothing special about her appearance that he could see. She was small for a wolf-shifter, about the size of a large breed dog. Her coat, what he could see of it, was blonde tipped with red.

What did she look like in human form?