I watched as Rush walked out of the room and left me with Beckett and Jonah, eyeing me cautiously.
“Can we get you anything?” Jonah asked, his head tilted as far back as he could as if that would somehow help him be more comfortable.
“Ice cream,” I croaked, crawling up the bed. “And popsicles!”
Beckett and Jonah scrambled out of the room, closing the door behind them. Rush didn’t come back to our room that day or the next. It wasn’t until the third day when he came back into our room, sniffed, and then walked over to me. He sent Beckett in to check on me every day, ordering him to abide by my every whim and wish.
“How are you feeling?” He brushed my cheek with his fingers.
“Like I’m a normal temperature again,” I joked, smiling up at him.
“I’m sorry I left,” he said softly.
“If you didn’t, I would have undressed you in your sleep, and we would be expecting a small child in about three and a half months.”
He smiled and stood up, stretching his arms and shoulders.
“What’s been going on?” I asked, standing up from the bed.
“We still have no leads on the stray wolves, and now three of our pack members are sick. I swear the last thing we need is for a virus to be going around on top of everything else.”
“Well, just make sure they’re quarantined in the medical building until we know what it is. We can’t afford anyone else getting sick right now,” I agreed. I became nervous as I asked, “What happened with the address?”
Rush kissed the top of my head and turned to leave. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Let me know if you change your mind?” I asked, hopefully.
He grinned and left.
While Rush was working in his office, I meandered down to the first level of the house. My feet took me to the kitchen, where my eager stomach growled at the sight of food other than ice cream and applesauce.
An older woman made conversation with me as I sat at the counter, eating leftovers from the night before. Her grandson was graduating kindergarten in the coming weeks, and she hoped the threat of wolves would be gone so she could travel to her daughter’s pack.
“This is him when he was a baby.” She showed me a folded-up picture of a small blonde boy, staring up at a woman I assumed was his mother.
“He’s beautiful,” I complimented, watching her cheeks grow red.
“I haven’t seen him or my daughter in months,” she told me, her voice filled with longing. She folded the picture back up and slid it into her pocket.
“Do you think they’ll be able to come visit you here?”
She finished gulping her water and shrugged her shoulder. “I’m not sure. My daughter's mate is a Warrior, and now it seems they’re in high demand.” She picked up her glass of water again. “Ooo, I’ve been so thirsty these days, someone must be putting more salt in the food.”
I giggled lightly. “I guess so.”
She continued to tittle on about her other child, a son who lived in our pack. He didn’t have any children yet, but she was hoping for another grandchild soon. She stood up from her chair, coughing slightly, tapping her chest with her fist.
“Are you alright?” I asked, leaning forward to help her.
She coughed, mouth open, trying to jar something from her throat. She growled slightly as she hacked and coughed. I stood up and looked around the room for assistance. Everyone observed, wondering if they should step in.
“Marguerite?” a woman asked, walking into the kitchen. Marguerite, the older woman, growled, and her head whipped rapidly to the side.
Her arms curled inwardly, hands fighting the sharp nails that wanted to protrude. The woman placed her hand on Marguerite’s shoulder; Marguerite quickly pushed the woman off, quite violently. Someone had mind-linked Beckett, who had been standing cautiously a few feet away, just observing.
Marguerite rolled her head in a circular motion around her neck, eyes rolling to the back of her head, chest protruding outwards as her shoulders spread back. I moved to take a step forward, and Beckett shook his head with one sharp motion. Growls and low menacing sounds filled the small space as Marguerite’s frail body began spasming.
In the middle of a convulsion, Marguerite shifted into her frazzled charcoal wolf, throwing chairs to the ground in her midst. I backed up against the wall, eyeing the wolf carefully. Her eyes were rapidly shifting colors, from their normal brown color to a bright chartreuse.
She launched herself towards me, jowl dripping with foam and saliva. Beckett grabbed her around her waist quickly, stopping her conquest to me. She turned her head and cut Beckett’s arm with one of her incisors, a deep laceration that startled Beckett into releasing her.
When her head turned back to me, I prepared to shift in the minuscule space left near me. A small whistle sounded from the side of the room, and Marguerite’s body slumped to the floor. Casey was near the fridge, a tranquilizer gun in his hands pointed at Marguerite.
“Told you we have guns,” he commented, his eyes lifting to mine for a second and then situated back on the wolf on the ground.
Two doctors came to collect Marguerite’s body to bring her to the infirmary for tests. Rush came down from the office to see the damage. The doctors informed us the other pack members in the infirmary exhibited similar symptoms, but they hadn’t been so extreme.
A few hours later, the Border Guards contacted us with sightings of wolves around the territory. The wolves hadn’t entered our borders; perhaps the sheer amount of pack members we had stationed at the border encouraged them elsewhere. Two Guards had quietly trailed them away from our borders and witnessed the wolves entering the human town.
The wandering wolves seemed to have no plan, they were unorganized and distracted. We
