Healing Hands: A Wolf Shifter Romance Read online

  Healing Hands

  A Wolf Shifter Romance

  E.V. Winter

  Copyright ©2020 by E.V. Winter

  Cover Illustration by GermanCreative

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATED WITH MUCH LOVE TO MY NIECES, AMY AND OLIVIA

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Traveling to the Industrial park via the interstate was like going down the throat of the city. Her heart raced every time she took this road. People were scarce in these parts and you knew that if you got lost or went unprotected, you might never get out. She did it every few months because she needed to get drugs for her animals. Her heart racing for an hour every 90 days was a fair price to pay. The not so United States was five years into a dystopian renewal but changes happened slowly and people didn’t matter enough anymore.

  She was meeting Zac in a fresh place this time, an old slaughterhouse. It was in an industrial park along the major highway in and out of Hale County. She parked her car in a carpark on the other side of the road and walked through the subway to get to the slaughterhouse. She saw him from a distance; he gave her a quick wave and disappeared inside the building.

  “Did you get it all?” India asked. There was no time for small talk or chit-chat. He provided a service, and she handed over the money. It was a business transaction, plain and simple.

  “I got it all but the Ketamine is getting harder to find these days. Too much human use now. I guess it’s for horses, right? I had a friend who worked at the track and they used it if a horse got lame…”

  “Did you get it all?” She repeated.

  “Sure but it might be expensive next time. I’m trying to keep prices fair but if humans are using it, what can I do?”

  “You got the antibiotics? The anesthetic?”

  “Yes, there’s a tank there with something in. I guess that must be that stuff, right?”

  She nodded and handed over the wad of twenty-dollar bills.

  “I’ll need the same in about three months. Can you meet me here on the 1st of February?”

  He nodded, still counting her money, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

  “I don’t deal in hard stuff you know,” he said. “I do weed and shit so the ketamine is kind of out of my remit.”

  “I’ll pay more if I need to, or you can refer me to someone else.”

  He smiled at her in her little pink facial mask. What was all that about? Was she a germophobe? “I’ll do my best but you don’t really want to be messing with those folk.”

  They heard wolves howling, and he raised his eyebrows. “Wolves getting closer to the urban areas. They must be hungry.”

  “I think Brunholme Ridge might cull their area.”

  “You know all this stuff about animals. How do you hear what’s going on there?”

  “I have a friend, she’s kind of underground.”

  “Ah.”

  “Nothing illegal. Just trying to help people out. I’m a vet, I care about animals, all of them.”

  “Yeah, but wolves? They would rip out your throat out if you got too close.”

  She picked up the box from his feet. “Then I won’t get too close. See you in February.”

  He watched her walk away. She always smelled so good when she came to see him, like fresh air, roses and vanilla but he never saw her face yet. Maybe she was an ugly chick. A sweet-scented grunt. He stumped out his cigarette and took advantage of seeing her stride away. She was blonde but too tall for him and maybe a little too smart for him too. He shrugged. He liked city girls and she rocked the whole mountain girl look with her plaid shirt, jeans and that badass rifle under her coat.

  India carried the box through the subway and once more heard the howling wolves. She looked to the sky, where the full moon hung like a frosted, frozen orb. There was a noise in the trees and she held back. She couldn’t risk being mugged with five hundred dollars’ worth of animal medication and she needed it all. She was ready to drop the box and grab her rifle if needed. Slowing down but still aware of the disturbance, she tried to see into the wooded area.

  A loud, high-pitched yelp stunned her to her core. She almost dropped the large cardboard box she carried to her car. The road was slippery as she walked to the car park with the box. Zac hid the drugs under boxes of cereal and empty tin cans so it looked, for all the world, like she carried groceries. Placing the box in her trunk she went back to the woods with a revolver in her pocket.

  Carefully, she negotiated the frosty surface. As the town was not under any kind of government rule, the roads were not being gritted. She moved closer to the sound of the injured creature, switching on her tiny flashlight, which came from a gas station and was used as a key chain. The whimpering creature lay on the embankment. She went to it, an enormous dog. As she approached, she saw other dogs attack again and fired off her revolver. They scattered in all directions at the sound and her own ears rung from the strength of the shot. She approached the creature and saw that it was now unconscious with blood pulsing from its neck. She reached into her pocket and dragged out a tissue and gripped it down on the wound.

  Her gun smoked in her hand and she had half a mind to put the poor beast out of its misery. She looked at it again and doubted her chances of carrying it to her car. She saw it was still breathing and felt for a collar; there was none there. She held its legs and dragged it towards her car. Her training as a veterinary surgeon came in handy at times like this. She got to her car and flipped open the trunk moving the box into her back seat and lifted the animal into the trunk. She looked at it again, still passed out, now covered in blood and realized it might be a wolf. The coloring was a little off though for a wolf. This one had red hair and gray and gold. Maybe he was a crossbreed.

  India sighed and placed pressure on its neck wound. How bad was this bleeding? Could she get it back to her place before it died? She felt the weight of her gun in her left-hand pocket and reconsidered. She needed to keep pressure on that wound. She reached in and took the animal out, moving it to her passenger seat. Its legs hung out over the edge of the seat so she lowered the seat and dragged it further back.

  India started the car and drove off, one hand on the wheel and her right hand holding a blood soaked tissue over the viscous wound. As she exited the car park, she saw the row of six wolves staring her down. She smiled to herself; this was one weird night and this city was getting wilder by the second.

  The roads back home were clear and she was glad of it.
Driving with one hand on the wheel she repositioned her hand on the wolf’s neck. What would she do if he stirred? She dared not think about it, he would attack her for sure but she had her gun beside her just in case. Seeing all those wolves frightened her too. She never saw so many in one place and wondered why they were attacking one of their own. She noticed that the wildlife were getting a little braver now that the streets were dead most of the time. She went to the city only when needed. If she couldn’t make it, her sister Eve went. Eve was braver than she was.

  The waves of crime and looting seemed to be over for now but India wondered what came next. She was caring for strays, thrown out when people fled the city after the first revolt. There was an inevitability to all this. She protected herself with guns and knives but if she was unarmed, she suspected, she would not live long, with wolves and maybe bears next coming into the confines of the human population.

  The wolf stirred beside her. Her heart raced so she took a deep breath and exhaled as he settled again. Blood saturated the tissue she held down. She nipped the artery and it seemed to stop the flow but made driving harder for her. He may well die before she got him to the surgery but she was a good vet. Or at least, she had been a good vet. Now she was doing it for herself. She moved her mask off her face for a moment and checked out the jagged scar on her right cheek in her rear-view mirror. She was unsure it would ever heal properly. India teared up again. It still pained her to see the change in her. The mask went back on. It was for the best. She was a grotesque, and others didn’t need to see her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When she arrived home, the dogs in the pen all barked as they always did and her chickens out back were squawking as usual in their shed. She took the wolf into the surgery and lay it on the steel table. Quickly she grabbed a clamp and sealed the bloody wound, cleaning it with iodine, which was to hand. Her arms ached from carrying him. She fitted a restraint collar to its neck and restraint cuffs to its front paws. She did not want it to lash out if it awoke and became distressed. She still wore her outdoor mask and swapped it for a clean surgical one from the drawer.

  “Okay let’s see what we have here,” she said looking over its injuries. This was maybe the best-looking wolf she ever saw. His fur was the color of fall, browns and coppery reds mixed in with the darker stuff. She emptied the cardboard box and took out the drugs. She ran an animal shelter. For all she knew, maybe she was the only one caring for strays in Hale County. She heard her chickens clucking again. “Angry birds, give me a minute,” she yelled. She checked the wolf’s pulse and filled a syringe with sedative, injecting it slowly into a thigh muscle. He twitched slightly but then lay still. She arranged a mask on its face and a tube into its mouth, between its sharp white teeth. She needed to act fast with anesthetic. Soon, he was under and she carefully sealed and stitched the artery which was pierced enough to cause heavy bleeding. She stroked the fur along the neck wondering why she’d bothered to save a wild animal who she couldn’t house for long. She did not like setting him free back to Brunholme Ridge where death might face him through hunters, anyway. She shook her head. She would worry about his freedom when he was ready to go. For now, she concentrated on just keeping him alive.

  The kennels were noisy with boisterous dogs. She opened the doors to let them run outside for some fresh air, exercise and a toilet break. There were only four of them, two oldies and two pups and they got on all right. She froze, her hands were still wet from washing them after the surgery, but time was against her. She needed the dogs back inside by nine o’clock. She liked to lock up by then and feel safe in her own haven. She went outside through the gate to the small holding where the pigs were already asleep in their sty and the chicks, as usual were being tetchy. Picking two handfuls of lettuce from her vegetable patch for her supper, she went back inside and whistled the dogs in with her.

  She locked the dogs back up, threw in snacks and checked their water was filled up. Back in the surgery, the wolf was sleeping soundly and should sleep all night based on her dosage of sedative.

  She stroked him again. “Goodnight, Red.”

  She made some quick notes on her vet’s pad, including the drugs dispensed and placed it back in the drawer. She took off her mask and ran her fingers again over the gnarly scar across her cheek. She put on her home mask, simple, gray with elastic around her ears. It was time for some food and rest. Her day was full of tension. She hated going for the drugs. It felt like she was visiting a dealer looking for heroin, but she only needed veterinary meds, and they were scarce if you were no longer working as a vet. Her phone rang, and she picked it up.

  “Eve?”

  “How’d ye know it would be me?”

  “It’s always you.”

  “India, you need to stop being a recluse.”

  “Okay. How are you?”

  “I’m locked away like the rest of the population with my state-run TV on, ready for my fill of repeats and my curfew in place for yet another night. How you doing?”

  “Well, it’s been an interesting night. I went to Eastside to collect and I now have an extra patient.”

  “Another mutt? What’s wrong with people…?”

  “No, he’s a wolf.”

  “A wolf? You know you did a stupid thing, right? He’s a wild animal. He’ll eat your puppies and he may eat you for dessert.”

  “Eve, other wolves bit him I think. Tiny nick to the artery but enough to be pumping out blood like I don’t know what. My car is like a crime scene.”

  “You put him in your car?”

  “I had to apply pressure to save him. He was in my passenger seat.”

  “Where d’you find him?”

  “On the Brunholme Road. He’s asleep now until morning I hope.”

  “You did surgery?”

  “Yes. I sealed and stitched the wound. He’ll be fine I think. I did some x-rays and scans but they’ll wait until tomorrow. I’m bushed. I need to eat and then sleep.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll let you go. I got some supplies of my own today.”

  “Ah.”

  “So I’m lighting up and chilling out. See you tomorrow if you like?”

  “Sure, I could use some help with the mess in the car.”

  “And I’m good at removing bloodstains, right?”

  “You did it before.”

  Eve sniggered. “See you tomorrow, Sis.”

  Rex awoke with a start. He was cold and saw as he looked down at his feet, that he was naked, apart from a collar and cuffs. He did not have the strength to move his limbs.

  Where was he? He tried again to move but the exhaustion overwhelmed him. Lying back down, he willed himself to transform again. Whoever captured him was not here, so he needed to still be the wolf they shackled to this steel bed. His eyes were closing and he willed himself with every breath to transform. Sleep was coming at him too fast, in glorious, druggy waves. His bruised, bloody legs ached. So did uncomfortable cuffs on his wrists.

  He needed to concentrate on only the transformation, the Zen of silent want to be something else. Soon, he felt his core expand. His brain committed, all his concentration led to his will to change. He saw his limbs take shape, hair grow, thick and sleek across his weakened limbs. He was himself again, he was Rex, the alpha, the royal alpha of the Brunholme Ridge pack.

  He was back but not strong yet. Closing his eyes against this strange unknown world he disappeared into the anesthetic haze and welcomed sleep but with a fear for tomorrow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maddox, Xander and Rafe transformed back into human form and scrambled to collect their clothes, left under a birch tree not too far from their cabin in Brunholme Woods.

  “What the hell,” Xander said. His hot breath punctuating the chilly air ahead of him.

  “Get ready, it’s cold. We’ll talk about this soon.” Maddox said, pulling on his sweatpants over muscular, toned legs. He spent the entire day in the gym and he was the strongest of all the pack. Even Rex had to bow to h
is superior power but he did not have Rex’s calm demeanor. Everything annoyed Maddox.

  “There were six of those guys. Which pack is six strong?” Rafe asked. “And in our territory? Do you think Rex made it?”

  Maddox shook his head and pulled on his shoes. “We may have lost him but we can’t do any more tonight. I can still smell them, can you?”

  Rafe sniffed at the air, a slow deep breath in. “Yup, they’re not far away.”

  “What do they want?” Xander asked.

  Maddox was already running towards the cabin, the others lagging.

  “What about Rex’s clothes?” Rafe yelled.

  “Bring them in,” Maddox shouted. “He can come back to the cabin if he makes it, naked.”

  Smoke rose from the chimney of their enormous, homely lodge. That meant that a fire was still burning and warmth lay in wait. Rafe was grateful for that, huddled up to conserve his body heat.

  Maddox went to the fire and threw another log on the burner. “They came to lay down a marker to us. They want this place. They want Brunholme Woods, the Ridge, the lodge, maybe.”

  “Who were they?” Xander asked, warming his hands on the glow behind the glass screen. “We’ve been here six centuries…”

  “At least.” Rafe said. “Rex is the latest in a long line of alphas. His entire family line is rooted in these trees, these mountains. They know they’re encroaching.”

  Maddox nodded. “It’s not done.” He sat down in an armchair and closed his eyes.

  “There’s tradition to what we do. There are conventions about territory.” Xander said.

  “Yeah, but in days of old…”

  Maddox stopped Rafe in his tracks. “Those days are long gone. Shifters don’t fight over territory unless there’s a good reason to do so. We respect land ownership and mating grounds. We hunt on our own land and we leave others alone. We follow mating rituals.”