Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
In the three days since his injury, Cole hadn't improved. No one could get ahold of Mark, especially not while maintaining the illusion that everything was okay.
Hugh had exhausted his first aid knowledge and every first aid kit they had at the pack house, and Nico had ordered him to sleep and stay out of Cole's room for twenty-four hours. He, Reece, and Javi were working in shifts, sleeping on the floor of Cole's room like it was doing something.
It wasn't.
Cole was getting worse by the day, and his room was starting to smell like it. Sick. Sweaty. Wrong. And there was nothing Febreeze and opening the windows could do to fix it.
The first two days, they'd managed to dissolve some Tylenol in water and ease that down Cole's throat. But today, no one had been able to get him to drink.
And it wasn't like Tylenol could do more than ease the mildest of his pains.
Someone needed to do something. And, unfortunately, Cole had appointed Nico to that task.
Nico really wanted to point out that the alpha had been delirious. There was no way to trust a decision he had made. In his most desperate, sleepless hour, he'd almost been tempted to call the Iron Runner Pack and beg assistance from their team of healers.
Because that was how big the Iron Runner pack was. They had a dozen healers and apprentices, and they were more than willing to hire them out.
If it had been one of the pack youths or one of their non-combatants, Nico might have truly considered it.
But Cole's illness was an existential threat.
And if the Iron Runners smelled blood in the water, they'd attack.
Their alpha, Dawson, was a tough son of a bitch, and they couldn't afford his attention right now.
Which meant it was time to be a fucking idiot.
They needed something that could help Cole. And Cole had forbidden human doctors.
Nico was following that order to the letter.
Because the alpha hadn't said a damn thing about animal medicine. He probably hadn't thought of it, what with the blood loss and delirium.
It was a tricky thing. Witches and vampires and all other non-weres liked to throw "animal" around like it was an insult to shifters. But they were animals. Weren't all creatures?
And, according to Google at least, most animal medicine was the same as human medicine. It was all in the dosage.
Besides, vet clinics were easier to break into than hospitals.
At least, that's what Nico had hoped as he'd sat in the parking lot of the Stewart Central Zoo. He saw a few other cars parked along the end of the lot near the street, but no one was walking around, and the streetlights were his only company.
Werewolves didn't usually get harmed permanently. They healed quickly, and what they or their healers couldn't heal killed them.
They didn't get stuck in stasis, moaning and groaning and covering their sheets with blood and other bodily fluids for days.
There was another vet hospital he could have tried, but Nico figured the zoo had a wolf exhibit. Maybe they had drugs that could specifically help wolves. Maybe that would be better than whatever dog and cat medicine they had up the street.
Besides, he'd been to the zoo before. It had been years, back on a school field trip when he'd been a kid. But how much could a zoo change?
A lot, it turned out. Especially when he was sneaking around in the dark in places visitors were never meant to go.
He winced when the first door slammed.
Ask Nico to bust heads and he was good to go. This thief shit was not his brand.
But he just had to find the drugs. He wasn't exactly sure what he'd do with those drugs when he found them, but that was what the internet was for. Unfortunately, he hadn't yet been able to find any TikToks about "how to heal your werewolf alpha," but he wasn't giving up hope yet.
A scent tickled his senses, and he paused, breathing deep.
Lilacs. Shampoo. And something … effervescent that curled deep in his gut and made his whole body stand at attention.
Someone was here.
And she smelled good.
His wolf jolted to attention, and something pulsed and whined deep inside of him as the wolf homed in on the scent. Now was not the time to get distracted.
Nico opened his mouth and forced himself to breathe shallowly. The last thing he needed was to be found by someone working late, even if she smelled like dessert and dreams. It was probably just some perfume. And hopefully the scent was old.
But he hadn't risen to be the highest-ranking beta in a growing pack by mistaking the age of a scent.
This one was fresh.
He had to be careful.
His wolf yanked at him, desperate to follow it and find her. To press her up against a wall and—
Nico snarled and snapped his teeth, as if he could nip at his own throat and get his wolf to shut up.
He hadn't been sleeping, and his wolf was trying to take advantage, wily bastard that it was.
Want, it demanded.
Too fucking bad.
Nico had smelled plenty of pleasant scents before on plenty of people. For the particularly good ones, he enjoyed it for a time and moved on. Did that sometimes lead to him spending the night with his head buried between a beautiful woman's thighs?
Yes.
But definitely not tonight.
He didn't need scents that made him think of sex. He needed drugs for his alpha and then to sleep for three days.
Nico found the med locker, and the lilac scent was even stronger there. Was someone working late? A vet working after hours?
A vet wasn't a human doctor. It was a thought he should not have been thinking. He wasn't here to rules-lawyer his way out of Cole's commands.
But if the vet was giving off that scent …
Nico shut the thought down. Cole would be mad if he brought any human into this. Despite the hundreds, if not thousands of supernatural creatures that lived in the city, humans lived in ignorance.
It was a careful balance, and every supernatural creature worked to maintain it.
Cole would be pissed if Nico risked their anonymity.
But Cole was unconscious.
Nico forced open the locker and blindly shoved as much stuff into his bag as he could. He had to force open some of the drawers, which he hoped suggested they were full of the good stuff. He didn't waste time trying to read the labels on the small bottles in the dim light.
He even grabbed a few bags of saline, some tubing, and anything else that he'd ever seen on an episode of Grey's Anatomy.
If it worked for them …
His duffel bag was bursting at the seams with loot when the smell tickled his nose again.
Ignore it.
He had the meds and the supplies. Mark would be back soon. Hopefully. Nico did not need another complication.
But his inner wolf must have sensed some weakness in him, and it yanked him down the hall to where the scent was growing even stronger.
She was here.
Nico ran. It wasn't a conscious decision. His wolf took control of his legs, and he was off.
He skidded to a halt in front of a woman in purple scrubs that were covered in … was that Snoopy?
She had blonde hair tied back from her face, and her eyes were bright blue and wide. Some hair had fallen out of its tie and hung down past her cheek, only emphasizing her eyes. Her mouth formed an O, and she sucked in a breath, ready to scream.
Rational thought was long gone.
Nico surged forward and covered her mouth with his hand, her hot breath ghosting over his skin.
She was a tiny little thing, at least six inches shorter than him, and her breath was hot against his palm as she panted against his skin.
Her scent was even stronger now, and it took every ounce of discipline within him not to bury his face in her neck and breathe deep. He wanted to bite her, which was just fucking crazy.
"Don't scream." His voice came out low, gruff. Almost inhuman. His wolf was riding high. "I won't hurt you."
She made a small sound in the back of her throat and stared at him like he'd grown a second head.
Were his eyes glowing?
When his wolf was this close to the surface, it happened. Humans tended to write it off. That was the real key to keeping supernatural society a secret. Humans didn't want to believe.
Her skin was warm, and if he kept touching her, he wouldn't be able to control his wolf for much longer.
"I'm going to pull my hand away," he said. "As long as you don't scream. Okay?"
She nodded a bit frantically.
He couldn't blame her.
Was she a vet? She was wearing scrubs. He could smell the faint trace of some wild animal on her. A fox, maybe? It was very faint, and mostly on her clothes. If she'd been working with an animal, she might have been wearing gloves or washed her hands.
"Are you a vet?" he asked.
"I—" It was more squeak than syllable. "Please don't hurt me."
Never!
The wolf and man were in total agreement on that.
Nico didn't go around hurting innocents, anyway. But there was something about this human that made the very thought anathema.
"Do you work here?" he repeated.
The woman swallowed hard and nodded. He watched her throat work, the bottom of that loose strand of hair just grazing her chin and drawing his eye. He wanted to drag his tongue over her pulse point and find out if she tasted as good as she smelled.
The bag full of stolen supplies was heavy on his shoulders. Her eyes darted down and took it in, and she let out a shaky breath.
She was a witness.
He couldn't leave a witness.
It was a shitty excuse. What was she going to tell anyone? A tall white man with dark hair had broken in? That described half the men in the city, probably more.
But Cole needed medical attention, and a delicious smelling medical expert had just fallen into his grasp.
If fate existed, it had just put her in his hands.
He'd be a fool to ignore the gift.
"I'm really sorry about this," he said, "but I need you to come with me."