The emergency room had an unexpectedly high number of patients during the night. In other words, chaos reigned. Dr. Quinn Orson found herself looking outside a once or twice just to make sure there wasn’t a full moon. The lunar cycle wasn’t just hell on shifters. The human population went nuts during certain days of the month as well.

Damn. Even her bear felt restless. Whoa, girl. You can get your roar on later. There was no rhyme or reason for the craziness, but Quinn was glad for the distraction. At the end of the shift in the morning, she would head out to see Gerri Wilder, shifter matchmaker, and supposed miracle worker. Quinn needed a miracle. Either she mated in the next two weeks, or she handed over her family’s ruling legacy of the bear clan over to that asshole Trey Steele. Quinn could only hope Ms. Wilder matched her with a bear that was, at the very least, kind and loyal. Handsome wouldn’t hurt, either, but it wasn’t a requirement.

Most the bear clans in the surrounding area knew about Quinn’s “predicament, ” and several had made offers of potential mates, but Quinn had been determined to find a work-around. She’d really believed she could find a legal way to keep her father’s property and money, even if she had to give up the clan. That was the crux of the problem: if she didn’t mate then everything her family owned would be inherited by Trey—and her mom and sisters would be banished.

Oh, Dad. Quinn swallowed the lump in her throat. How could a car accident take away the best man she’d ever known? As the Orsino bear clan chief, Santos Orson’s progressive ideas and charismatic demeanor had led to real changes in the way the clan viewed its female members. Recently, Dad had challenged the clan’s archaic rules about only allowing male heirs to rule. After all, he had three daughters that he’d raised to be independent and free-thinking. Why should having ovaries prevent a woman from leading the clan?

If only the clan could accept a female chief. But no, the rules were still antiquated and outdated. She’d been the chief resident during her senior year of med school and had been promoted to ER attending for the past five years, which entailed running a staff of thirty-five nurses, lab techs, aides, and doctors. Controlling the chaos of a busy hospital had adequately prepared her to govern a small bear clan.

“GSW to the chest coming in hot,” said Adam, the nursing supervisor and Quinn’s go-to, as he hung up the phone at the intake desk. “He’s lost a lot of blood, they had to perform CPR in the field, and his vitals are unstable.”

Shit. “What happened?”

“They didn’t give me the rundown, Doc.” Adam shrugged. “But it’s bad enough to take down a bear shifter.”

Adam Fields was human, but he knew Quinn was also a bear shifter. He also knew that the area was the Orsino clan territory. It was likely she knew the victim. “Who?”

“A guy named Brandon Bennet.”

A small noise of surprise escaped her throat. “I’ve got this one,” Quinn said to Michael Rawlings, a human doctor on duty with her.

“You know him?” he asked.

“Yes. He’s in my clan.” She’d heard Brandon and his sister Marigold had taken jobs with a security company, but what the hell had led him to getting shot? Her first instinct was to call Monica. Her sister had been madly in lust with the kid since they were teenagers. She looked at Adam. “How long out?”

“Any minute now.”

Calling Monica would have to wait. “Make sure Trauma B is open.”

“We have a cardiac patient in there--”

“If he isn’t dying right now get him out of the room,” Quinn snapped. “B is best equipped to deal with a gunshot, and if I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure Brandon survives tonight. Do you understand, Nurse Fields?”

“Yes, Doctor Orson.” Adam took off in a jog toward the trauma bay.

Quinn looked down at her hands. Brown fur had sprouted over her arms and hands. “Crap.” She shook herself, pushing her bear down. She was Doctor Orson right now, not Quinn Orson, Ursula to the Orsino Clan. It would be her human training she needed, not raw instinct.

“I’m going to wait by the bay doors,” she said.

Inside the waiting room, most the chairs were full of patients waiting to be admitted. None of them were as urgent as a gunshot wound, or Lacy, the receptionist, would have sent them back already. Quinn smelled blood and vomit, but both were faint, probably lingering from earlier patients. She saw a small girl clinging to her mother, and sweat beaded on her brow, and her blonde hair matted and unkempt. Her eyes were red and vacant as she watched Quinn cross to the entrance.

She walked over to admit. “Get that girl in next to see Rawlings.”

Lacy, a middle-aged redhead with no sense of humor, gave Quinn a tight-lipped nod.

The sliding doors swished open, and Quinn absently tugged at her white coat. Two paramedics came through with an oversized gurney. They’d strapped Brandon down at the legs, waist, and shoulders. They had a bag of Ringer’s Lactate hanging from the IV hook, and a line running into his forearm. One of the Paramedics used his gloved hands to hold a wad of bandages down onto Brandon’s chest. The normally white gauze was dark red with the shifter’s blood.

She raced to the gurney. “I got this,” Quinn told the medic, shoving him aside.

Marigold came in immediately after them, along with three tall, broadly built men that Quinn had never seen before.

Marigold, a tall and muscular woman, a distinct contrast to Quinn, appeared small as her fear for her brother was reflected not only in her face but also her body language.

“I’ll take care of him,” Quinn said to her clan member. “I promise.”

She spared a passing glance to the three men surrounding Marigold, her stomach aching as the one in the middle, a man over six feet and a half tall, a mop of dirty blond curls and a short beard, drew Marigold into his arms while Quinn and the medics rushed away with Brandon. His blue eyes stared through Quinn as if exacting a promise, and she squirmed under his gaze.

“His blood pressure is dropping again,” a paramedic said.

“Squeeze the bag,” Quinn told him. To the other, she said, “Go ahead and tell them we’re going to need a fast cross match on blood when we get inside.”

The transfer to from the gurney to the padded table in Trauma B had taken the effort of five people. Brandon, who was at least three-hundred pounds and built like a linebacker, was unconscious and limp, making it three-hundred times harder to move him without making his injuries worse.

The monitors they hooked him up to fluctuated erratically. He was a bear shifter. His body should be healing itself, and while the chest wound had already started to close over, something was preventing him moving from critical to intermediate.

The room was set up with an x-ray and an ultrasound. Adam cut Brandon’s shirt off and had already cleaned around the gunshot, which had penetrated Brandon’s left chest. The bullet had to be lodged in a heart valve, or worse, it had traveled into his aorta. It was the only thing that made sense.

With a human, she would have kept the bullet in and tried to repair the damage around it until it was safe to remove, but Brandon’s natural healing was taking care of the soft tissue and bone damage. Unfortunately, the bullet seemed to be interfering with his heart, and Quinn had to get it out. Her hands shook, and she took a deep calming breath. Brandon wasn’t Dad. Her father had died because the humans trying to save his life didn’t know he was a bear shifter. His chest had been pierced, and protocol meant leaving the metal inside. His heart couldn’t heal. And it stopped beating.

Get your shit together, she told herself. Or you’ll lose Brandon, too. “Let’s get the ultrasound—”

The alarm on the heart monitor blared. Shit. His heartbeat was too erratic. If she didn’t act now, Brandon would code.

Quinn’s bear roared to the surface with its need to protect what was hers, and Brandon, though not a mate, was part or her clan, and in her bear’s eyes, that’s made him hers to protect. Female or not, a bear chief’s blood ran through her veins. If Brandon had a bullet preventing his heart from healing, she had to remove it now.

She looked at Adam and the resident who’d come in to the room to help. “Go get the ones who brought him in.” When Adam questioned her with the raise of a brow, Quinn added, “Now!’ with a bit more growl than she’d intended.

Adam took off immediately. She scented the stench of nervous anxiety even over Brandon’s blood and turned her glare on the first year resident. “Get out,” Quinn said.

If Brandon woke up while she was digging in his chest, he would most likely shift, and any non-shifter in the room was in grave danger. She didn’t watch as the young doctor scurried from the room. Instead, she grabbed a scalpel from a nearby tray, tore into the package with expert speed and popped the plastic safety top off the blade. She cut into his chest, spreading his ribs with her fingers, just enough to feel around.

“Damn it,” she cursed. “Where is it?”

“What do you need me to do?” The deep, raspy voice startled Quinn.

She turned to see who it was but didn’t stop digging for the projectile. It was the blond guy, the one with the beard. The one who’d been holding Marigold. How had he gotten into the room without her hearing him? With Brandon’s blood everywhere, it was hard to detect other scents, but still, she should have noticed.

“I can’t get my hand past his ribs.” She needed the damned rib spreader.

The man came over as Marigold, and the two other guys who’d been with her, came into the room. Adam rushed in behind them. She almost ordered him out, but she needed his expertise.

“Intubate and bag him,” she ordered.

Adam, who’d been an ER nurse for over a decade and before college he’d been an army field medic in the first gulf war went straight to work on getting Brandon’s airway open and tubed.

“Luke,” Marigold said, as the blond bearded man, Luke apparently, grabbed Quinn’s scalpel from a metal tray and sliced along the rib line.

“What are you doing?’ Quinn asked.

Luke, without answering, used his fingers to pull Brandon’s ribs apart wide enough for Quinn to not only feel the heart but to see it as well.

“You need to hurry,” Luke said.

“No shit,” Quinn replied through gritted teeth as she slid a finger inside the hole the bullet had torn into Brandon’s heart muscle. “This isn’t right. There shouldn’t be this much damage.” She felt a sliver of something she hoped was bullet and not splintered bone. “I’ve got something.” She used the point of her claws to grab the object. When she held it up, she saw that it was copper colored and shaped almost like an arrow. “What is this?”

“There’s more in there, Doc. You gotta get the rest out.”

And Quinn did. Within a minute, she’d pulled out one circular piece of copper and four more spear-like pieces.

“Epinephrine, Doctor Orson?” asked Adam.

“A shifter’s system won’t process human medications. It’s the downside of being fast healers.”

The heart monitor emitted a long, low tone.

“I can’t feel him,” Marigold cried. Their twin-bond had always been empathic along with telepathic. She tried to rush the body, but the two men who flanked her on either side wrapped her up between them.

“Shock his heart,” demanded Luke.

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Quinn. “This isn’t Grey’s Anatomy. Using a defibrillator won’t restart his heart if he doesn’t have a shockable rhythm. Do you know CPR?”

Luke nodded.

“Start compressions.” C’mon Brandon. Don’t you dare die on me. “Adam, defibrillator.” She pointed at the group huddled on the other side of the gurney. “One of you get over here and keep bagging him.”

The dude on the left of Marigold heeded Quinn’s demand, taking over the task of squeezing air into Brandon’s lungs.

Adam got the defibrillator ready and then opened the sterile heart paddles, which he handed to Quinn. The minute it took to get the defibrillator charged felt like a year. As Luke kept doing compressions, he stared down at her, his green eyes firm with resolve, and something else. Something more primal that made Quinn uncomfortable. What was this guy’s deal?

“Doctor, we have v-tach,” said Adam.

“Well, that’s something at least. When I say clear,” she said to the men. “The two of you move the hell away.”

The moment the machine indicated readiness, she yelled, “Clear!”

The men backed off immediately.

Quinn put the paddles on Brandon’s chest and said, “Shock!”

Adam pressed the shock button. Brandon’s body twitched, but his heart rhythm didn’t reset.

“We’re doing it again. You, start bagging. Luke, compressions.”

Quinn waited for the charge to complete, and yelled, “Clear!”

The men moved back, and Quinn pressed the paddles to Brandon’s skin. The current released. She stared at the heart monitor. “Beat,” she pleaded softly. “Just freaking beat.”

Everyone in the room, except for Adam, who was back at the task of bagging Brandon, held their breath.

Tump. A surge of hope filled Quinn. Again, she silently begged. Again.

Tump-ka-tump. Tump-ka-tump.

“We have a regular rhythm,” said Adam.

Marigold whimpered her relief. A tear clouded Quinn’s eye when Brandon took his first long breath on his own in four minutes. Jesus. Only four minutes. It had felt like a lifetime. Adam deflated the balloon at the end of the intubation tube and pulled it out of Brandon’s throat.

“Is he going to be okay?” Marigold asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Quinn said honestly as she cleaned and bandaged the wound. He was a shifter, so sewing up the wound would only impede Brandon’s natural ability to heal. After it was over, she took his sister’s hand, her own covered in blood. “He’s strong, Mari. Brandon will fight to stay alive. To stay with you. With us.”

She meant the clan, but Marigold got a strange look on her face at Quinn’s words. “When can we move him home?”

“He’ll have to shift soon. I was afraid he’d do it while I had my hand in his chest.” Which was why she’d told Adam to get the group. If Brandon had changed into bear form, it would have taken a supernaturally combined effort to control him. “I’ll close him up, and if his vitals stay stable, we’ll arrange to transport him back to the clan tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”

“He’ll have to be protected.”

Brandon was third in line for the chief’s position if Quinn didn’t find a mate. Which meant, he was a potential threat to Trey Steele.

Quinn nodded. “We’ll take him to my family’s home. I’m staying there until…” She shook her head. “Well, I’m staying there for now.” She hadn’t lived in Orsino Clan territory since medical school, but she’d moved back after her father’s death.

Luke moved next to Marigold, his dark gaze pinning hers. “I’ll post a crew with him until he can be moved.”

Her bear, an alpha in her own right, perked up at Luke’s assertiveness. A shiver of pleasure and fear ran over Quinn’s skin. This was a stranger and already taken, if the looks Marigold passed him were any indication. She couldn’t allow herself to feel for someone who could never be hers. But God! Those blue eyes, the color of the Caribbean sea over white sand, made her thighs vibrate with need.

Every shifter in the room stared at her, except the unconscious one, of course. Stupid hormones. And her stupid, horny bear. Her animal growled its displeasure at her accusation. Down, girl, she chided and conceded that she might be the horny one.

Gah! Every shifter in the room could smell her desire as it hung thick in the air. All she could smell was the rusty scent of blood and her own sweat.

A guy like him would want someone like Marigold. She was tall, athletic, and beautiful. Everything Quinn was not. Sure, people told her she was pretty or cute, she even got the occasional adorable, but it wasn’t the same as being drop dead gorgeous. Like Luke and Marigold. A ten for a ten.

Ugh. Quinn had to stop thinking like this.

In the stillness of her internal turmoil, Quinn had forgotten about the human in the room. She turned to Adam, her eyes wide.

The male nurse shook his head and smirked. “Shifters are weird.” On that note, he gave her a nod and left the room.

Quinn shrugged. “He’s not wrong.”

Brandon’s heart was beating strong now. A healthy sign. Marigold laughed, then the two men on either side of her joined in. Luke’s lips tugged up on one side in a half smile.

“I’m Luke Dashwood,” he said. “Thank you for all your help tonight, Doctor…”

“Orson,” Quinn supplied. “There’s nothing you can do for Brandon right now. I’ll have him transferred to a private room while you all go get cleaned up.”

“Good idea,” Luke said. “Ricky,” he said to the man with pitch-black hair and coal black eyes. “You stay with Brandon until he’s been moved, then I’ll relieve you to go home and get some rest.”

“I’m staying,” Marigold said.

Luke nodded to her. “Do you have some scrubs or something she can change into?”

“I’ll have Adam arrange it,” Quinn said.

Luke moved in close and took Quinn’s hand in a two-handed clasp. The heat of his palms, the warmth radiating off his skin, made Quinn’s legs feel boneless. She could smell blood and bear and something else. Something unfamiliar. But beyond the strange was something even more confounding. Desire.

Quinn’s breathing quickened as she tried to pull her hand from his.

“I don’t know how to repay you, Doc.” His voice was low and throaty.

“It’s my duty,” she said, her voice pinched and high as she swallowed the lump that had settled in her throat. She looked at Marigold with a guilty flush.

Adam poked his head in the room. “Burn victim on his way in, Doctor Orson. Two minutes out.”

“I have to go.” She jerked her hand from Luke’s grasp. She checked Brandon one last time then nodded to Marigold as she went out the door. She should have said something to his sister, something comforting, but it was taking every ounce of Quinn’s willpower to walk away from Luke Dashwood.