Chapter Three
Lindsey wasted no time in finding what she needed to take care of the wolf. She was able to maneuver him onto an old towel and placed a heating pad behind him to keep his body temperature up. Grabbing her suture kit from the bathroom, she slid onto the floor next to him. He was awake but not as alert as he should have been and his breathing was labored.
“Come on buddy, hang in there.” She said.
She talked to him as she worked, it soothed her and he seemed to like it too.
“I think I heard your friends out there,” she said as she probed his wounds to make sure she wasn’t going to stich up anything in the wounds that wasn’t supposed to be there.
“They seem like nice wolves I guess,” She said to him. The last patch of fur was almost sewn back together. Sitting back to look at her handiwork, she saw his breathing was already starting to return to normal. The last thing she wanted to do was give him a hormone inject that also had the primary immunizations for dogs. She prepped the needle and positioned herself put it in his skin. He started to growl though, and she froze.
“What’s wrong honey? I just stuck you a dozen times with a needle to do stitches and now you are scared of one?” She said as she moved to give him the injection once again.
Again the wolf growled, this time, it was far more vocal and followed by a series of howls from the wolves outside. Lindsey froze, she didn’t know why but something about that needle wasn’t right. Instead of forcing the wolf to submit to the injection, she placed it on the counter. Maybe tomorrow she would be able to give it to him, but tonight it wasn’t happening. She took off her surgical gloves and cleaned up the mess. Knowing she couldn’t leave him alone, she found an old blanket and laid down next to the wolf on the hard kitchen floor.
“You have to pull through, you just have to,” she said to the wolf.
The tears were starting to prickle at her eyes. This was the first time that she had stopped moving since the attempted rape, and the force of what she had survived came crashing down on her. If it hadn’t been for the wolf, she would have been raped and probably left for dead. Tomorrow she would go to the police. What would she tell them though, that she was saved by a wild animal that wasn’t native to this area? She would sound insane. She also had to find out what to do about Dr. Beyer.
Lindsey started to doze off to sleep, tomorrow she would need to find out what to do. Tomorrow, just not tonight.
***
The next morning, she awoke confused and sore. It took her a minute to remember what had happened. Immediately, Lindsey looked to the wolf. He was asleep, but his breathing was returned to normal.
“Thank god,” she said. She stood and found her phone. She needed to talk to Amy right away. After a quick shower and agreeing to meet Amy in town for coffee, she went back to the kitchen to check on her friend one more time before leaving.
“I’ll be back soon buddy, I just need someone to talk too, someone who talks back,” she said.
She lifted his bandages to see how her stitches were holding up.
She sucked in a sharp breath and whispered, “impossible.”
The wounds were almost healed. Once more she looked down at the wolf. Something strange was going on. She had never seen an animal heal so quickly. Lindsey made a mental note to take a closer look at the beast’s blood when she got back. Maybe there was something more to him than just his size. She left the house with more questions than she had answers. She met Amy at the coffee shop.
“Oh my god! You look like hell! What happened?” Asked Amy, shocked at the bruises that covered Lindsey’s body.
As they sat down, Lindsey filled her friend in on everything that happened the night before, including the massive beast laying on her kitchen floor. Her friend listened with anger, then horror. Followed by sympathy, awe, and back to anger.
“So what’s the next step?” Asked Amy, when Lindsey shrugged her shoulders, her friend continued, “are you joking? Go to the police. You said you think that the doctor had something to do with it right?”
Lindsey nodded her head.
“You know, this morning I went to pick up my paycheck and I saw some kid in an ATC jersey walking out of his office with a limp. He looked pissed too. Do you think they could have been frat boys?”
“I know they could be, the one who was talking had on a jersey too. I didn’t think anything of it until you just said something,” replied Lindsey.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Could her boss really be involved with her attackers? Lindsey decided that either way, her best approach would be to involve the police.
“Your right. I’m going to go home and check on the wolf then I am going to go down to the station,” she said as she rose up from her seat.
She looked out the glass windows of the coffee shop, and her face went pale. Across the street from them was Dr. Beyer. Lindsey sat back down and spoke quickly to Amy. Amy saw the look of horror on her face and followed her gaze.
“What is he doing here?” said Amy.
When Amy looked up, her friend was already gone.
Lindsey snuck from the coffee shop through the backdoor, ignoring the cussing from employees insisting she wasn’t allowed back there. When she circled the coffee shop she saw the doctor walking in. Her car was right in front. She ran to the driver’s side door and climbed in just as the doctor ran out of the coffee shop and up to her door, but she had already locked it.
“Lindsey, open the door,” he said.
She looked at him in horror as she fumbled with shaking hands to get her key in the ignition.
“Lindsey, where the wolf? I know you're hiding him.” He said as he slammed his hand down into her glass.
She found her key and stuck it in the ignition before gunning the engine. She pulled out into traffic, electing a round of horns from oncoming traffic but she didn’t care. She had to get away from him. As she sped through the streets, her mind raced. Lindsey didn’t know why but she felt herself being pulled back to her home. Something about the wolf, something about the doctor’s interest in him. Lindsey drove past the police station and onto the highway that would take her home.
When she skidded to a halt in her driveway, she was relieved to see her house just as she left it. The seclusion of the farmhouse gave her comfort and calmed her rattled nerves. She slipped the key into her front door and went inside, tossing her keys off to the side as she went. For the first time, she locked the door behind her and headed directly to the kitchen to check on the wolf. When she turned into the kitchen, she gasped.
The wolf was no longer laying on the floor. He was nowhere in sight. In his place though was a rugged looking man with a perfectly tanned and chiseled body. He had markings on both his arms that looked like tattoos of some sort. His leg and chest had stiches covering up healed wounds. She knew those wounds and the stitches. They were the wounds that she had stitched on the wolf not even twenty-four hours ago. His eyes, stunning and blue were the same color as the wolf.
There was no doubt in Lindsey’s mind, the gorgeous man standing naked in her kitchen was the wolf.