Treasure

Coral watched Rori speed away on top of the trailer in disbelief. “Call everyone off, she’s gone. She jumped onto a fucking truck on the highway,” she sent to the others. Even if they got back to their vehicles, the truck had too big a head start. It had already disappeared around the bend.

“She did WHAT?” She shook her head as she caught her breath. “Retreat to the nearest vehicles and report in. Coral, this is on you.” The Beta was pissed, rightly so. She had underestimated the little red wolf twice, once by thinking she couldn’t fight like her, and then thinking she was trapped. She wasn’t the only one, Roberts was out of commission with a shredded knee, but she was the one who failed to take her down when she had the chance.

It wouldn’t happen again.

She trotted back north, to the gap in the fence she had gone through. The other wolves followed her while the ones in human form retreated back up the hill to the waiting vehicles. She lagged behind the others on the way up the hill, the wounds on her stomach were still bleeding and she was weak. The others had already shifted, some pulling on the extra shorts and shirts they kept in the vehicles, when she jumped in the vehicle in wolf form. “Don’t shift,” Martinez said. He got out a first aid kit as they drove off, just before a couple Harleys turned into the road they had just left.

Coral laid on her back as Martinez used alcohol wipes to clean the wounds, then superglued the skin together. He was finished as they pulled into the motel parking lot they were staying at. She shifted and pulled her clothes back on, trying not to show the pain she was in.

Two of their three vehicles were now damaged, and that presented a danger if anyone had seen them force the van to a halt; even without that, the Club members might have gotten their plates. “Olson, Roberts, you drive these cars back to the Bitterroot Pack and have them repaired there. Leave now, and don’t stop except for gas. I’ll have them send replacements for you with new vehicles.”

“Yes Beta,” they said. As soon as Coral was out, Olson was backing out of the lot. She moved slowly towards her room, but Beta Carlson called her to his instead. “After action critique and food first,” he said. She nodded and turned to his room, followed by the others. They gathered around the table in his room as he laid his iPad down, showing a map of the area they had attempted the snatch.

The critique rules were simple; everything was discussed, and nothing was perfect. The Beta was adamant that nothing was done so well it couldn’t be done better, so over the next two hours they critiqued everything from the surveillance to their retreat from the area. There was a lot of discussion on the chase and how one untrained she-wolf had evaded a half-dozen highly trained Enforcers. From her contacts with Roberts, who was participating by phone, and Coral’s description of her brief battle, it was clear she was more than a scared teenager. “She’s had training,” the Beta concluded. “Not in a Pack, but we know she has MMA training and being with the motorcycle gang, she must have gotten more. The wolf was instinctual, but she’s tough enough to take a shot and get back up.”

“It’s not just instinct, her wolf is calculating and bold,” Coral said. “This wasn’t a run by a frightened or feral wolf, just running without thinking. She got over a fence Martinez couldn’t clear by finding a boulder to leap off, and she picked that semi-truck and made a leap I’d never make. Yes, she was afraid, but she was thinking on her feet too.”

They had gotten lucky, no one had called 911, and their tech guy didn’t see anything on the scanner. With luck, no one would notice the damage to vehicles on the road until the morning, and by then the SUV’s that were involved would be in Montana. The pizzas they had ordered had arrived with the cokes, and Coral ate quickly before excusing herself back to her room. “Coral?”

“Yes Beta?”

“You’re to take a week to recover. Go home, see your brother, whatever, just give me a call when you are back to full strength.” She nodded, he was right. She’d left her stomach open and Rori had shredded the muscles, and she’d lost a lot of blood. Her werewolf healing would repair everything in less than a week, and in the meantime, she’d get her first vacation since joining the Council Pack. She would sleep, then go stay with her brother until he was off work long enough to go back home with her.

Donna was screaming out her sixth orgasm of the night when her phone started ringing. “Ignore it, we’re on our honeymoon,” Roadkill said as he pounded up into her. The sheets were pooled around their legs, and he sucked hard on a hanging nipple as she rode him through it. The stimulation spun her right into another, and this time he joined her, shooting his load deep inside. She collapsed on his chest, her body still twitching around his cock as she laid her head on his broad chest.

“I love you,” she said as she relaxed into his hug. He fell out, unleashing a flood, and he rolled her to the side. “God, I’m a mess.”

His phone started ringing, and he rolled over and grabbed it. “Take a shower, I’ll join you in a minute,” he said. “Wolfman’s calling.”

She got up, showing off her still-hot body as she walked to the bathroom of their Florida Keys vacation rental. They planned to spend their honeymoon in their room or their private beach, with as few clothes as possible. She was about to close the door when she heard him yell, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY TOOK HER?”

She ran back to him, sitting next to him on the bed, and asked him to put him on speaker. “What’s going on with my baby?”

“A team of armed men stopped our van on the way home from the airport. Rori jumped out, taking out one of them, then took off running.” Her hand went to her mouth as she gasped. “I’m sorry, we couldn’t find her or them. She’s just gone.”

“Oh god oh god oh god…”

“We’ve got everyone out looking. We’ll get her back, Possum.”

“We’ve got to go,” she said as she jumped up, pulling her bag out and throwing stuff from the drawers into it. She barely heard Roadkill hanging up as the tears fell, she had lost her, she failed her. She sank to the floor, holding her head in her hands. “It’s all my fault,” she said.

“Nothing is your fault,” he said as he knelt in front of her.

“It is, if I hadn’t brought her back for the wedding, they found her on the way home!”

“You don’t know that, baby. It could have been anything.” She shuddered as he held her tight. “Take your shower, I’ll get tickets to Seattle and we’ll be there as quick as we can,” he said. She wrapped her arms around his neck, unable to even talk. It took a few minutes before she caught her breath, and she kept hold of him as he picked her up and walked her to the bathroom. “Clean up, all right?”

It was almost four in the morning by the time they got on the road, and the first flight to Seattle was at eight. Roadkill’s big Electra Glide had Bluetooth communication with noise cancelling between the two of them, and he used his phone to talk to everyone while they drove there. Mongo promised any help he could get and volunteered to talk to the Regional President. They talked to Wolfman again a few times; they still had no leads and were calling in help from other Chapters to help in the search. They parked the Harley in the lot at the Miami airport and raced inside just in time to make the flight.

It wasn’t until they landed and she turned the phone on that they got the voice mail from an unknown number in the 206 area code. She gave Roadkill one of the earphones as she pressed play. “Mrs. King, this is Doctor Woodson at the Fairfax Behavioral Health Center in Kirkland. I need you to contact the hospital at 206-555-1212 as soon as possible regarding your daughter.”

With shaking hands, she dialed the number and waited for an answer. By the time they left the airport in a car Wolfman sent for them, she felt a lot better. Rori was safe, but under a psych hold after another blackout episode. She gave them access to her health care records and insurance information as they drove north towards Seattle.

Doctor Chase Nygaard pulled into the physician’s lot of the Kirkland hospital just after 5:30 in the evening. He’d worked a 24-hour shift, had 24 hours off which he mostly spent sleeping, and now was starting another 24-hour shift. When he got off on Tuesday night, he would be off until Friday morning. He couldn’t wait to get back to the Cascade Pack and eat his Mom’s cooking and run with the Pack again. The noise, smells and congestion of the Seattle metroplex were tough on him.

He turned off his Harley Fat Boy and put his helmet on the handlebars. Riding his Harley was the closest thing he had to running in wolf form in the city, so he rode every chance he could get. Walking in the staff entrance, he said hello politely to his coworkers, including a couple nurses who were shamelessly flirting with him. None had been successful in getting as much as a hug from him; none were his mate, and he had no interest in any other woman until he found her.

He put his riding gear in his locker and changed into scrubs and a lab coat, arriving at the main desk five minutes early. The Center was a psychiatric teaching hospital, so he was working under an Attending Psychiatrist in patient care. The two would be walking down the patients on the floor today, covering any details on treatment. Of course, it was also time for his Attending to probe his knowledge of diagnosis and treatment options. They day would start hard and not stop until the next night at seven.

Most of the patients had been there since his last shift, so those were easy, but two new patients had arrived overnight. The first was a suicide attempt by pills, a veteran who struggled with PTSD. The second was more interesting.

“This one arrived on a seventy-two-hour psych hold last night. She was found by police in an alley, naked and covered in blood, with the remains of a raccoon around her. When she woke up, she had no idea what had happened.” The offgoing attending had that look to him, like he was going to show him something new and different.

“Rabies shot?” He looked at his iPad which had her patient history summary. “This has happened before. Psychotic breaks, paranoid schizophrenia, she’s spent months in institutions.” Chase skimmed through the pages; an otherwise innocent girl with violent outbursts she couldn’t remember. “Drug treatment was partially successful.”

“Apparently, but the drugs would seem to help, and they would turn her loose. Now she’s eighteen, so she can’t be held beyond the 72 hours without a judge authorizing it.”

“And that will require us to determine she is a danger to herself or others.”

“Correct. Without regular medication she will continue to have these episodes, I’m afraid. The tragedy is that the patient doesn’t want the side effects, so they don’t take them. An easily controlled psychosis then grows to significant, even violent episodes. She’s lucky she wasn’t attacked or raped while she was out, and the man who found her called the police.”

They reached the door to her room, and his wolf suddenly was forward in my mind. He opened the door and the scent hit me like a train. “MATE,” his wolf said in his head.

She looked up at him, the most beautiful woman Chase had ever seen. Red hair, wide eyes, and no recognition of him as the one Luna made just for her. He stepped into the room, his eyes fixed on hers while his wolf pushed to be let out. “Let me go,” she said.

Never.