Paging Doctor Wolf

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  Paging Doctor Wolf

  Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Royce

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-333-4

  Cover art by LFD Designs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

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  1Night Stand Stories

  I’ll Be Mated for Christmas

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  Believe in Me

  Stories in The Edge Shifters & Bikers Series

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  Bar Mate

  Mate By the Music

  Out of Place Mate

  Paging Doctor Wolf

  A 1Night Stand Story

  by

  Rebecca Royce

  Chapter One

  Dallas Olson stared at his computer screen and took another sip of coffee. The liquid scorched his tongue, and he hissed before setting the cup back down on the desk. Madame Eve had found him a match. Reading the e-mail for the fifth time, he grinned widely, the words finally sinking into his tired brain.

  In a million years, he’d never thought he’d use a dating service to set him up with a one-night stand. But then, he’d never anticipated how busy being the chief of trauma surgery at the Anchorage Medical Center would be either. The only women he met were those he worked with, and as he’d had to leave San Francisco to get away from his ex-wife with whom he’d shared a practice, he had no interest in repeating mistakes of the past by mixing business with pleasure.

  He couldn’t date where he worked.

  But next Saturday night he’d be meeting Cara Johnson….

  The door to his office flew open and a nurse from the first floor burst in, out of breath. “Doctor, we need you in the ER right away. A man has come in. It looks like wolves have torn him apart. Everyone is going crazy downstairs. The operator isn’t answering her phone, and I couldn’t find anyone to page you in all the chaos so I charged right up. I think some of the staff has fled the hospital.”

  Wolves? Inside the hospital? What the hell?

  “Thanks, Bev. I’ll be right there.” He hoped he sounded calm because his heart rate had doubled with nervous energy flowing through his veins.

  While other people panicked, he never did. Trauma surgery suited him. The calmer he stayed, the better the results.

  Watching Beverly run from the room, he stood, putting his arms into his jacket. He couldn’t think about his date right then even as her information stared at him from the computer screen. But later, he’d give the upcoming meeting his full attention.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, he arrived to find a chaotic scene more appropriate for a movie rather than the orderly emergency room he’d grown accustomed to handling. What had happened?

  People scrambled everywhere, some crying and others hiding while three black wolves growled and circled a bed. The man on the bed, presumably the one who’d been attacked and would be his trauma patient when he could actually get to him, sat and growled back at them through clenched teeth.

  Growling? Beverly had reported his patient had been torn to pieces by wolves.

  One of the nurses grabbed him by the arm. “Dr. Olson. Please, you have to help us. The wolves are everywhere; they’re threatening anyone who tries to get near the bed. Nobody understands what’s happening.” Tears flowed down her face.

  “Okay. Has anyone called the police? Animal control?”

  The woman’s hand shook. “I have no idea.”

  “In case no one has, please go call again. I’m going to go see what I can do about the wolves.”

  Although he had no idea what that might actually entail. How had they even gotten into the building to begin with?

  Maybe he could get the wolves to retreat. Moving forward, he grabbed a broom leaning against the wall someone had discarded, probably during the melee going on. It would have to do as some kind of weapon.

  “Hey!” The three circling canines turned in unison to stare at him. “Back off!”

  The closest wolf raised a lip in a threatening snarl. Disconcerting. The same wolf then bent lower to the floor, growling again.

  Damn. He wished he had more than a broom. The wolves appeared to communicate with one another, moving in unison, taking direction from the one making the most noise.

  The man on the bed rose to his knees and howled at the ceiling. The wolf bites associated with an attack amazingly seemed to be healing. In fact, the howling man ripped the bandages off his chest.

  “Okay.” In general, as a trauma doctor, Dallas knew when to say enough and the current situation fell way outside of his realm of expertise. “I’ll back off. You can work this out yourselves.”

  Knowing his colleagues would think him out of his mind, but he’d give an oath if asked, that the creatures seemed to understand him. The lead wolf lunged and he knew death approached when he saw it in the canine’s eyes.

  Using the broom as his only defense, he whacked him in the head. It slowed the assault but didn’t stop the wolf from attacking again. He didn’t move fast enough and the wolf jumped him.

  Instinct made him land with a roll. A few seconds became a lifetime. He saw the bite in his mind’s eye before actually being assaulted, yet nothing could have prepared him for the pain. The animal’s large mouth tore into his arm. It didn’t hurt at first, since he could only stare as if he seeing the attack from a distance. Then the flames of horrific agony pounded through his body and he cried out, wishing to black out. If he lived another day, he’d be more sympathetic to his patient’s distress. Nothing could be worse than the bite of a wolf.

  Until the second wolf bit him.

  ***

  Cara Johnson hurried along the road toward her Alpha’s house with nervous energy pulsing through her veins. When the Alpha called her out in the middle of the night to come to his place, she booked it there fast.
>
  Relax, maybe they just want you to babysit your delicious nephew. Even her internal dialogue didn’t make her feel calmer.

  Rounding the corner, she took the stairs to Luke and Bethany’s house two at a time. Before she raised her hand to knock on the door, it swung open, and Lucian answered. As wolves, they were able to smell each other and didn’t require doorbells or knockers. But Bethany, her older human half-sister, didn’t have wolf-blood, and preferred they observe the custom of announcing their arrival.

  “There’s no time to waste on doorbells.” Luke’s voice was tense and his usual scent of authority held a mixture of nervous energy she didn’t like.

  Bowing her head, she nodded. “My Alpha.”

  “Come.” He motioned her inside and she followed him to the back of the house, her own heart rate kicking up a notch with every moment that passed.

  “Is it Bethany and John?” If something had happened to her sister and nephew, she would slaughter whoever had harmed them.

  “No.” Lucian shook his head and closed the door behind them after Cara entered the room. “If something had happened to my family, I’d be ripping apart the world.”

  “Yes, of course.” She sat in the chair assigned for guests. “And Jack is fine?” Her brother had recently mated and announced that they were having a baby.

  “Also fine.”

  “Then why did you call me?” Unlike her brother, she hadn’t yet become a pack enforcer. She didn’t get contacted during emergencies. Well, not usually.

  “Do you remember your date that got canceled three weeks ago?”

  How could she forget? She didn’t generally ‘date’ and certainly not with humans. Lately, however, she’d felt wistful and sort of…strange. Bethany had married and had a baby. Jack had mated a woman with a child and they were having another one.

  Cara had her work. The pack might even fall to financial ruin without her accounting skills. She had her role and her wolf could fight with the best of them. Yet she’d been somewhat discontented, as though the things that had always amused her no longer did. She’d signed up for the 1Night Stand dating service that had set up her siblings with their loved ones. Madame Eve had found her a match and then promptly canceled the date.

  “Yes.” The fast ending of the date that never happened had convinced her she’d made a mistake signing up for the thing in the first place.

  “I got a very odd text from Madame Eve this morning telling me to look at the third page of the newspaper today.” He held out the paper to her.

  The article told of an attack three weeks earlier in Anchorage. A doctor had nearly been killed when four wolves burst into the emergency room and caused havoc. The wolves had vanished while the doctor nearly expired from multiple wolf bites.

  He’d lived and finally been released from the hospital, although the reporter said his physician expected him to require months of physical therapy on his left arm.

  Below the picture of a good-looking blond man, who humans would probably describe as a surfer dude, wore a white lab coat with the hospital emblem. His name tag read Dallas Olson. The same name that Madame Eve had sent her before she’d later canceled the evening.

  She gasped. “My date got attacked by wolves?”

  “Not just wolves.” Luke sighed. “I sent some of the enforcers to the hospital to sniff around. They told me what I already suspected.”

  Cara anticipated his next sentence, having heard similar stories her whole life. “They’re shifters.”

  “Rogues. No pack. Scourges.” He slammed his hand on the table. “They are the reason we’re all going to be found out.”

  She had heard his rants about the non-pack wolves before. Yes, they tended to be very violent. From personal experience, she understood more than most about the damage a lone wolf could do. One had killed her mother. At the moment, however, the doctor’s face in the newspaper article held her total attention.

  “Luke,” she interrupted, something she wouldn’t normally do with her Alpha. “He lived.”

  Lucian nodded. “By some miracle. He’s one of the few.”

  “But he’ll have no idea.” He would think he’d lived through an attack and have no clue as to exactly how much his life had changed. Most wolves were born as wolves. Some humans could be converted but only after being forcibly bitten. Why some died and others lived still remained a mystery to their scientists. To change a human, even ones who wanted it, went strictly against the law. No humans could be allowed to attempt to convert, either forcibly or with consent. End of story.

  “I know.” Luke held up his phone. “I got a second message from Madame Eve. She’d like you to meet him at the Castillo Lodge tomorrow morning.”

  “In Castle? Tomorrow?” She bit her lip as her mind started calculating all the things she’d need for the journey. One evening didn’t leave her much time to get ready. She’d started to mentally pack when her mind ground to a halt. “Why does Eve want me to meet him? She can’t want us to have a date. The man got attacked. He can’t be feeling up to it.”

  “I don’t know what Madame Eve wants.” Lucian shrugged. “I need you to go get him and bring him back here. Do I need to remind you how little time we have until the next full moon?”

  She did a quick count of the days. Usually, she didn’t have to know. If she’d lived off pack land, she’d have to be aware constantly, but she lived in Delta, a werewolf town. Full moons came and went. Since she almost never left Delta, it didn’t matter.

  “We only have a week left until the moon cycle is complete.”

  Luke nodded. “Go get him. He can’t have a shift without us. If he shifts on his own, he’ll panic and history shows us that changing alone for the first time tends to produce rogue wolves. Someday, I swear we’ll know why that is, but for now, we need to focus on retrieving him and bringing him here. Or if he doesn’t want to come to Delta, he needs another pack. We can help him. Don’t let him remain alone. I don’t want to hunt and kill him.”

  “Maybe someone else would be better for this.” She didn’t think she should be given the job of talking to people. The pack had ambassadors. She handled the money, not delicate explanations of life and death circumstances.

  Luke growled, narrowing his eyes. “Are you questioning me?”

  What had happened to her good sense? She whimpered, falling to her knees. “No, my Alpha. No.” One simply didn’t argue with the Alpha.

  “Then get yourself to Castle. We need him here. I won’t have another lone wolf out there causing havoc, uncontrolled, unprotected.”

  She didn’t need to be told what would happen to her would-be date if he shifted without the pack. Luke’s enforcers would hunt him down, as she imagined they already were with the four wolves that had attacked the man. If Dallas had not yet caused any harm, he’d be given the chance to join her pack. If he had, the enforcers would end him.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I suppose if Madame Eve thought we would suit for one night, then maybe we will get along well enough that I can talk him into believing in the unbelievable.”

  “Either that or you can hit him over the head and drag him back.”

  She might have laughed if she’d thought he was joking. But Luke’s serious scent wafted through the room.

  ***

  What the hell had he been thinking agreeing to come to Castle for a date mere days after he’d gotten out of the hospital? Dallas rubbed his arm. He should be in bed, doped up on painkillers…except the medications that should have been keeping him knocked out weren’t exactly working.

  Edginess made him snippy and for some reason years of medical school couldn’t help him explain, everything smelled completely different than it used to. His last days in the hospital had nearly destroyed him, thanks to the eye-burning intensity of the disinfectant they used to scrub the floors. In the past, he’d hardly ever noticed the smell.

  And the sick people. He loved being a doctor more than anything in the universe, yet their scent made him want t
o turn around and run from the building—which he hadn’t been able to do because he’d been unexplainably on death’s door for days without anyone able to make sense of his blood work or his body’s reaction to his injuries.

  He stormed to the window of the hotel room and stared out at the landscape of Castle, Alaska in the fall, courtesy of the Castillo Lodge. So beautiful. Even though he could barely walk without pain, all he wanted to do was remove all of his clothes and run around the grounds of the remote location until he’d seen every inch of it.

  Run around naked? Seriously?

  Hell, he had to get out of there. As a trauma surgeon, he knew when a patient displayed symptoms of stress after an attack and if he’d been treating himself, he’d recommend an immediate psychiatric evaluation. Where had he put his bag?

  The door to the hotel room opened with a thud and he whirled around.

  Walking through the doorway, framed by the natural light coming in through the windows of the hall, stood a woman who made his heart skip a beat. Barbie. A ridiculous thought, but he couldn’t help the comparison. Cara Johnson, his date, looked like a brunette version of Barbie come to life.

  Tall, slender, with legs that didn’t quit, she had curves in all the right places. Her oval face, with cheekbones women paid plastic surgeons thousands of dollars for, imprinted on his mind.

  Her hair, dark and sleek, fell down her back and matched her dark brown eyes. She looked at him with an assessing glint, and he wondered if she wanted to turn around and run the other way. He didn’t look great. With the scars, bandages, and a sling, he appeared like he’d just stepped out of a car wreck. She must be questioning what the fuck she’d been handed for the night. Even after tonight, he’d never forget her.

  As he registered her physical beauty, the strange part of him that he couldn’t identify or get rid of also noted she smelled like pure heaven. Sweet but not overly saturated. Clean but not like disinfectant. And feminine. He growled before he could stop himself. Horrified, he put a hand over his mouth and turned his back on his date who should be sprinting like hell down the hall by now.