Page 12 of The Enforcers: NOAH

Chapter 5

Noah should have been waiting impatiently for Mina and Brock to leave, but when he watched them walking out the door a couple of hours later, it was all he could do to stop himself from giving a mournful howl.

He wanted them to stay. Something had happened to him when the two of them stood with their hands around his muzzle. Instead of a cold abyss in the center of his soul, he’d felt something tiny and warm, like a faraway sun.

Now that they were leaving, his life suddenly looked even darker and more lonely.

With a sigh, he shifted painfully to human. As his legs grew larger the splint burst and the bandages squeezed the wound painfully. He ripped the gauze off and blood rushed back to the area with an aching throb.

He examined the wound, looking at the neat rows of stitches all the way around his leg. That monstrosity of a trap had damn near severed it. Without the surgery, he would never have walked right again.

That thought made him nauseous. Not being able to run, to protect himself, to protect a mate.

He owed Mina big time. She’d hauled his big-ass unconscious carcass out of the woods by herself, which meant she’d probably strained half her muscles, and then she’d likely stayed up the rest of the night piecing his leg back together.

And for that, she got a raft of shit from her asshole ex.

He needed to do something about that. Noah Reilly was a wolf who paid his debts.

He just had to find out what she needed. But first, he had to get the hell out of here.

The problem was, he couldn’t risk being seen by anyone, or caught on security cameras. He had to wait until it was full dark and there was no one around. He also had to find a wolf-friendly exit and make his escape look good, because it would raise a dozen red flags if it looked like Mina’s wolf opened his own cage and strolled out the front door.

He flexed his damaged leg, then got his feet under him to see how much weight it would take.

Not bad. He could walk on it. It was pretty damn stiff and sore, but another day or so should finish the healing. There was definitely going to be a permanent scar, though.

Noah reached through the mesh and undid the cage door bolts. Then he shifted to wolf and mangled the door with his claws and strong jaws, so it would look like he chewed his way out.

He found a drawer with Mina’s clean scrubs and searched through them until he found some pants that would fit him. Then he sat down at her office computer and went to work.

First he checked the location of the clinic. It was in one of the small Nashville suburbs, only about ten miles from the Nashville pack’s estate, on the edge of the same forest land. Piece of cake to get back there from here, even on a half-healed leg.

Then he started looking for her research files—and found more than he bargained for. He paged through document after document, barely aware of the time passing.

Aramina Reston had a brilliant scholastic career, specializing in mammal biology and behavior. She’d been accepted to a special accelerated program that merged advanced undergrad work with doctoral courses in veterinary medicine, emerging as a qualified veterinary surgeon and researcher in only six years.

She was twenty-nine, five years older than Noah’s twenty-four.

Huh. He’d always liked older women.

Stop that, he told himself. It’s fake love, just like all the others. And she’s a human, so it’s not even fake bonding love, just desperation.

She’d gone from grad school to a prestigious research grant in the Alaskan bush, studying an isolated pack of “genetically unique” wolves.

She’d been there only a short time when all hell had broken loose.

From the news stories Noah pieced together, as well as Mina’s own notes, it seemed that Mina had managed to befriend a reclusive researcher named Justin Adams who’d bonded with the pack, kind of like the way Timothy Treadwell had bonded with his grizzly bear friends.

And with no better results.

According to the official story, the wolves had gone rogue and attacked a group of hunters. Adams tried to defend them. No one was clear on exactly what went down, but Adams had been brutally killed, along with most of the wolf pack, and his cabin had burned.

Mina had been found in the ruins, holding Adams’ body, completely traumatized.

She’d been in a psychiatric hospital for weeks, and the news stories he found hinted that she’d never regained her mental balance. Soon after, she’d married Robert Wells, one of the hunters who’d found her in the ruined cabin.

And dropped off the face of the earth, as far as wildlife research was concerned.