the door swings open and the doctor walks in, Lily and the guys on his heels. “Well Max, you sure don’t waste any time. Already claimed her, huh?” he says, chuckling, but stills when he feels the angry waves coming off of my body. He should have kept his damned mouth shut. “Sorry. I thought…”
“You thought wrong. Right now, we need to figure out what to do to help her,” I snap, staring daggers at him. If he didn’t have the means to help my mate, I’d rip his fucking throat out.
“What does claimed mean?” Kenly asks the room. “Is it like belonging to someone, being their husband or wife?” Damn she’s smart. I like that shit.
“Yes, little one. Don’t you worry about a thing.” I nod to Lily who touches her arm, but I don’t let her go. “Doctor, set up over there.” I lift my chin, gesturing to the side of the room, and he snaps out of whatever is going on in his head and gets to work.
“No. I want to know,” Kenly demands. Damn, she’s a spitfire and I fucking love it. My still-hard cock stiffens even more and she gasps, no doubt feeling it against her.
I bend down to her ear, no longer able to hold it in. “It means that you are my mate. Mine. I have claimed you to all of my pack. Once you change, we’ll figure everything out. But all I want you to do right now is focus on these next few days.” I shouldn’t have told her all of this. She has so much to focus on right now, but it’s out there and I’m a bit relieved for it. I’m not a hider. I’m a straight talker. Even keeping that shit from her for a few hours was too much.
“Have you gone mad?” She tries to pull out of my arms, but doesn’t succeed. Wolves have an abundance of strength and endurance, something she will find out really quickly.
“Calm down, little one. It’ll all work out.”
“I don’t even know you,” she hisses and Lily chuckles. I glare. Lily tries to hide it, but doesn’t succeed.
“Nor I, you. With wolves it’s all about smell. We smell our other halves and I smell you.” She licks her bottom lip again and it takes everything I have not to crush my lips to hers.
“I can’t smell anything and I’m not even a wolf yet. What is there to smell?”
Before I can answer the doctor does. “You have the wolves’ saliva mixed in with your blood. From the wolves that attacked you. That’s what the beta is picking up on.” I turn Kenly around in my arms, her back to my front, as we listen to the doctor. “My research over the past three hundred years is shaky, because we haven’t had many cases of human-to-wolf transformations. But from what I could gather, as soon as the wolf bites the human, they release their DNA or magic into their bloodstream. One bite will not allow a human to transfer. Two bites, either. We don’t have a specific number but in your case, from what I hear, you have forty to fifty bites. That is way too many not to transfer. The last two women I monitored, one had four bites and the other five.” He looks down at his feet. “And I’m sorry to say, they didn’t make it.”
Kenly’s shoulders shake and she sinks further into me. She takes a huge inhalation of breath, exhaling while words begin to form on her lips. “Okay. So there’s a strong possibility that I might die, or I could transfer back to human by finding a light and go about my normal life.”
Now is my turn to tense. If she thinks for one damn second she is leaving me, she has some enlightening to do. No way am I letting her go, especially if she pulls through this.
“Ma’am, the chances of you going back to your old life are slim. Wolves don’t last confined, that is why this place is so massive.” The doctor pulls out some needles, setting them on the bedside table along with some other medical shit. I have no idea what any of it is.
“I’ll be fine. I can bounce back from anything. I’ve got this.” Her smell changes and while there is apprehension still, there is also determination