Page 60 of Wolf Bound

“You were going to kill a dog?” Fisher asked.

“No. I mean, Reggie was just protecting us. He ran at the dog, but she was backed in a corner. She couldn’t get out of the situation without reacting. She bit him on the arm, and he cried out and dropped the knife. My cousin grabbed the knife to keep the wild dog away from Reggie before she bit him again. The dog attacked him next, and bit him on the wrist, but he cut her, and she yelped.”

Kira shook her head. These guys needed to be incarcerated.

“What? She was vicious.”

“How did you get bitten?” Kira asked.

Royce rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at the table. “Oscar turned me. The dog leapt at Oscar and knocked him down on the pavement, knocking him out. Reggie ran for the car, leaving us behind. I shook Oscar, trying to get him to wake up and then he came to, and the dog took off. I got Oscar into the car and Reggie drove to the clinic. At the clinic, we had to wait for a couple of hours, and then Oscar and Reggie had stitches and we left. Once we were in Reggie’s SUV, he suddenly said, ‘I’m burning up.’ I asked if he thought he had an infection, but I figured that was too soon for it to appear. But he was frantic and yanked the vehicle off the road and parked. Then, I thought maybe it was because he was drunk. He began to yank off his clothes. Which was too bizarre to consider.”

Kira didn’t believe so, knowing just the reason for Reggie’s frantic actions that night.

17

While still questioning Royce at the Yuma Town sheriff’s office, Fisher could understand why a she-wolf—who had been alone and threatened by three drunk men—had to react in any way that she could to save herself. He reached over and took hold of Kira’s hand on her lap and squeezed, hoping that she wasn’t feeling bad about her own experience as a child.

She smiled at him and squeezed his hand in response.

He wondered what had happened to the she-wolf who had bitten the kidnappers. Was she a lone wolf? Maybe that’s why she hadn’t done anything about the men she had turned. He could see why she would have had difficulty dealing with them further if she didn’t have a pack to back her up. Though they still couldn’t allow the men to be on the loose. They had to resolve the situation.

“Reggie yanked off his clothes and then?” Fisher asked Royce.

“I thought maybe the dog that had bitten my cousin and Reggie was rabid. But Reggie wasn’t foaming at the mouth. Then he turned into a dog. Or a wolf, we later realized. So that gave us a whole different perspective on the situation. I was in the front passenger seat when all this was happening. I jerked off my seatbelt and grabbed the door handle. But the door was locked. Then I heard a low growl coming from the backseat. My heart was beating so hard that I felt it was going to jump right out of my chest and I was sweating up a storm. I glanced at the back seat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Oscar’s clothes were on the back seat, a dog was sitting on top of them, and Oscar was gone. The only explanation was that he was now the dog, just like what had happened to Reggie.”

“Then Oscar bit you?” Kira asked.

“He was still growling at me. I mean, I was drunk so I wondered if I might be hallucinating. Maybe someone had even slipped something into my drink at the bar. I was in a panic to leave the vehicle, hallucinations or not. Then the dog in the backseat climbed over the console and bit my arm as if to tell me to stay in the vehicle. I cried out. Hell, that hurt, and he broke the skin. I was bleeding and I was angry and terrified. I fumbled with the door again, but I swear my brain was all mush. I did have the thought that we couldn’t return to the same clinic so that I could get patched up this time. I mean, how could I explain that this time I was bitten by a new dog if the same medical staff that saw to Reggie and Oscar took care of my bite? But then it began healing on its own.”

“When did you figure out that you were wolves?” Fisher asked.

“About an hour later, I felt the change and I had to take off my clothes and turn into a wolf. I kept thinking that we couldn’t turn into dogs. Then I thought of werewolves and that we really were bigger, like the one who had bitten my cousin and Reggie. I couldn’t see what I looked like, except my legs and feet, and my bushy tail. Then Oscar howled. Reggie joined him. It took me a minute before I was willing to give it a try. I howled and realized how easy it was. It made me think about every werewolf movie I had ever seen. That’s when I saw the full moon on the clear black night. Once Reggie was able to turn back into a human, he dressed and drove us to his home. At least he was pretty much sober by then. I was sitting there as a wolf and couldn’t change back. My cousin was human again and was stretched out on the back seat, naked, snoring loudly.”

“Then you realized you couldn’t deal with the issue of being wolf shifters,” Kira said. “And left Denver.”

“Hell, we couldn’t control the shifting. One minute, we were eating breakfast at Reggie’s house, and the next, he was shifting, growling, mad over his loss of control. But also what was worrisome was we thought someone had been prowling around the outside of his house.”

“The she-wolf?” Fisher asked, thinking she had some unfinished business and maybe she had planned to do something about the men after all.

“Yeah. I mean, we didn’t believe one female wolf could take on all three of us, but we knew we couldn’t go back to our jobs or even see our families. We finally left the area because we knew we couldn’t be around our families when we couldn’t control the shifting. We thought it would only happen during the full moon, but it happens any time except during the new moon. We never paid any attention to the moon phases until this happened. We can only plan to do any work when it’s the time of the new moon now.”

“Well, truthfully, I’m sorry this happened to you and that no one was there to teach you how to be one of us,” Fisher said.

Kira glanced at Fisher, her jaw dropping.

“That said, the reason you are wolves was because you threatened the she-wolf, and she had no other recourse but to protect herself. But if she was trying to undo her mistake, that was also the only way she could take care of the mess that you had forced on her.” Fisher could tell Kira finally got the point that he wasn’t excusing the men one bit. If they hadn’t cornered the she-wolf, none of this would have happened.

“Who had the stupid idea of kidnapping kids to get easy payouts as your new choice of job?” Kira asked.

“Reggie. Oscar is his best friend, and he always goes along with Reggie’s schemes. The plan was to gather enough money and then we would go to Alaska and figure out something from there,” Royce said.

“You never thought of the kids you traumatized? Their families?” Fisher knew the truth of it. At least with Reggie and Oscar, they hadn’t given a damn. But he thought Royce had more empathy for the kids they’d kidnapped, at least for Billy as far as Fisher had witnessed. “Or that one of the kids, like Billy, whom you had left in the woods by himself, might not have even survived?”

Royce put his elbows on the table and held his forehead. “I didn’t want to leave Billy in the woods. We always took the kids to somewhere safe like the library or a clinic, hotel, or a church even once. Leaving him in the woods hadn’t been a safe bet. It was supposed to be our last job and Reggie was getting nervous about getting caught.”

“So he planned to just leave Billy out in the wild.” Fisher shook his head. “If we hadn’t been there to protect him, he could have died.”

Royce rubbed his face. “I didn’t want to do it.”

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