Feral (Wolf Ranch #3) - Renee Rose Page 0,64

Dr. Ames, already patched me up.” I nodded at Audrey, who had remained to make sure no one tried to get a look at my rapidly healing bullet hole. She’d covered it with a bandage and was prepared to attest to the fact that I had merely been grazed by a bullet and didn’t need to go into the hospital tonight.

She stood near Boyd’s pickup with Rob and Boyd, who refused to leave us unprotected.

“Evening Sheriff Duncan,” Rob lifted a hand in greeting.

The sheriff nodded at Rob and Boyd. “Evening, gentlemen.”

“Did my boss tell you there was a possibility of his friends showing up?” I asked.

The sheriff touched the gun at his side. “He told me. I’ve got back up on the way. If they come, we’ll get them.”

Yeah, I wasn’t so sure about that.

The op hadn’t gone as planned. I’d wanted Markle behind bars, so we could use him to get Murrieta. After what happened, I was happy he was dead. His intentions for me didn’t make me feel bad in the slightest.

We had the drugs, knew how they arrived at the ranch and how they left and got to Canada.

With Markle dead, there was no information on getting to Murrieta. Vaughn planned to send a guy to the next planned drug pickup at the closed rest area, but it wasn’t going to be Murrieta himself. Only another cog in his huge drug wheel.

I’d pretty much blown the case. We were back to square one because Murietta wouldn’t give a shit that Markle was dead. He’d been a mere pawn. He’d have another one by tonight to rebuild the drug path to Canada.

The shipments were stopped for now but wouldn’t be for long.

I’d failed, and I had no doubt I was out of a job. For once in my life, I didn’t care.

Everything I’d thought about myself had been wrong. My name really wasn’t Willow Johnson. I’d always known that. Tonight was the first time there was a real clue to who I was. To what I was.

I was a shifter.

A shifter!

And that mattered so much more than this stupid case I’d been fixated on for the past year.

“The DEA will be here in the morning, so if your men could just keep watch, it would be much appreciated. I’d like to get back and clean up and get a couple hours sleep before I have to meet them here to search the place and take care of all the procedures and paperwork.”

“You’re staying at the Shefield place?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Okay, Agent. Let me take your statement and then you can go ahead. We’ll stay here to protect the crime scene.”

Thank God for small town sheriffs.

I looked over at Rob and gave him a weak smile.

Everything had changed. My whole life had turned upside down, and the one thing I knew that mattered—the only thing—was him.

29

WILLOW

“And now, my little ginger she-wolf, it’s time for your punishment.” Rob backed me up against the bed, tugging my clothes off as he went.

We were at his pack’s mountain lodge in the private bedroom in the back. Rob brought me up so I could practice shifting, but first… he had something else in mind.

I’d spent the past day bogged down in procedures. The sheriff and paramedics with Markle’s body had left by dawn, but the DEA had remained all day, searching the property, making an inventory of the drugs and working with Canadian customs to watch for other shipments. Markle’s drug channel was shut down.

My body had mostly healed. I still had a mark and felt twinges where the bullet hit me, but that was it. My shifter genes had saved my life.

Everything in my life suddenly made sense. What I’d told Rob when I’d first shifted back: my sensitive nose, my heightened instincts, my love of running. And what I hadn’t told him. Why I’d never felt like I belonged in society. Until I’d come to Cooper Valley and found Rob. I knew from my paperwork my birth mother, who had been just a teenager, had been admitted as a Jane Doe to a hospital in Billings. She’d had me and disappeared from her hospital bed, abandoning me. Whether she was the shifter or my dad was, I couldn’t be sure, but for some reason, it changed the story for me.

I’d felt abandoned before. Unwanted.

Now I felt special. My parents—or one of them—had given me a gift. I was half-shifter. Able to turn into a beautiful ginger wolf, according to Rob. And