and she stumbled to a halt.
"Ms.
Thompson? Is that a werewolf?" "Where is Adam Hauptman?" But a roar from the emergency room told me all I needed to know.
"Whose bright idea was it to bring him here?" I muttered, running for the double doors between the waiting room and the emergency room, Ben and Sam flanking me.
"Not me," Ben said, sounding a little more cheerful.
I think he'd been worried about what we'd find, too.
"I am absolved of guilt.
I was in the trailer getting toasty-warm when they sent him here." A gray werewolf whose fur darkened around his muzzle stood in the aisle between the patient rooms and the central counter, his change so recent that I could still see the muscles of his back realigning themselves.
He was missing large patches of fur where his skin was blackened and had bubbled up like wax.
All four of his feet were hideously burnt, the singed skin a horrible imitation of the black fur that usually covered them.
The curtain from the room was caught over his tail.
I stopped just inside the doors, assessing the situation.
Jody, the nurse I'd talked to the night of Samuel's accident, was standing very still--and someone had coached her on how to behave around werewolves, because her eyes were fixed on the floor.
But even from where I stood, I could smell her fear, an appetite-rousing scent for any werewolf.
Mary Jo crouched in front of Adam, one hand resting on the floor, her head bowed in submission--and her tough athletic body, so fragile-appearing next to the wolf, was directly between the bystanders and her Alpha.
I glanced down at Sam, but apparently he'd fed enough on the dead fae that his attention was all on Adam, though he stayed next to me.
Ben waited on my other side, holding himself very still, as if he was trying really hard not to attract Adam's attention.
In other circumstances I wouldn't have been as worried.
Werewolves tend to lose their human halves when badly injured, but they can be recalled to themselves by a mate or by a more dominant wolf.
Samuel was more dominant than Adam, and I was Adam's mate.
Either of us should have been able to bring him back.
Unfortunately, Samuel wasn't himself this evening and Adam had fried our mate bond in his panic when he thought I was trapped in the trailer.
I didn't know what that meant in terms of how he would respond to me.
He lowered his head and took a step forward, and my time to dither ran out.
"Adam," I said.
His whole body froze.
"Adam?" I stepped away from Ben and Sam.
"Adam, it's all right.
These are the good guys.
They're trying to help-- you've been hurt." I'm fast, and I have good reflexes, and I didn't even see him move.