“A gift from your favorite doctor.”
I wanted to kill him then and there. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t possibly know what the implications of his words meant. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t directly responsible for what had happened to Desmond. I wanted to kill him because he’d said doctor.
He wasn’t referring to any old doctor. He was referring to The Doctor. And though I knew perfectly well Friedrich Kesteral was dead, for this one moment he was as alive to me as Mouse was. Because he was still fucking up my life.
The Doctor had specialized in researching paranormal creatures. Not just vampires, but werewolves and—what was it Tyler said the FBI called them?—CUOs. Creatures of Unknown Origin.
Apparently his research hadn’t been entirely theoretical.
He’d developed something to forcibly turn a werewolf from human to wolf form. “Goddammit. I’m guessing they didn’t ship an antidote with it?”
Mouse snorted. “You think Peyton or whoever sent him that shit was concerned with reversing the process?”
No. I didn’t.
But this meant I wasn’t getting the cure from Mouse because there was no cure to be had. At least not in France. Callum had implied we might be able to reverse things if I could get Desmond in immediate contact with a wolf king. I might not be Lucas’s biggest fan, but he was the best shot we had of putting Desmond back in a nice Desmond-shaped package.
Like I had time to deal with this.
“I have one more question.”
He eyeballed me warily but lifted his chin as an invitation to continue.
“Do you know where I can get a wolf-sized kennel?”
Chapter Eighteen
Since Fate seemed hell-bent on making me interact with my wolf-husband, I figured it was high time to bite the bullet and head home to New York. If I’d had things my way, I would fly from Paris to Winnipeg and haul ass to the country to make sure Grandmere was okay. But I couldn’t let Desmond cool his heels as a wolf, and Callum had promised me he’d keep his mother safe. I had to believe he would be true to his word, at least until I could get there myself.
The one perk of flying in a private plane—aside from being able to protect myself from the sun—was that I didn’t have to keep Desmond stowed in the storage hold. The pilot had drawn the line at letting the wolf wander freely though, which meant he was stuck in the metal crate Mouse had helped me track down on short notice.
Desmond was not impressed with his in-flight digs.
I couldn’t blame him, but I also couldn’t let him out, as per pilot orders.
“I’m sorry,” I said for the seven hundredth time on the flight. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
He growled in reply. I had a feeling I’d get a not-so-friendly nip when I finally released him. I’d allow one free pass on biting. I had it coming.
“We’re less than an hour out. I’m going to take you straight to Lucas as soon as we land. I swear to you we’ll have this sorted out before the night is through.” We’d had to time our flight so we left Paris while it was still dark but would arrive in New York when the sun was down. It was a tricky plot that should get us into LaGuardia right around sunset.
I was exhausted.
Moving from one night to another didn’t exclude me from the day, and I’d napped hard on the plane, unable to resist the pull of daylight. It had been a hell of a twenty-four-hour stretch, and I didn’t foresee a time when I’d be able rest easy in my near future.
The timing of the flight worked beautifully, and I was able to hire a shuttle van that didn’t make too much of a stink about the “dog” I had with me. Funny how the promise of a hundred-dollar tip could change people’s minds on things.
When we pulled up in front of Rain Hotel, I paid the driver and released Desmond from his cage. The wolf, as predicted, gave my hand a firm chomp, and I laughed it off as a love bite when the shuttle driver gaped with open horror. An extra hundred seemed to allay his concerns over my well-being.
In the lobby I was greeted by the stern, disapproving face of Melvin, the night-shift concierge. Melvin, a were-ferret and no great fan of mine, always seemed to be working on the nights I got my hands the dirtiest. Yet I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see him. He was something familiar, and to see him frowning at me meant some things hadn’t changed.
“Ms. McQueen.”
“Hello, Melvin.”
“To what do we owe the pleasure this evening?” A few other guests had taken note of Desmond and were moving away from our end of the desk. Leave it to the hoity-toity upper-crust to be too proper to scream when they see a wolf.
“I’ve come to see Lucas.”