Wolf Fever by Terry Spear Page A

student nurses in one of my biology classes. Sat like a wallflower during the whole affair when I discovered the male medical staff in attendance had significant others, who were not at the party, but were looking for some extra nighttime entertainment. I didn’t have a ride home or money to call a cab, so I stuck it out.
    â€œBut I loved the color.” She ran her hand over the silky fabric. And the cut looked good on her, so she hadn’t had the heart to get rid of the dress. Now she felt way overexposed for the current event, like she was trying to prove something to the other women or to the men, when she had no intention of doing so.
    â€œAre you going to be all right?” Lelandi asked, as Carol disappeared into the adjoining bathroom.
    Carol touched up her lips with a shimmering peach gloss. “Yep, as right as can be.” Under the circumstances.
    â€œWhen you went into the woods with Ryan last night, did you see any sign of a red wolf?”
    Frowning, Carol walked out of the bathroom. “No, why?”
    â€œHave you had any premonitions that we’ve had trouble with a red wolf?”
    â€œNo.” Lelandi’s worried voice concerned Carol. What was up now?
    Lelandi crossed the room to the door and opened it. “Ryan claims the wolf was skulking around the woods surrounding our home. Since there are only the two of us reds here, other than Doc…” Lelandi shrugged, but Carol could tell she was trying to hide her apprehension.
    â€œWould it have been your cousin, Ural?”
    â€œNo, I called him, and he’s still in my uncle’s pack. Whoever it was, he was wearing some kind of hunter’s spray,” Lelandi said.
    If it wasn’t Ural, was it someone else from Lelandi’s old pack? Someone who had survived the battle?
    Carol opened her mouth to speak, but remembering how those who had attempted to kill Lelandi had worn hunter concealment sprays brought back a horrible flash of memory. She clamped her lips and eyes shut, the terror of the night she’d been bitten coming back to her in an instant. The red wolf’s wicked canines primed to bite her, lips curled back, nose wrinkled, the growl, the sharp teeth sinking in, the stabbing pain, the numbing cold, and then blackness.
    â€œCarol?”
    Attempting to hide a shudder, Carol opened her eyes and gave a wan smile.
    â€œWhat were you thinking of?”
    â€œBeing bitten.”
    Lelandi gave her a heartfelt hug and then pulled her to the door and into the hallway. “That’s what I thought. But Deputy Peter Jorgenson killed the wolf that bit you.”
    A deep frown marred Lelandi’s forehead, and Carol got the impression she knew something else. “Was there someone from your old pack who was at the battle and survived?”
    Lelandi stopped halfway down the hall and took a deep breath.
    â€œConnor. Darien killed his twin brother. Connor appeared harmless enough to the others when he quit fighting to watch Darien battle with my former pack leader, so they let him go. But later, we had word that during the battle another was downstairs called North, cousin of the one who bit you. Like Connor, he gave up the fight and Jake let him leave.”
    A chill spiked up Carol’s spine. “Would either of them want revenge for their kin’s death?”
    â€œPossibly.”
    But the way Lelandi said it as she headed down the stairs sounded more like she thought the red had some other agenda.
    â€œWhat’s another possibility?”
    Lelandi looked over her shoulder at Carol, her expression worried. “Connor’s brother turned you, but he died. Now either of the men, the brother or the cousin, might want to claim you, partly because you’re a red and partly because in the old days when a man neededa woman, and sometimes a woman wanted a particular man, they bit and changed them. Then they took the newly turned werewolf as a mate.
    â€œIn this case, their