Heart of a Wolf

I took my place between them. “Jeremy, explain.”

Jeremy let out a long sigh. “If we’d realized just how weak your heart was…”

“They never would’ve operated in the first place,” I finished for him.

“So when Doug told me a new heart had just come in and that the family had already agreed to give it up, we decided to give it a try. Val never knew about the complications because it all happened so fast.” He took a deep breath, his hard exhale shaking as he spoke. “If I’d known where the heart had come from, I would’ve stopped them from operating.”

“And let me die,” I said, swallowing around the lump that had formed in the back of my throat.

“I…” He let out a long breath. “I don’t know.”

“What about Dani?” I asked, having yet to look over her paperwork.

“According to her file, the wolf who brought her in claimed to be her brother. He had the ID to prove it. Seeing as she’d never visited a human hospital before, we believed him.

He told the attending that so long as the heart went to someone else, we could use it.”

“No

wolf would ever agree to that,” Ash bit out, lunging in Jeremy’s direction.

Zander was on her in an instant, his wolf rushing to the surface as he fought her back down. “Remember where we are, pup. If you shift now, there’s no going back.”

“Do you have a name?” I asked, looking through Dani’s report and finding none.

“I do,” Jeremy said, his voice low. “His name was Coren.

It was another detail I had to find as even Dani’s file was altered, claiming the organs were no good and disposed of after the fact.”

Now it was Zander’s turn to lash out, ripping the papers from my hands so he could read over the report. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill that waste of fur.”

I placed my hand on his arm, gently removing the papers from his grasp. “If he brought her here—”

“Then he knows how she died,” Ash finished for me. “I always had my suspicions but—”

“You needed proof,” Zand said with a nod. “This all makes sense now. From her passing to the botched medical records and him claiming Jo was bitten. He’s trying to cover his tracks.”

“But giving the heart to a human?” Jeremy urged, not sounding convinced.

“There was no telling what a wolf heart might do in a human body. He probably hoped the host would die along with it, covering the truth indefinitely.”

“But when he saw me in pack territory—”

“He panicked,” Fallen said, taking my hand in hers. “He had to find a way to hide it again, which is why he gathered the other packs.”

“But he wasn’t counting on me being in a listening mood,”

Zander finished for her.

“And it’s a good thing you were,” I said, walking over to one of the chairs before my legs could go out from underneath of me.

“This also explains why you didn’t shift for so long,”

Zander went on when we didn’t say anything. “Not wanting you to turn, you were put on suppressors.”

“Which I didn’t need once I started work.”

“Exactly. Taking your wolf into a place like this when she’s been pushed down for so long is bound to have some unwanted consequences.”