“Is she okay now?”
Cameron’s words brought him out of the strange trance she had lured him into, and Kalen moved away with a frown.
“Yeah, she seems okay for now. At least the change seems to have startled her into calming down. It’ll be some time before she changes back. We should probably get her into one of the vans and head back to Walker with her.” He shrugged. “At least, if we take her out of here now, no one is going to call the cops and say we’re kidnapping a local.”
Randy yanked her clothes from around her and rolled them up into a ball. “It wouldn’t do to have someone see you carrying what they’re going to think is a dog dressed in jeans and a t-shirt out to the vehicles.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “especially one wearing a hotel apron.” He shook his head. “How many more people has that lunatic turned?” What if they’d missed someone in their frantic search to find the asshole? What if there were dozens of people out there turning into God knows what all over the place?
The implications were just too horrific to contemplate. They were shifters. They shared what they had, and they helped their kind with everything. Just the thought that there were others out there who needed their help and didn’t know to find them and ask for it was enough to make him growl.
Kalen leaned down and scooped the woman-turned-wolf up off the bed and carried her to the van. “Take her back to Loup-Tech headquarters and don’t let her get away. That lunatic, Thornton, injected her with his serum. She can’t know what’s happening to her. Make sure she gets the help she needs.”
Two of the men gave him a quick jerk of the head in response, shut the doors and climbed into the front seat.
Cameron ran out and handed them the wad of clothes through the window. “Take her clothes. Since we know nothing about her, this is all she has for now. Toss them in the back in case she changes again.”
Leave it to the retired Army Ranger to think of the woman’s comfort. Kalen would have just expected her to lay back there naked. Being naked in front of others was a fact of life for their kind. The unfortunate detail of her former humanity hadn’t even crossed his mind.
He slapped the side of the van. “Get going. The faster you get her out of town, the better.” It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for her. Eventually, someone was going to wonder why she wasn’t cleaning the rooms.
Kalen watched while the van pulled around to the driveway, the right blinker flashing bright amber as the driver made the turn that took them back the way they had come. His stomach clenched as the van moved away. Something told him he should have been in there with the woman.
Shaking his head, he took a deep, cleansing breath and headed back to the motel room. He needed to convince Bastien to get moving. God only knew how many others the crazy scientist would inject before this was all over.
The image of terrified violet eyes flashed through his mind and he sighed. Kalen swallowed around the lump of sorrow in his throat and looked down at his shaking fingers. What was getting into him? Why should he give a damn about some strange woman-turned-wolf that he’d just met?
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Embracing Carly Page 26
