Catch the Cougar: A Halloween Novella Read online

  First thing the next morning, William was calling her again. She figured he was going to talk about dinner or something, but instead he said, “Hey, how do I keep Buddy from peeing on the floor? I take him out and he doesn’t do anything, then I bring him inside and he puddles.”

  She chuckled. “After he drinks water, gets up from a nap or bedtime, eats, take him out. Watch him. When he starts sniffing for a good place to pee, he’ll have his nose to the floor, grab him and take him outside.”

  “You are going to get so tired of me calling you about him.”

  She chuckled. “No, not at all. I get these questions a lot. All first-time pet owners go through the trials of puppyhood if they get a puppy and not an adult dog. You two will manage just fine. It can take some time though.”

  “Uhm, what about biting?”

  She laughed. “Puppies need to learn what they can and can’t do. It takes time to teach them to stop biting. They check out things with their mouths and teeth. So you need to have toys to keep him busy. When he’s teething, he’ll need something for his sore gums. When things are moving, they like to bite. So you’re moving your hand and he bites. Litter mates and mother dog will teach your dog not to bite too hard. You have to teach him the same thing. Get beef bones and antlers. Don’t get stuffed toys that they can pull apart. They can rip them apart and ingest them. Also, yelp, or tell them no, or uh-uh, in the same decisive way if they bite too hard.”

  “Okay, gotcha.”

  “If the puppy comes to bite you, always have a toy for him in hand and then give it to him when he tries to bite. I had a Lab that would chew my hands every time I came home from work. She was so excited to see me, that’s how she responded. I finally began to teach her to get her toy. When I’d come home, she’d first run to see me. Then, as if a light bulb would go on, she’d race off for her toy, then return to me with it in her mouth, wagging her whole body to greet me.”

  He laughed.

  “It worked. So I no longer had to carry a toy with me. She would get it on her own. If Buddy isn’t getting the message, take him for a walk, put him down for a nap, do something else instead of playtime. Play gently with a tug toy, throw a ball, so you’re not using your hands to play with him. Change out toys, so they’re new and interesting.”

  “What about him chewing on my slippers?”

  Smiling, she shook her head. “Watch him. Keep things up that you don’t want him to chew on. Put him in his crate if you have to leave so he doesn’t get bored and chew on stuff. Exercise him. If you sit on the floor with Buddy, that’s like an invitation to play with him. When I would sit on the floor with my Lab, she would be all over me. It was like I was one of her litter mates then.”

  “Okay, done that.”

  “Exactly. We all do. You need to sit up on a chair or something so you’re playing above Buddy. Don’t take puppy on the couch or the bed. He needs to be housebroken first. As big as he’s going to get, I’d keep him off the furniture, give him his own bed to lie down on, if he’s not in the crate while you’re there. And no feeding Buddy scraps while you’re fixing meals or eating them. You don’t want to feed him the wrong things or too much.”

  “Okay, thanks so much, Vanessa. You’re a lifesaver. Can I bring him with me at dinnertime? I hate to crate him most of the day and then at night. When I have a break at work, I run home and take him out.”

  “Of course. We can take him for a walk too. Though that’s another training issue—walking him on a leash.”

  “I need to bring him in for shots also. Maybe before lunch and then we’ll have him at the house during lunch tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure. We need to set up a chart for him and I’ll give him an exam.”

  Then they finally ended the call so they could both get to work!

  Chapter 6

  For two weeks, Vanessa had fun helping poor William with Buddy, housebreaking him, teaching him not to bite, and not to bark, and not to chew on things that weren’t his to chew on. In the meantime, the pup and Midnight were getting to be best friends. Watching William interact with Buddy and Midnight, and her, of course, Vanessa realized just how much she needed William in her life—permanently—24-7. The four of them were becoming a family already. They just needed to be together, one consolidated household for all of them.

  She’d never decided something so quickly in her life, and yet no matter how many times she tried to tell herself it was too early for making a commitment to William, she wanted to in the worst way.

  She was wearing her pirate costume for the Halloween party and William was getting ready at his place. Though Vanessa had told him she would just drive into town, there was no sense in him having to come out and pick her up and drive her in, but he was a romantic like that. He had told her he was taking her to the party and that this was another official date and she loved that about him.

  He called her on Bluetooth on the way to her house. “Did you ever get your cutlass or flintlock to go with your costume?”

  “No. I have you and you can fight all my battles.”

  He laughed.

  “What are you laughing for? I’m serious.” Then she said what she’d wanted to for days now. “When you drop me off at my place after the party, you should stay the night with me.”

  “All right. I would be glad to.”

  She smiled. She figured he would be.

  “Hell, shit!”

  The squeal of brakes caught her ear. She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Something just ran in front of the car and I hit it. I heard a thud. It was a coyote, I think. I’m pulling over to check it out.”

  “Oh, William, be careful.”

  “I will be.”

  She practically held her breath when he was silent for way too long as she heard him shut his car door and walk on the pavement to where the injured animal must be. “William?”

  “Hell, it’s a wolf.”

  “How badly injured is he?”

  “I think he’s got a broken leg.”

  “Okay, I’m coming to help you. I’ll bring my tranquilizer gun. Is he conscious?”

  “He’s breathing, his chest is rising and falling. I’m about ten minutes from your place.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.” She ended the call and rushed to get her tranquilizer gun and a large cage, gloves for both of them, and then jumped into the clinic’s van and took off to meet up with William. She called him on Bluetooth. “Is he trying to move?”

  “He wants to. His eyes are fluorescent in the headlights and he’s lying on his side. He’s tried to get up. A dog, well, wolf, can run on three legs if they want to get away from danger in a hurry, so I think he’s had a bit of a concussion, or he would have been afraid enough of me to run off no matter how much his leg hurt.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you okay doing this?” William asked. “You usually don’t take care of wild animals, do you?”

  “Sure. There’s no one else available to take care of them.”

  When she finally arrived at the scene where William’s car lights were shining in the night, she saw the large gray wolf and William talking to him. He waved at her when she got out of the van.

  The wolf tried to get up just as she raised her gun to shoot it. The dart hit his hip and he yelped and then sank back onto the blacktop.

  “I’ve got a crate for him. Let’s get him into it and take him to the clinic.” Vanessa headed for the van.

  William assisted her in carrying the crate to the wolf and then wearing the gloves she’d brought with her, he carefully helped her move the wolf into the crate. She locked the crate door and they carried the crate to the vehicle.

  “You look great in your costume, by the way. I think I might keep you on my crew a while longer.” She quickly kissed him.

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly, and she smiled at his eagerness. “I will ride the Seven Seas with you.”

  “Okay, but first, we need to take care of the wol
f.”

  “Duty first.”

  “Of course.” She drove the wolf back to her clinic, William following behind her. Then she was pulling into the clinic parking lot and William parked his car next to her vehicle.

  He got out of his car and helped her to carry the crate into the clinic. “Do you need to call anyone in to help you?”

  Once they set the crate down so she could take x-rays of the wolf’s leg, she patted William’s chest. “You can assist.”

  “I will do my best.” Then he helped her with x-raying the wolf and he looked over the results with her. “It’s definitely a broken femur.”

  “Okay, I’m going to use a bone plate and a series of screws to stabilize the fracture. In a year, it will be healed up and I can remove it,” she said.

  “You’re going to keep a wild wolf around for a year?”

  “Whatever it takes to make him right. Sure.”

  They began prepping him for surgery when the wolf started to stir. He swung his head around and bit Vanessa’s hand through her glove. “Ow.” She was about to sedate him before he could bite her again when the wolf’s form suddenly blurred in a blink of the eye and he shifted into a man. One second he was all furry, the next, he was a naked male, late twenties, dark hair, dark eyes narrowed at her. He wore some of her blood on his mouth.

  “Ah, hell. I bit you clean through your glove, didn’t I? I taste your blood in my mouth. It doesn’t matter. You’ve both seen me shift. It’s too late for—”

  “We’re cougar shifters, so there’s no cause for alarm,” she quickly said and just as quickly sedated him before he jumped off the table to try and turn William or kill them both and injured his leg worse. The wolf shifter should have figured she could stop him. But he might have been a little out of it still.

  William was just staring at the guy. “A gray wolf shifter. I’ll be damned. Okay, so we need to transport him to my clinic now and I’ll take care of the broken leg now that he’s a human.”

  “All right. And I’ll assist. Let’s get him into some spare scrubs. Riley always leaves a couple of pairs here that should fit the guy.”

  “Have you ever seen a wolf shifter before?” William asked.

  “No, but I’ve heard they exist. Which we just confirmed.” She helped William set his leg, then they dressed him.

  They put him on a cart and rolled him out to William’s car.

  “We’ll leave your car here and we’ll drive to the clinic, patch him up, and drive over to the party. Marcus is the nurse on staff tonight who will watch over him.”

  They moved the wolf into his car, and then William and Vanessa climbed into the front seats.

  “Okay, good.”

  “I never saw him coming. Suddenly, he was in the road and then I hit him. I feel terrible about it.” William was at the wheel, driving them into Yuma Town.

  “I wonder what he was even doing here,” Vanessa said.

  “At least when he comes to, we can ask him. And he’ll heal faster than a normal wolf.” William glanced at Vanessa. “How’s your hand?”

  “He barely broke the skin. We can take care of it at the clinic.” She’d been so startled that the wolf had shifted and spoken to them, she had forgotten all about it. “I believe he thought he would have to terminate us for having seen him shift.”

  “Or turn us, depending if it would work well for him or not, if he belongs to a pack. Of course, he might have been thinking of getting rid of me and taking you for a mate.” William raised a brow and smiled at her.

  Vanessa smiled and rubbed William’s back. “No chance at that. That’s one thing that’s good about us. We can’t be turned into a different shifter species if one bites us. At least I don’t think so. I’ve never been bitten by a wolf shifter before.”

  “I don’t think it could happen either. Sorry for messing up our Halloween party night.”

  “You didn’t mess up anything. These things happen and we’ll take care of him. Just think, we’ll have the story to beat all others tonight at the party.”

  William smiled at her. “Yeah, we sure will. I’m going to call Marcus to tell him we have incoming.”

  “All right.”

  William got on Bluetooth and said, “Hey, Marcus, I’m bringing in a man with a broken femur. Prep the OR for me, will you?”

  “Yeah, sure thing. Weren’t you going to the party?”

  “Yeah, we’ll go in right after we take care of this.”

  “All right. See you soon?”

  “Fifteen minutes, tops.” Then William ended the call. “I keep feeling like we need to tell someone we’re going to be late to the party or they’ll worry about us.”

  “Or they’ll think we got to fooling around.” She smiled at William. “Why don’t you call Kate.”

  William called her then and she said she’d let everyone know, though he didn’t mention the man was a wolf. He was afraid everyone would show up to see a wolf shifter, though right now, he looked perfectly human.

  When they reached the clinic, William and Marcus lifted the wolf shifter onto a stretcher and carried him inside.

  “So what do we have here?” Marcus asked as they took the injured man into the operating room. Marcus was wearing his Black Panther costume that he’d worn all day.

  William had hoped they would have a quiet night so Marcus could be at the Halloween party, but Halloween night was notorious for crazy stuff going on.

  “The man is a wolf shifter with a fractured femur. Which means he’ll heal faster than a human, for one thing and he’ll be fine. There’s no need to move him out of the clinic after surgery, since he’s one of us, so to speak. But we’ll need you to watch him overnight,” William said.

  “Yeah, no problem at all.” Marcus glanced at William and Vanessa’s costumes before they dressed in fresh scrubs. “So you’re pirates.”

  “Yeah, I swab the decks. She’s the captain.” William motioned with his head to Vanessa.

  Vanessa and Marcus laughed.

  They took x-rays of the injured man’s leg again, this time as a human since the one Vanessa had taken at her clinic was of a wolf’s femur. Then William and Vanessa bumped heads looking the x-rays over and they smiled at each other.

  “You know, I don’t think we’re going to have to do surgery. We can put him in a long leg splint instead. Normally the healing is complete anywhere from three to six months, but for a shifter, we can cut that healing time down by half,” William said. “Even from the x-rays you took of him at your clinic, I can see some improvement.”

  “I agree. I hate to do something on a shifter that heals so fast when we could use a less aggressive procedure,” Vanessa said. “And I’m sure he would feel the same. Besides, we should really have gotten his approval if we’d planned to do the surgery procedure on him.”

  “I agree.”

  “Who is he?” Marcus asked.

  “We don’t know yet. When he wakes up under your watch, learn what his name is, where he’s from, and why he was running out near Dr. Vanderbilt’s property as a wolf.”

  “Will do. Do you have any idea how he broke his leg?” Marcus asked.

  William let out his breath. “I ran into him with my car. He raced across the road before I could stop.”

  “Ow. Okay. Will your car insurance take care of it?” Marcus asked.

  William frowned at him. “What they won’t know, won’t hurt my pocketbook. I’ll take care of the cost. No billing the patient. And we can keep him here, if he doesn’t have anyone to take care of him wherever he’s from. But we do need to learn if he’s got family who could be expecting him and worried when he doesn’t arrive home.”

  “Okay, that’s what I really thought you would do, just asking.” Marcus smiled at him.

  “And I need to take a look at Vanessa’s hand after we’re done here.”

  “He bit her?” Marcus asked, frowning and glancing at Vanessa’s hands.

  “He did, but just a light bite, as if he realized the dang
er he would be in if he bit me hard and was able to turn me. Though he did break the skin. Of course, we didn’t know he was a shifter at the time, and he didn’t know we were either. I was just getting ready to do surgery on him, he woke, bit me—I don’t blame him there—and then shifted, which shocked us.”

  “Wow. That’s one for the storybooks,” Marcus said. “You’ll have a tale to tell at the party.”

  “We sure will,” she said.

  They finished applying the cast, but before they could leave for the party, their sheriff, Dan, arrived to check on them to see what had happened. He was wearing a Batman costume.

  “Is everything all right?” Dan asked, coming into the room to see the patient.

  Their patient was still soundly sleeping, now in a hospital bed. Though he hadn’t needed to be knocked out to apply a cast. However, for pain management, he would have needed something anyway, which could have had the same effect. But mainly, after he’d bitten her and he seemed so growly, she’d had to react quickly and keep him from injuring himself further or them.

  “Wolf shifter,” William said, his arms folded across his chest as he looked at the sleeping man. “We don’t know who he is or why he was in our territory.”

  “Dr. Rugel hit him with his car,” Marcus said, as if he had to make sure the sheriff knew that.

  Smiling, Dan shook his head. “That’s not exactly the way we welcome new shifters to town.”

  Dressed as Catwoman, Addie came into the clinic next. “Hey, what happened?” She frowned at the dark-haired man in bed, sleeping like a baby.

  “Come on, honey,” Dan said, taking her hand. “William and Vanessa can explain what happened at the party. If we don’t return now, everyone will be over here checking the wolf out.”

  Addie took in a deep breath. “A wolf? A wolf shifter? Oh, wow.”

  William gave Marcus a set of instructions. “Above all else, call me when the patient wakes.” Then he checked over Vanessa’s hand, but the bite mark was already fading. He applied antiseptic.

  “I think it’s going to be all right. I don’t need a bandage. It doesn’t go with my costume.”

  “Sure it could. In the last ship boarding, you were slightly injured.”