Colton's Dilemma (Shadow Breeds) - By Dara Nelson Page 0,2

of the clubs or bars. But he had fed, quite amply, the last few nights. He’d be okay if he stayed in tonight, and for some reason he wanted to be here in case she woke up. He snickered as he thought if – God forbid she were to wake up with only Hansen here in the house, good luck getting any kind of help from him. But what should he do? Should he stay downstairs? He knew he’d hear her down here. But for some reason, he wanted to be able to see her too. He felt like that was important. He moved slowly up the stairs, much slower than he could have. His hand trembled slightly as he reached for the doorknob. The door opened silently and he slipped inside. He wrinkled his nose at the stench coming off of her, boy, Hansen wasn’t kidding. He ducked into the bathroom to grab a bowl with warm water, a washcloth and some first aid supplies. He’d been a doctor, once upon a time, sort of, among other things, so he thought he should tend to her wounds. He hadn’t practiced in a long time, but he had three medical degrees and two law degrees – might as well put one of them to good use – obtained throughout the years to assist in whatever way that he could in leading his men, of course field dressing, battle wounds and court tribunals hardly compared to what he was dealing with at the moment.

He began with her head would. He cleaned the wound as best as he could then he turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed a magnifying glass. Looking closely, he studied the wound. After studying the jagged edges and the indentation in the middle, he was confident that the wound was from a fall, probably onto a rock or something. He proceeded to inject a numbing agent into it so that he could stitch it up. While he waited the few minutes for the medicine to take effect, he glanced down at her face. It was a face filled with so much emotion he thought it might burst – pain, fear, beauty, peacefulness, love – everything was written all over her face. He forced his eyes away – he had to complete his exam. He was looking for bite marks, or scratches. Bites were bad – they would mean that she would turn at the next full moon. Scratches were worse, much worse. If you were only scratched by a werewolf and not bitten – you would turn at the first full moon, but not a full transformation into a wolf. You became this horrible mass of half-human, half-dog, in complete agony and never able to turn back. Nothing ever survived that. You get scratched, you writhe around in agony on the floor for several hours until your body can’t take it anymore. He knew: he’d seen it happen once. He squeezed his eyes shut at the painful memory. He tossed the covers off of her and whispered, “I’m sorry, but I have to check,” as he slid his hands behind her back to unhook her bra. He slid it off of her arms and tossed it on the floor as he tried not to stare at her beautiful, round breasts. He was just a doctor examining her, after all. But he was a doctor who was used to examining men on the field of battle with limbs torn off, deep gashes, and while there were some women in his army, on the field of battle he never saw them that way, they were just wounded soldiers – this was different. And now was different because he had been alone for a long time. And now was different because he was also a man, a man who had denied himself the company of a beautiful woman for many, many years. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just sort of happened that way. He preferred his solitude at the moment, at least after her – and his men, mostly in Scotland but some scattered throughout the world, all understood the reasons for his self-imposed exile – they understood and they waited patiently until he contacted them once again – which they knew would happen eventually, once his heart had had enough time to mend. They all knew utter devastation that had been unleashed upon his heart – something that took years, decades, to recover from. So, he preferred his