He tried to answer, but he choked and coughed, his body trying to expel whatever was trapped in his throat.

“Let’s get this out of him,” she said to someone off to his left. “Easy, Bold. Easy. You’re going to be fine.”

Tape was removed from his mouth and the tube pulled from his throat. He quickly rolled to his side, the coughing getting worse as mucus and saliva poured out of him.

“It’s all right, Bold. You’re fine.” She stroked his back, his neck, while someone else wiped his mouth. After the coughing subsided, he was again rolled onto his back.

Marci Luntz smiled at him. That warm smile she used to always give him anytime she saw him in town. “Hi, Bold.”

He had to admit he was glad to see her, but there was just one thing . . . Marci Luntz didn’t leave town. Not since she’d returned from her residency at Johns Hopkins. To quote her, “What’s out there for me? Full-humans? Snobby cats and cranky wolves? Thank you, but I’ll stay right here.”

Bo looked away from her and around the room, gazed out the window with all that bright morning sun that shed light on all the snow and ice covering the trees. Those trees with the deep gouges ripped into their trunks from hundreds of years’ worth of bears.

Christ, he was back. Back in the town he’d moved to after his parents died. The town he’d left eight years later.

He was back in Ursus County, Maine.

But why? Why was he back? And why was he hurt?

He moved his gaze to his arm. He had on a cast, the pain as bone and muscle repaired itself radiating up his arm and throughout his body.

Christ, his arm. He’d broken his arm. When? How? And, more important, would he still be able to play?

Fear shuddered through Bo, helped along by feeling hot and cold all at the same time. The fever. He had the fever. Rationally, he knew that was a good thing. The fever would help repair him. So would Dr. Luntz.

He returned his gaze to her. She smiled. It was that warm smile he remembered so well. He focused on it, immediately feeling calm and centered when he did. He was about to return her smile, something he rarely felt the need to do for anyone when Dr. Luntz was pushed aside and a big, fat, stupid face he remembered all too well moved in close. Too close.

“Speck!” he screamed in Bo’s face. “How ya doin’, Speck? How ya feelin’, buddy?” The polar looked Bo over, grinned. “I see you finally hit your growth spurt, huh? ’Bout friggin’ time, I’d say. Right, kid?”

“Fabi—”

“It’s okay, doc! Speck here’s my cousin, right? You know that. Speck adores me! Don’t ya, Speck? Don’t ya adore your cousin Fabi?”

Uh . . . no. No, Bo didn’t adore his cousin. As always with the idiot, Bo wanted to bat him around like a tennis ball. Yet he could almost hear a voice telling him that wouldn’t be right.He’s family, the voice insisted. You’ve gotta have family!

He knew that voice . . . and that ridiculous sentiment. Blayne. That was Blayne’s voice.

Blayne . . .

With his right arm in a cast and still healing, he used his left to grab Fabi Novikov around the throat, his fingers squeezing until his cousin’s eyes bulged from his head.

Dr. Luntz grabbed his arm, trying to pry him off. She screamed out the door, “I need help in here! Grigori! Somebody! Now!”

Bo leaned up while pulling Fabi in closer. “Where is she?” he asked, his voice not more than a ragged sound torn from his damaged throat. But that pain didn’t stop him from bellowing in Fabi’s terrified face, “Where’s Blayne?”

Grigori walked down the hallway toward his nephew’s room. The kid was doing okay. Marci seemed real sure he’d be just fine, and Marci wouldn’t lie to him, even if she wanted to. The fever hit the kid hard but that was to be expected. Bold had tossed and turned all night, his big body shifting from human to animal every few minutes, leaving his sheets soaked in sweat and the need to replace the cast on his arm twice. It was hard fitting anything to his shifted form. He’d taken a lot of both his parents and came up with something pretty damn new.

He’d had no intention of leaving the kid this morning, but Marci had sent Grigori off for coffee and the hospital cafeteria’s amazing biscuit sandwiches because, and he was quoting here, “I don’t know which is annoying me more at the moment. Your face or that pit you call a stomach grumbling every ten seconds.”

He still brought her back a couple of honeycomb biscuits. He’d never thank her verbally for helping his nephew, but the biscuits should do the job.

Grigori came around the corner and stopped short. He wasn’t exactly shocked to see his nephew storming down the hospital hallways, yelling out, “Blayne!” Nor was he surprised to see half the staff trying to stop him. But why that dumb ass Fabi got so close that not only could Bold get ahold of his neck but now drag him along as he stalked the halls looking for that freaky little wolfdog was beyond him.

“Don’t just stand there,” Marci complained from behind Bold. “Do something!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Grigori moved down the hallway until he was about twenty feet from the boy. He planted his feet and barked, “Bold!”

Bold stopped, blue eyes narrowing. For a moment, he wasn’t sure the boy recognized him. For a moment, he was sure that Bold Novikov was going to charge him. So Grigori added, “Put your cousin down.”

Bold looked at the blood relative he had in his left hand. Shaking his head, he returned his gaze to his uncle and raised the hand holding his cousin. Then he shook Fabi a bit. “Where is she? Why won’t anyone tell me?”