Unbound by Meredith Noone Page A

here.”
    Ranger huffed.
    They reached the end of the hallway and were buzzed onto the ward by an orderly who greeted Michelle by name. Michelle returned his greetings with a tight smile.
    The wolf found himself in a large, multi-purpose room, with a barred medication window off to one side, and a piano on his other side, and a half dozen low couches. There was a small television in the corner, playing a brightly colored cartoon about a boy with a stone on his chest, and three or four young patients were sitting watching it, along with an older woman who might’ve been nearly sixty, and a young black nurse.
    Clyde and Yani were not with the young patients, though, and it took the wolf a moment to notice them huddled together under a low table strewn with playing cards and scrabble pieces. No one was sitting at the table, though a couple of the other patients were casting resentful glances at it, as if their game had been interrupted.
    The wolf couldn’t remember how old Clyde and Yani were anymore. The last time Ranger had seen Clyde, he’d been a little boy with a crop of sandy colored hair and big blue eyes. Yani had been an equally little girl back then, strawberry blonde hair pulled back in pigtails. It’d been eight years, and they were both teenagers now, and no longer small children, but when Ranger looked at them he immediately thought of wolves.
    Michelle seemed to read his mind, because she murmured: “Yeah, they’ve been like that ever since they transferred from the juvenile ward.”
    Dale Devereaux was sitting by himself in an armchair, dressed in pale blue hospital pajamas, ratty gray socks, and a worn blue striped dressing gown. He was a tall, gaunt man with hair that had once been black as night and was now streaked gray, and with scruff on his cheeks and jaw.
    He barely even glanced in Michelle’s direction when she stepped up to his side, resting her hand on his shoulder.
    “Hi, Uncle Dale,” she murmured. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
    “Don’t bother with nonsense like that,” Dale said, without looking away from the grounds outside the window. “I already know that you brought the mutt .”
    Ranger almost growled at him, then remembered the nurse sitting at the end of the sofa not six feet away keeping an eye on the patients watching the odd cartoon on the television, and swallowed the snarl in his throat with difficulty.
    “I see that Mickie has you dressed up and playing the dog, then, Ranger,” Dale continued. “Don’t you find it offensive, having to pretend to be something you are not? Or have you spent so long acting like a lap dog that you really think you are one, now?”
    Michelle inhaled sharply. “Dale, don’t be crude. Ranger just—”
    Dale cut her off before she could really get started, though. “Ranger is here because he is obliged to be, and not out of the kindness of his heart. Don’t mistake his presence today as some sort of familial sentiment. We may be inmates of this godforsaken institution, but we still receive the news.”
    “You’ve heard about the murders, then,” Michelle said.
    “Don’t mince words, child. Call them what they are. They’re sacrifices. The spacing of the deaths, the timing, it doesn’t make any other sense. Ranger’s only here for one reason, aren’t you?” For the first time, Dale looked away from the window to throw a scathing glance at the wolf.
    “No, it’s not true.” But even as she said it, Michelle’s voice wobbled badly, and she didn’t even sound like she believed her own words. The wolf certainly wouldn’t’ve.
    Dale sighed. “You’re being dull, Mickie, and it doesn’t become you. You know that your pet wolf only came to visit us this time because he needs to assemble the Guardian Wolves, and since the pack is so thin on the ground back home that means he needs our help.”
    Yani wandered over, walking on her toes, and made an inquiring noise in the back of her throat. “Us? Our help?” she asked,