“Shut up,” I snap at the ogre. “You’re not going to win me over. We’re never going to be friends. Just stay out of my line of fire, and you won’t get burned.”
The bastard has the gall to smirk at me.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re as small as a sprite but fiery as a dragon,” he says with too much laughter in his voice. I glare at him until the bell rings for the doors to open. “I have a daughter just like you—almost three, and she’s your size with your attitude.”
My screams of frustration fill the hallway. I’m not small. I’m not insignificant. I control whether I live or die, dammit.
Chapter 3
Frank
“Cantankerous Chuchunya, whining witches, and minging minotaurs,” I grouse from my leather desk chair. The dust on my shelves sparkles in the sunlight. I should dust them, but I’m never in here. My OR is absolutely spotless, but this place? Why bother? To entertain the annoying patient's families? “Whoever said monsters were fearsome obviously had never met one. I’ve never met such a bunch of complainers—”
“They are patients sick enough to be in a hospital,” Drake volleys back to me. She sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup with stains over the rim. I bet she’s refilled that cup at least three times today. “Pain makes monsters grouchy. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m not grouchy,” I bark, snapping my scissor fingers at her. “This is my natural charm.”
“Ignore him,” says Landyn to his phone. He’s kicking his leg over the arm of one of my visitor chairs. That pose means he’s texting his latest conquest. “These board meetings always make him pissy. He doesn’t like hearing that the meat he tenderizes has thoughts, feelings, or a life force. It messes with his illusion that he’s not working on living, breathing individuals.”
“You make me sound heartless when I know you repaired mine all those years ago,” I sneer.
Landyn flicks me off without looking up from his phone.
I’m ready to get this meeting over with. It’s obvious Landyn is mentally useless. Drake is running on half the sleep she needs. Where’s Bracken? He’s always late to the bullshit. You would think, after all this time, he’d learn to schedule the births in this hospital. Babies. Damn inconvenient. If they didn’t pad our bottom line, I’d ax the whole department. I swear half the whining comes from the preggos.
Landyn laughs at his phone screen. Drake rolls her eyes, but I’m on one today. If he wants a fight, I’ll give him one. “At least I slice a piece of ass like a real surgeon instead of taking it in the supply closets,” I say.
Drake snorts coffee through her nose, staining her scrub shirt.
“Bracken’s late, so you turn your nastiness onto me. Is that it? Well, guess what? I don’t give a damn. You can’t bring me down. Not today. I’m too happy with Veronica—”
“You rat bastard! She’s the best nurse I’ve had since we opened Haunted Hospital! How am I going to replace her?” Drake yells as she mops coffee off her scrub shirt with a paper napkin.
“Why would you have to replace her?”
“Because they aren’t the same after you bed them,” she snaps. “Sometimes I hate you, Landyn.” She crosses her legs fiercely and bobs her foot with irritation. “A harpy. A harpy, Landyn. Couldn’t you keep it in your pants for a harpy?!”
“Obviously not,” I add, earning myself a glare.
“It takes two—”
“Shut up!” She screeches at him.
“I wouldn’t scream at him,” I say to take the temperature another notch. “He obviously likes screaming females.”
Landyn picks the cup of pens off my desk and throws them at me. I open my arms so as not to accidentally poke his eyes out. I want to fight, not to maim my best friend with my surgical instrument fingers. Unfortunately, he’s content to kick over my chair. I fall to my ass on my desk, sending my dictation board flying. It crashes into a thousand pieces.
“Sorry I’m late,” Bracken says as he flies through the door. “I can see I’ve missed nothing new. Drake’s pissed. Landyn’s tackled Frank. Glass and shrapnel everywhere.”
“We had to amuse ourselves somehow,” I quip from the floor on the opposite side of my desk, where I survey my broken equipment. “What kept you?”
“Business is booming in OB/GYN,” he says with more pep than someone should have this early in the morning. “We had a werewolf family from Grant’s pack—”
“The one with the human in tow,” I say, perking up. When Grant called about a possible three-stage J-pouch surgery, I nearly jumped for joy. A chance to operate on a human, not once but three times, to create a new lower-gi for them? Sign me up.
“Yes, she’s the reason I’m late,” he says, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair to make it stand up in all directions. Poor man looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket. “I had to keep the family busy while the orderlies captured her. Didn’t hear the announcements to put the hospital on lockdown?”
