“Spence, Loch, this is Robyn Sheffield. She’ll be with us for the next two weeks. Treat her like you treat Abby.”
“Only better,” Abby said with a grin.
Spencer gave her a friendly wink, then turned to me. He inhaled deeply, and I tried not to be offended or weirded out, but I still couldn’t get used to the way cats sniff each other all the time. Even if the human-form version was much more polite than a house cat’s butt sniffing.
I braced myself for his reaction. For the subtle staring and less-than-subtle excuses to touch me. But Spencer only shrugged and held out his hand to be shaken. “Hey. I’m Spencer Cole.”
“Lochlan Hayes.” The tall, blond tom stuck out his hand, peering at me through light hazel eyes, and I could only stare at them both. Though I caught their Alpha looking every time I turned around, they seemed totally unaffected by the presence of the only female stray known to exist in the US.
Spencer laughed and lowered his hand, when I failed to reply to his introduction. “Nice to meet you anyway. And to answer your question, I told him I knew a specialist who was familiar with this particular infection. Then I offered to treat him for free. No need to file anything with his insurance. That last part usually seals the deal.”
“Do we have a name?” Titus asked.
Lochlan pulled a worn leather wallet from the pocket of his gray jogging pants and handed it to his Alpha. “Corey Morris. Looks like he’s a freshman at Ole Miss.”
“Any idea why he’d go to the hospital in Jackson?” Jace asked. “That’s a two-hour drive south of Oxford.”
“Maybe the wayyoudrive,” Abby said. “It’d take me two and a half.”
Drew shrugged. “Poor kid’s just eighteen years old.”
“His life isn’t over.” Titus stared at the unconscious new stray, while Spencer pulled an IV bag full of clear liquid from one of the upper cabinets on the other side of the basement. “It’s just a lot harder now.”
My chest began to ache as his words dug into me like the claws that had simultaneously shredded my skin and ruined my life. I couldn’t think of a truer statement in the world. My life wasn’t over either, but since I’d been scratched by a dying stray in a cage more than four months ago, everything had gotten infinitely, immeasurably harder.
Every decision seemed complicated by a whole list of consequences and considerations I’d never had as a human. Each breath brought with it a banquet of scents my sluggish brain struggled to identify and classify. Every beat of my heart pumped blood-borne instincts and cravings I fought to resist. Every square foot of earth belonged to some Alpha who would only let me stand on it if I promised something in return. Loyalty. Obedience. Marriage.
Corey Morris would wake up in a world he no longer recognized or truly belonged to.
I knew exactly how that felt.
Spencer crossed the cell and hung the IV bag from a hook on the wall above the twin bed. While he opened a packet of sterile IV tubing and supplies, Titus knelt next to the bed until his nose was inches from the bloody bandage. Then he inhaled deeply. “He definitely hasn’t shifted yet. I can’t smell his infector’s scent in his blood.”
“What does that mean?” I whispered to Abby.
“The way my dad puts it, sampling someone’s scent is like tasting wine,” she whispered, while we watched from the other side of the cell. “You know how when you smell a person, you get the primary scent, but also subtle layers of other things? Fear. Health. Pregnancy, if that applies.”
I nodded. It had taken my human-born nose a while to learn how to find and interpret those things, and the truth was that I was still learning what each scent meant.
“With a stray, you also get a trace of the cat who infected him. But that doesn’t kick in until after the first shift, when the infection has thoroughly permeated the bloodstream.”
“So, in a few hours, we’ll be able to tell who infected him, just from smelling him?”
“If the scent belongs to someone we know.” Abby shrugged. “But that’s not likely. Titus’s goal is to identify and reach out to all the strays in his territory, but the reality is that that’s quite an undertaking. Most of them aren’t volunteering to be counted in the census.”
“So, what’s with the IV?” I asked, as Spencer carefully slid a needle into Corey Morris’s arm. “They’re medicating him?”
“No.” Titus leaned against the bars to my left, to get out of Loch’s way. “Hydrating him. The fever leads to dehydration, and IV fluids help fend off the worst of the sickness.”
Abby gave me a sad look. “I didn’t know that when you were infected. Sorry.”
I linked my arm with hers. “You did what you could. Without you, I’d probably be dead by now.”
And without Titus and his friends, Corey Morris might die too. Or he might live, then infect someone else.
The sick stray’s free arm twitched on the bed.
“He’s waking up,” I said.
