“He needs blood.” The professor was opening and closing drawers, searching through all the equipment my parents had purchased.
“Fine. Take mine.” I rolled up my sleeve and shoved my arm at the professor.
“What’s your blood type?”
I had no idea. Shifters rarely if ever needed transfusions.
“The school has that on file.” Mrs. Ardilla stepped away from Rawling, yanked off her gloves, and made a call before putting on another pair of gloves.
The phone dinged seconds later, and she bent over the device without touching it.
“Oh no. The only one?” She sent me a worried match. “Because Rawling has quite a rare blood group, there’s only one person in the school who’s a match.”
“Is it me? Let it be me.” I flung my arm out. “I have to do something.” Yanking at my hair was a welcome distraction from what was happening in front of me.
She shook her head, and I braced myself for her to say Holden or Professor Shaw. It didn’t matter, just drag them here and I’d pump the freaking blood out of them myself.
“Atticus.”
I let a moment pass where I imagined his reaction and dismissed it. “Get him.”
“Take your hands off me.”My folks shoved Atticus through the door minutes later, and he was made to put on a mask and a hospital gown.
“Why am I here?”
Mrs. Ardilla had placed a screen in front of Rawling, and Jack was in the bedroom giving the baby a bottle of formula. Rawling would be upset when he woke up because he’d want to feed her first. But she was hungry, and he would give her the second, third, and all the rest of her feeds.
I dragged Atticus into the kitchenette.
“Rawling will die if he doesn’t get a transfusion, and you’re the only match in the school, so fucking do it.”
“That’s preposterous.” His nostrils flared. “My blood is superior to any latent’s.” He tried to peer around the screen, but I blocked him. “The records are wrong. I’m not the same bloody group as that filthy?—”
Using all of my shifter strength, I shoved him against the kitchen counter. Fur rippled over my arms, and I snarled. “If you value your life, you won’t finish that sentence.”
He growled and sneered. “He’s worse than a latent, and I’m going to expose him.”
“There’s too much blood, and he’s getting cold.”
I tried to block out Mrs. Ardilla’s frantic voice and concentrated on Atticus.
My hands trembled, not from the air-conditioning or from Atticus’s wolf but from what he was inferring. Unscrambling my thoughts and piecing them together, I thought back to when he’d mumbled about my mate at archery. I’d dismissed it as BS. But what if it wasn’t my mate’s humanity he was hinting at but he’d caught word of Rawling being a hunter?
I knew hunters weren’t a thing, but history gave us countless examples of one person or a group being able to whip up a crowd carrying a grudge about a perceived threat.
Shifters at Sombertooth were at best wary of humans, and if Atticus convinced them my mate was a hunter, Rawling and our baby girl would be at risk.
Us too.
This wasn’t a time to think of my own skin or my wolf’s fur.
“Massage again, harder.”That was the professor.
Hating that I was arguing with my former best friend instead of being with Rawling, I allowed my fangs to extend and saliva to drip onto his face. He spat at me as Jack emerged from the bedroom saying the baby was asleep, but I needed someone to be with our daughter and I begged her to go back.
“You are a disgusting piece of shit, Atticus.” Jack flung those words at him, and he visibly shrank under her tirade. “If you don’t do this, I will personally make your life a misery.”
He shrugged, but she had wounded him, I could see it in his eyes.
