“Easy enough.”
I lift the blanket to cover her from the waist down before she tugs her gown up to bare her stomach and show me the extent of the damage, and it’s far worse than anything I imagined. I expected the state of her wound and bloodied bandages, even a smattering of bruises to explain why she’s sick in the first place. It wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve come across a female shifter that was married off to some abusive assholes that think they’re entitled to treat their mate however they wish, but this...
A subtle glance at the exposed skin of her arms shows them just as riddled with scars as her abdomen, but it’s the unique precision of each that has me swallowing bile. Every mark is different, carefully carved into her skin. The majority are pearlescent white, though there are a few that were engraved so deeply, they healed as upraised, pink scar tissue.
“No need to make it weird,” she flippantly declares, pointedly staring at a spot on the ceiling above my head. “I’m sure you’ve seen much more interesting things in your line of work.”
“Oh, absolutely. I could go on for days listing the things I’ve unfortunately had to extract from patient’s bodies.” Shaking my head to clear it, I leave the room briefly to grab the necessary supplies. “Thousands of years of evolution, yet people still cannot seem to grasp the concept of ‘if it doesn’t have a flared base, don’t stick it up your butt.’”
Her soft, breathy chuckle sets us both a little more at ease, and I push my countless questions aside to concentrate fully on the task at hand to make this as quick and painless as possible. Carefully wiping away the blood from her skin when I finish, I rise to my feet.
“I’ll make it clear that no one is to step foot in this room, but I need to find someone to cover my rounds before I can stay. Do you need me to get you anything while I’m out there?”
Eyes closed, she’s already half-asleep. “Pants.”
“I’ll do you one better and grab a shirt while I’m at it.”
Tossing everything into the waste bin, I strip off my gloves to replace them with fresh ones when a small smudge of her blood on my wrist catches my eye. Internally cursing, I wash my hands and grab a new pair, closing the door softly behind me.
“Dr. Garrison, wha-” the nurse from before begins, but now I need to make a detour that’ll set me back even longer, and swiftly cut her off.
“Not a soul is to step foot in that room. I don’t care if every alarm goes off, you page me instead of rushing in, understand?”
She purses her lips, retorts clearly on the tip of her tongue, but ultimately gives a terse nod. “Fine. But it’s going in her chart that you made the request after you were alone with her for an hour.” The implication is heavy in her tone, and I nearly bite her head off for the unspoken accusation, but that would only make things look worse, and I’m already working with a limited time frame.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
Passing my patients off between two residents, I head to the nearest single stall bathroom and lock the door. With a drawn-out exhale, I cross to the mirror hanging above the sink, gripping the porcelain as I focus on slowing my rapid heartbeat. No matter how many times I’ve wound up in this position, it never ceases to be completely and utterly terrifying.
Each race of shifter developed their own unique mate curse on top of every other way we’re damned, and it’s my fault the dragons got the worst one, penance for the part I played in our downfall. One unintentional brush of skin with a stranger is all it takes to seal our fate. The missing piece to what remains of our blackened souls out there is a constant threat that forces us to take extreme precautions, even if it’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that it’ll happen. Mark-mates are little more than a fairytale anymore, and the vast majority of dragons have given up on the prospect altogether, choosing their mates instead. What if you take a mate, though, then a decade later stumble across your fated? Everything about our lives was set up for maximum heartache as penance for my mistake.
On the off chance it does happen, a matching mark appears on our skin at the moment of contact, but it could be anywhere, any size. There’s no pain, no internal sense ofknowingwhen it occurs. Bump into someone in the airport? Unless you get their information then and there, or are willing to strip down immediately to do a body check, you might not find out until that night when you’re taking off your shoes and discover your mark appeared on the bottom of your toe. Then your mate could be literally anywhere in the world without a way to track them down. The epitome of ‘so close, and yet, so far.’ It’s forced us to isolate even more than most shifters tend to, further reducing the chance of ever finding our missing half at all.
Putting your life in the hands of a stranger and living in constant fear that they’ll be killed, that you’ll drop dead without warning; it’s what I deserve, but not the other elementals that don’t even know what they truly are.
“Just because she was afraid of people touching her doesn’t mean she’s a dragon.” My iridescent gaze stares back at me beneath the locks of white hair that have escaped my leather band, calling me out on the pitiful attempt to keep my anxiety in check.
Reaching one hand behind me, I tug off my shirt, beginning the meticulous inspection process.It’s okay even if it happens. I know what she looks like, where she is.
The sink shatters, porcelain shards pelting the tile at my feet.
“No.” My heartbeat thunders until all I can hear is my blood pounding in my ears, the edges of my vision blackening for a flash. Pivoting in front of the mirror, I lift my arm, revealing the massive tribal dragon head tattoo covering my left rib cage. “For the love of everything unholy and otherwise, please let me be hallucinating. The Fates can’t be so cruel as to bind that poor woman by my side. Give her someone else,anyoneelse.”
A thousand thoughts whirl through my mind so quickly, they may as well be static. Meaningless. Everything and nothing, all sense lost as my entire world shifts on its axis. My stomach lurches, bile rising and burning my throat, and I barely make it to the toilet in time to vomit.
‘You were meant to save people, Stone. I’m just not one of them,’my best friend’s voice echos, taunting and tormenting me at every turn.
Flushing, I stumble back to my feet on shaky legs, rinsing out my mouth in the sink. As I spit for the third time, I force the haunting reminder back down. I’m not going to fail to protect anyone ever again. Especially not my... mate.
This doesn’t have to change anything. I simply need to make her aware of the situation, convince her she’s safer living in the main house with Raiden... overlooking the city she apparently hates. Then both of us can carry on with our lives, albeit, more carefully than before. Everything will be fine.
“She’s going to think I did it on purpose to trap her.”
Thatrealization hits me hard enough to snap me out of my spiral, and I yank on my shirt while striding out the door. Detouring to grab a pair of scrubs that look roughly her size, I power walk the entire way back to her room, struggling to figure out how I’m going to deliver the news. What I’m going to do. Whatwe’regoing to do. But all of my scattered thoughts come to a screeching halt when I open the door and find her bed completely empty. The crumpled business card and droplets of blood on the blanket obliterate any hope that I accidentally stumbled into the wrong room, and I’m left with only a sinking feeling in my gut, and an increasing sense of dread for company.
Dropping the clothes, I storm back into the hall and smack both palms down on the counter of the nurse’s station, jaw clenched so tightly it’s a miracle I haven’t cracked a tooth. “Where. Is. She?”
The temp jolts in his chair. “Slipped out shortly after you left her room.”
