Chapter 35
Havoc
“So, what's on the schedule for today?”
She grimaces, gesturing around the empty lobby. “You're looking at it.” She sees my confusion and sighs, leading me down the hall. “I get most people in Mercy Ridge don't have pets, but what I don't understand is apparently I've got this fantastic reputation that brought Stryker here searching for me, and even at the fundraiser, some rich asshole was talking about sending people to search for the ‘Angel of Mercy,’ but none of them could find me? I don't get it, it's not like I'm keeping this place a secret.”
My stomach swoops as it clicks. Any time I heard a whisper of someone searching for her, I killed them. The King of Carnage isn’t my only enemy, and even though I’ve taken care of the rest that I know about, there’s always someone waiting in the wind to get revenge. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Fuck.Fuck.
“I'm sure business will pick up.”Now that I’m not murdering your customers.
She shrugs. “Hopefully. But as soon as I get the check for the house I'll have plenty of buffer room to figure out a way to drumup business. Maybe invest in some advertising.” With a glance over her shoulder, she declares in no uncertain terms, “You're not getting that back, by the way.”
“I don't want it back. You're my mate, Kiara, it's my job and privilege to take care of you.”
She makes a dismissive hum under her breath and opens the door. I react on instinct as something flies at my face, catching a furious raccoon in one hand and holding it as far away from me as possible.
“What the fuck!? We need to get better locks on these cages.”
“Oh, that's just Marco, he lives here. Careful, he bites.”
As if wanting to prove her point, the rabid little beast stretches forward and sinks his sharp teeth into my arm.
Motherfuckerthat stings.
Kiara clicks her tongue. “Now Marco, that's not very nice. Havoc here is the reason I'm going to be able to finally spring your mate from this joint.”
I swear, the little monster is able to understand her perfectly, slowly releasing my arm and shooting me a dirty look before squirming free. He skitters back to Kiara's side, and I take a step ready to intervene, but it's not necessary. He rubs himself against her leg like a cat before crawling into a large box underneath the metal exam table.
I nervously crouch down beside Kiara to see, half expecting the beast to lunge for my face, only to see him protectively curled around the top half of another raccoon, licking the top of its head. This one barely acknowledges me at all, nestled in a sea of blankets, scraps of paper, and untouched food.
“What's wrong with it?”
My sweet mate brushes her fingers tenderly across the lethargic one before moving to the counter to wash her hands and pull a vial out of her messenger bag. “Burned the heck out of her leg a few weeks ago. I got her healed up, but the furhasn't regrown for some reason, despite the fact there's no scar tissue there. Checked her for mange and everything else I could think of, but she's perfectly healthy. The issue is that it's cold as hell outside. If I were to release her right now, she'd end up with frostbite or worse because it's such a large area of exposed skin. So I've been keeping them here while trying to come up with a long term solution. Bandages, socks; any of that will be filthy and torn in no time. Honestly, I was drawing a blank and reached the point of training Marco to do laundry. Good little mate that he is, he's been an A+ student. The problem is he can't hang dry socks in this weather, they'll just freeze. On the bright side, he's become a fantastic assistant around here. Downside, Polo is depressed and getting worse by the day.”
I knew my mate was too sweet for this world, but this settles it. She should have been able to turn tomefor help. I'm the king of all assholes for leaving her alone long enough that she trained a raccoon to replace me.
“So are we adopting them as pets, then?”
Over her shoulder, she gives me a curious look. “Have youmeta raccoon? They'll rob you blind.”
“Sounds like they'd fit in perfectly at the guild.”
She smiles softly, and my heart skips a beat. It's not as free as the ones she used to give me, but it has just as much power to bring a man to his knees.
“Well thankfully, we won't have to find out, thanks to you.”
“What do you mean?”
Reaching up on her tiptoes, she grabs a silver bowl and bag of chips from the cabinet, pouring a few in before uncorking a familiar vial of iridescent powder and carefully tapping it so only the lightest dusting covers the chips. “Antlers from a white stag are basically a cure-all for physical ailments in animals. It feels sacrilegious to sprinkle it on Doritos, but desperate times and all that jazz.”
That tiny vial alone cost five million dollars. Well, it would have if I hadn't stolen it, but in my defense, the guy was trying to sell off two of them on the black market while his own daughter was in the hospital. I didn't feel an ounce of guilt killing the bastard, and the first stop I made was to his daughter. The rest of the vial went to a myst nurse working the NICU.
It may not be a miracle cure for humans the way it is for animals, but it still does wonders to speed up the healing process and give them a fighting chance.
Two million dollars an ounce, and she's feeding it to a depressed raccoon on a Dorito. I'm not sure if I'm about to have a heart attack, or kiss the hell out of her.
