Page 15 of Damien’s Mate

At the first red light, he yanked the wires from the car’s GPS so it couldn’t be traced, before continuing on to an abandoned area near the waterfront. At least the damn thing didn’t have On-Star, or he’d be screwed.

He had the rearview mirror tilted so he could check on Lila while he drove. She was still breathing.

Keep it up, girl, he thought. Don’t fucking die on me.

Anxiety clawed at him. He’d almost lost guys he worked with—had lost some of them. It sucked, seeing someone go like that, and it hurt if they were somebody he liked. But he always dealt with it because that’s what you did.

You dealt and moved on. But if Lila died…

He couldn’t help feeling he would have lost something important. His last chance at having something beautiful. Which was fucked up, because even if they’d done the dinner and hotel room, one wild night with a thief shifter goddess was not exactly a happily-ever-after.

What would a shifter want with a human guy, anyway?

He hadn’t learned much about the shapeshifters he’d met, but one thing they’d let slip was that they were tougher than humans, and that they healed faster.

He just hoped she’d be okay without a hospital. But he’d had no choice, taking her out of the ambulance.

If she went to the hospital and turned into some kind of giant cat right there in the ER, shifters would be outed to the public. He knew they’d do just about anything to keep that from happening.

And from what little they’d told him, they had good reason. They’d been hunted, abducted, trafficked, experimented on.

He guessed some of them were law-abiding, and some walked the shady side of the street like him. Like Lila. But whatever she was, however she felt about him, he owed her big—for tossing him that bracelet before the explosion, and for keeping Rostov from shooting him.

He had to hope he’d done what she would want.

The problem was, she still needed a doctor. And there was only one he could trust.

Parking in the shadows behind an empty warehouse, he called an old high school buddy, James Nuñez, who ran a free clinic near their old neighborhood.

Fucker got a scholarship to college, another one to med school, and didn’t have any more fucking sense than to go back to the shithole they came from.

But he was a good friend, and he’d patched Damien up more than once, off the books.

James picked up on the second ring. “Hey, asshole,” he said. “Who shot you this time?”

“Fuck you, Jaime. There’s a reason you weren’t voted Class Clown.”

“Because I was voted Most Likely to Succeed.”

“And yet here you are, still in our fucking hood,” Damien said. “Look, sorry about calling so late, but I need your help.”

He heard James’s sigh. “Of course you do. How bad you hurt?”

“Not me this time. It’s a friend. And she was hit by a car.”

“Fuck. You should be on your way to the ER.”

“Can’t. It’s complicated.”

“It always is,” James said. “Can you meet me at the clinic?”

“You don’t want the car I’m driving outside your door.” He told James where he was.

“I’m on my way.”

Chapter 7

James stayed on the line as he drove, walking Damien through a series of things to check Lila for. Pulse, respiration rate. Pupil reactions. Swelling in the abdomen, that would indicate massive internal bleeding.