The Enchanted: Council of Seven Shifter Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  1

  Don’t cry, Kate, don’t you dare cry! Kate gently smacked the back of her head against the wall as she willed the tears from her eyes, determined not to fall to pieces, but the more she tried to stop herself, the heavier her breathing got. You’re stronger than this, no matter what you grew up believing. Shake it off and move on.

  The matter wasn’t so simple, her genetic disposition toward compassion overcoming her immortal hardness. Who had she been kidding to believe that she could handle this? She wasn’t cut out for this line of work, not even in a hospital where seventy-five percent of the patients were Enchanted.

  It seemed unfathomable that a graduate of the prestigious Stanford Medical School struggled to collect herself in the eerie quiet of the hospital morgue, and the realization only made her sob more. She wished she had the capacity to turn off her emotions like so many of her counterparts in both the mortal and Enchanted worlds.

  This was supposed to be easier, starting my internship here. An Enchanted hospital. Why didn’t I listen to Mom? I should have just gone into herbal medicine instead.

  Kate was alone in the tombs, but she knew it was only a matter of time before someone else ventured down there, disrupting her deep anguish. She wasn’t sure if she welcomed or cursed the thought. On one hand, she wanted someone to pull her out of the deep depression which threatened to squeeze her tender heart. On the other, she loathed the idea that someone might see her like that, sniffling in the shadows. It was difficult enough being a female. She didn’t need to fuel their disdain by proving the males in her midst right.

  Come on, Kate. Get it together. You’re better than this. Kate’s intelligent brown eyes were squeezed shut as if to ward off the water threatening to fall onto her lightly freckled cheeks.

  In her lab coat, her pager vibrated again, and Kate wanted to whip it against a wall. What the hell could be so important at a time like this? She had just watched a little girl die, and they expected her to answer to what? An inflamed boil in the clinic? Did she need to change a bedpan?

  At that moment, she didn’t entertain the horrific notion that another mortal life hung in the balance.

  She choked back the stone of emotion caught in her throat as she heard footsteps striding toward her, accompanied by the metal clanging of a gurney. Hastily, Kate wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and picked up her pager, staring at it like she was studying the message, even though she couldn’t read it through the tears blinding her vision.

  An orderly burst through the double doors, wheeling in a body covered in a sheet. He glanced at her suspiciously, his eyebrow raised in question. Kate willed herself not to look at the corpse, worried that the screams that she’d managed to suppress would come spewing from her lungs.

  That’s not her. That’s not Lisa, she thought to herself. It’s someone else who died today in this merciless building. Death is everywhere in this place.

  “Are you supposed to be down here?” the orderly demanded gruffly, peering at her identification pass. Kate nodded quickly and held it up so he could see it better.

  “I just started here,” she muttered. “I got a little turned around looking for pediatrics.”

  The orderly arched an eyebrow higher, as if questioning her explanation. If Kate had not been in such a state, she might have found his expression comical, but there was no humor in her bones, not that morning. She wondered if she’d ever find anything amusing again after what she had experienced.

  To her relief, the orderly seemed content with her explanation and pointed behind her. “Yeah, it happens all the time when you take the south elevator instead of the north. Hang a right at the end of the hall and take the far bank of elevators. They’re painted blue, not red.”

  Kate nodded and turned away.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled. “I appreciate it.” She realized she was speaking the truth; she had appreciated the reality check. If the orderly hadn’t shown up, she likely would have stayed down there all day, withering away in the dark.

  As she pushed through the double doors, the orderly called out to her.

  “Dr. Luthor?” Kate paused to look at him from over her shoulder, slightly surprised that he had actually taken the time to note the name on her ID tag.

  “Yes?” Surprisingly, the orderly offered her a small smile.

  “It gets better,” he told her, and she hung her head in both shame and gratitude. He had seen right through her flimsy excuse, after all. Perhaps it did happen more than Kate thought. It gave her a perverse boost of confidence to know she wasn’t the first to be caught hiding out in a sea of tears.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. Oh, God, I hope so, she thought as she exited the sterile mortuary. I hope it gets better. It can’t get any worse, can it?

  She rubbed her hands over her face, doubting it would do any good. She was thankful that she couldn’t see her face but even more grateful that she hadn’t thought to fuss with makeup, despite Lisette’s constant razzing about her lack of professionalism. Of course, Lisette would never be caught dead in the tombs, sobbing like a baby. Kate could only imagine what her eyes might look like if she had troubled herself to wear mascara.

  You’re worried about how you look right now? Shame on you. Guilt shot though Kate like a bullet, and the mixture of emotions inside her made bile swirl dangerously in her gut.

  What she had told the orderly hadn’t been a hundred percent true; yes, she was new to Carlingview Private Hospital. She had just begun her first year as an intern at the internationally renowned hospital three weeks earlier, but she had already gathered her bearings quite well in the 82,000-square-foot space. Kate had not been looking for the pediatric unit when she found herself in the basement. She had been fleeing the treatment area.

  She was not strong enough for this. She couldn’t watch eight-year-old cancer patients lose a fight after months of treatment. That was not what she had signed up for. She had become a doctor to end that kind of suffering.

  Kate waited at the bank of blue elevators for a moment, trying to push the image of her sister’s face from her mind, but Veronica’s chubby cheeks and vivid azure eyes were etched in her subconscious forever.

  That little girl in pediatrics is not Veronica. The circumstances are not the same. You cannot let every death affect you like this, or you’ll never last, and the years you have spent training will not make an iota of difference. You owe it to Veronica to keep it together. Do it for your sister. That’s why you’re here in the first place. Make Veronica proud.

  Ensuring that she had talked herself down enough to return to her rounds, Kate punched the call button on the elevator. Her pager buzzed again, and an instant flash of shame filled her. Someone else could have been dying while she was down there wallowing in self-pity. She had to respond to her pages. It was the first thing she had learned in med school. Nothing was more important than responding to her pages. Maybe she had no business being a doctor. Maybe that was what today’s lesson was trying to teach her.

  She pulled the device out of her pocket again and peered at it, cringing when she saw who it was. The head of pediatrics was looking for her. Of course she was.

  Dr. Evans is going to be livid, Kate thought. She already thinks I’m pathetic because I couldn’t find a vein to draw blood from that preteen yesterday. I can’t keep her waiting now.

  The door opened, and an attractive doctor looked past her down the hall in confusion. Kate felt her breath catch as she looked at him, his attractiveness striking her into speechlessness.

  “Seriously? It went down?” he grumbled as Kate stepped onto the lift with him. His hazel eyes rested on the board, and he poked at the already lit button for the fifth floor. He shot Kate a contemptuous look, like she was somehow responsible for the elevator going down instead of up, as he had expected.

  Well, isn’t he pleasant? she thought with uncharacteristic sarcasm. It wasn’t surprising, however. He was a bear, and they were notoriously standoffish. Coupled with the fact th
at he seemed to be an attending of sorts, she was sure he was twice the jerk for it. All that money and power seemed to go to their brains.

  Kate smiled timidly in spite of herself, but he turned his eyes upward to watch the lift move floors, tapping his foot impatiently. She was becoming accustomed to being ignored by the senior residents, but she couldn’t help feeling him checking her out through his peripheral vision, and Kate wasn’t sure what to make of the attention, covert as it might be.

  No one bothered to get to know the interns; most of the junior doctors would weed themselves out in the first year, anyway. The ones who did not burn out or get fired would end up with placements in different medical establishments for their residency. The general mentality among the senior staff was not to get too attached—or at least, that was how it seemed to Kate.

  The elevator stopped on the second floor, and Kate got off to find Dr. Evans. As she stepped between the steel doors, she heard the resident mutter loudly enough for her to hear.

  “Really? You want to be a doctor, and you couldn’t have taken the stairs up two flights?”

  “Want to be”? I AM a doctor, just like you! she thought indignantly, her chocolate eyes flashing. Kate whirled to protest the unfair assessment, but the doors had closed on his smug face before she had a chance. She could have sworn she saw him wink infuriatingly before he disappeared, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Who was she kidding? She wouldn’t have said anything to him. He might be her boss one day. She probably would have apologized for doing witchcraft and summoning the elevator to her if he had challenged her further. Kate sighed, wondering what it was about the residents which turned the interns into groveling, brown-nosing shadows of their true selves.

  There I go lying to myself again. I’ve always been obedient and submissive. Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe that’s why I’m here.

  Kate had graduated top of her class at Stanford Medical School, and three months earlier, she had been the one to be revered among her peers. It had been a long, grueling haul, one filled with sleepless nights, endless studying, and minimal nutrition. Her diet had consisted of coffee and ramen noodles for almost eight years, despite the fact that she had cut down her undergrad by a year with a demanding course load for her summer classes.

  Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it was a small chunk of time in her elongated life, and the end result made it all worthwhile. For the first time, she felt like she had a purpose. She’d received offers from hospitals all across the country, even Canada, but she’d chosen Carlingview, believing that being around the Enchanted would let her focus more on her training without worrying that her true nature might shine through under pressure or after a twenty-four-hour shift.

  Carlingview was the only Enchanted-run hospital in the west, and Kate had been eager to accept. What she hadn’t anticipated, however, was that she would be thrust to the bottom of the totem pole, trying to prove herself all over again. Kate began second-guessing her own moves, ones which had felt natural inside the structure and security of a classroom.

  But real life is nothing like college. They tell you that over and over, but you don’t get it until you get it.

  “Luthor, where the hell have you been?” Nurse Byers snapped from behind her. Kate whirled to face the head pediatric nurse, startled at her presence. She hadn’t been expecting a direct confrontation.

  The older woman glared at the new doctor with annoyance and gestured for her to follow her through the floor. Byers was one of the few mortals that Kate had worked with since starting, but there was certainly something otherworldly about the firm-faced woman. And not in a good way.

  “I… uh… got off on the wrong floor,” Kate muttered, trailing after Nurse Byers.

  The nurse snorted rudely. “Typical. You’ve been here three weeks, and you still can’t navigate yourself around?” she demanded. “How did you ever get through medical school?”

  Kate gritted her teeth but steeled herself from answering. At least I got through medical school, she thought caustically, and she was instantly ashamed. Nurses were an intrinsic part of the healthcare system. They were the backbone of any facility, ensuring that everything ran smoothly, providing materials and dealing with the most difficult patients. She knew that the short remarks and sarcasm were partially a hazing and partially a way of toughening up the incoming staff. She couldn’t take it so personally.

  Kate was just tired. She had been on call for thirty-three hours, and she had barely slept two. She would be off in ninety minutes. She could make it another hour and a half, couldn’t she? She could feel her eyelids grow heavy as the words echoed in her head. She wondered if she would make it back to her cramped basement apartment. Maybe she would just crash in one of the on-call rooms for a few hours. The cots were more comfortable than the lumpy second-hand mattress she called a bed, anyway. Realizing how close she was to a deep, uninterrupted sleep only fueled her exhaustion.

  I’ll never make it. I am going to collapse right here on the floor, giving Nurse Byers and Dr. Evans yet another reason to despise me. Maybe I should do just that. Curl up on the floor and give up for good. In her mind’s eye, she saw everyone pointing and laughing at her as they stepped over her defeated body.

  The thought gave her the spark of adrenaline she needed to gather her fourth or fifth wind. Or was it her sixth? She didn’t need any more hate from the staff. They had reason enough to expect the interns to fail. Kate wondered if the senior residents and attendings had a secret pool, betting on which interns would be the first to go down in flames. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least if they did.

  There was a rumor that the job became easier to deal with, the lack of sleep, the insane hours, the constant stench of death around them, but Kate could not imagine a world where that was a reality. She had watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to hope for a brighter tomorrow, though she knew reality wasn’t a medical drama. Maybe by “better,” they meant that they would develop a certain apathy to these things. But Kate didn’t want that, either. Feeling was what made her who she was. Without her empathy and compassion, Kate had no idea who she’d be.

  She blinked, realizing that the head nurse was well ahead of her, almost out of Kate’s view altogether. She had to sprint to cover the distance between them.

  “Nurse Byers, I’m sorry, but I can’t go with you. Dr. Evans paged me,” Kate told the embittered woman. “I can come by after—”

  “Where do you think I’m taking you?” Alice Byers snapped over her shoulder, her mouth twisted into a grimace of scorn. “Dr. Evans sent me to look for you stragglers, as if I don’t have anything better to do with my day than babysit lost newbies.”

  Kate’s face was burning with humiliation by the time they stopped. She blinked furiously to generate fluid to her burning eyes. I don’t want to see another dying kid today. Please don’t let it be another dying kid.

  Nurse Byers knocked gently on the door before opening it, plastering a warm smile upon her face, even though no one had called out for her to enter. Dr. Evans was in the middle of a prognosis with the two other interns. Kate had started the day doing rounds with them before her little breakdown.

  The doctor glanced up as they entered, a glimmer of irritation passing over her face, but she did not stop speaking, as if Kate wasn’t there at all.

  “—three fractured metacarpal bones and a broken ulna.”

  Kate glanced at the little boy on the bed, who was grinning proudly, holding up his cast to show the doctors, and she found herself relaxing. He caught Kate’s eye, and his smile widened.

  Not another dying kid, she thought with relief. Just a kid who fell out of a tree, having a normal childhood but one with mere mortal bones.

  “Hanson, Michaels, take Miles to radiology for a CT. We want to ensure that everything is setting the way it is supposed to be.” The interns nodded at her order, and Kate shuffled toward the bed to help the patient, but Dr. Evan’s stern voice stopped her dead in her tracks. “Dr. Luthor, c
ome with me, please.”

  Dammit. I’m in trouble, Kate cursed to herself. Of course I’m in trouble.

  “Hey!” Miles called out as the doctors moved to leave the room. Dr. Evans turned from the doorway.

  “Yes, Miles?” the head of pediatrics asked sweetly, and Kate was amazed at how easily the doctors and nurses could go from bedside manner to furious in five milliseconds.

  “Can’t she take me?” he asked, pointing at Kate. “She’s way prettier than these two.”

  Dr. Paul Michaels chuckled, but Dr. Gemma Hanson was unimpressed by the six-year-old’s comment. Dr. Evans smiled and winked at the boy.

  “I need Dr. Luthor for a very important assignment, Miles, but maybe when you get your cast off, she can do it for you. Is that okay?”

  Is that a sign that I’m not getting fired? Kate thought hopefully. That I’ll be around in three weeks to take off Miles’ cast?

  “Do you promise?” he asked, cocking his head to look at Dr. Evans suspiciously.

  “Pinky swear,” she agreed, locking her finger with the little boy’s. “If Dr. Luthor is around that day, she will definitely do that for you.”

  Ah. There’s the qualifier I was waiting on, Kate thought miserably. Miles seemed to accept the compromise and allowed himself to be wheeled off by the interns, but not without giving Kate a flirty smile. Dr. Hanson scowled at Kate as she passed. What is she mad about? He’s six. Some people are insane for attention.

  Kate rolled her eyes at Hanson’s retreating back, but Dr. Evans saw her and glared in her direction.

  “Luthor, when you’re finished acting like a child, I’m waiting to have a very adult conversation with you,” she snapped, and Kate jumped to attention, humiliation coloring her cheeks at being witnessed.