by ReGi McClain
Zeeb sat at the other side instead and the dogs settled around his feet., He lifted his cup to his lips, took a sip, then ran his lower lip over his mustache to remove drips clinging to his whiskers. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, he looked around Margarita. “If you’re not in a big hurry, we’ll start the merfolk research tomorrow.”
Harsha gave him a lop-sided, wry smile. In a hurry. After spending fewer than twenty-four hours in Ireland? “No. I have a couple days.”
Margarita pressed into Zeeb’s side. He appeared not to notice. “Great. You can use the empty patient bedroom for the night. Maura can try out the room that will be hers. Maybe you two can figure out paint and stuff while you’re here.”
Margarita rested her head on Zeeb’s shoulder. His expression remained neutral and his attention stayed on Harsha as he shrugged Margarita off. “If you’re not too worn out, we could show you the lab and greenhouse today.”
Margarita climbed onto his lap. He set aside his mug and hoisted her off without batting an eye. Harsha lifted her brows but refrained from commenting on the odd scene. Instead, she answered his question. “I need a shower, and probably a nap after that, but yeah. That sounds like a good idea.”
“Okay. I’ll hang a fresh towel for you.”
While he talked, Margarita walked around to the back of the couch and leaned over to wrap her arms around him, her hands low on his chest. Zeeb lifted Margarita’s arms off himself, stood, and walked out of the room.
Margarita climbed over the back of the couch to settle in a tangled mass of limbs that showed off unusual flexibility and sighed. She watched Zeeb exit with a wistful expression. “Isn’t he amazing?”
Harsha pursed her lips. Clearly, whatever she took as romantic hints from Zeeb meant less to him. A twinge of unwelcome jealousy tempted her to make a snide remark. She settled for, “He’s something.”
Margarita jumped up from the couch and disappeared in the direction Zeeb had gone.
Harsha watched her go, speculating as to why Zeeb never mentioned living with a flirty girl in his daily calls. A dog nose bumped her hand, and she turned her mind away from Zeeb and looked at Maura. “Now that we know you won’t melt in the water, why don’t you take the first shower?”
“No.” Maura dropped the single word like a henceforth immovable rock.
Harsha chose not to argue the point at the moment. Maura’s oil baths, while expensive, kept her from becoming malodorous. She went in the direction that Zeeb and Margarita had gone, down a short flight of stairs, and found Seraph standing between Margarita and a door, arms crossed over her chest, brows drawn and nostrils smoking.
“You know the policy, Margarita. Shut doors stay shut. Or do I have to call Ylva?”
“She has the alpha. I want this one.” Margarita pointed to the door Seraph blocked.
“You’ll change your mind as soon as your sense of smell goes back to normal.”
“No, I won’t. I lo ”
“Margarita,” Ylva’s voice called from upstairs. “Head on up to the lab. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Margarita whined, but obeyed the command, stomping up the stairs after bumping Harsha on the way by.
Seraph did not relax her expression until Margarita’s feet disappeared from view. After a deep breath, she asked, “Are you looking for your room or the bathroom?”
Harsha stared at the door Seraph guarded. “Bathroom for now. What was all that?”
“This one.” Seraph took a few steps and opened a door. “Newly turned werewolves tend to be overwhelmed when the sense of smell starts to improve. Any strong scent can cause problems, but pheromones are particularly worrisome because… well. Anyway. They don’t bother Ralph because of Ylva, but Zeeb is an irresistible temptation to most of the females and a few of the males who come for treatment.”
The mental image of multiple people throwing themselves at Zeeb failed to assuage Harsha’s unwelcome jealousy. She tried to shake it off. Maybe she liked him, and maybe he liked her, but it stopped there. She had no time to bother with romance.
She smiled and tried to joke. “Poor baby. I’m sure it’s devastating to be so popular.”
Seraph tilted her head to one side. “It might be amusing for human men. For Zeeb, it’s a serious problem. The last time the Lowells had two females here at once, one started a death match and almost killed the other. When Zeeb rejected the winner, she tried to kill him, too. He had to maim her before she gave up.”
Harsha shuddered. “I’m sorry. That’s…” A mental image of Zeeb in his wolf form superimposed itself upon a dogfight scene from a horror movie Jason had convinced her to watch with him before she left on her first trip to Alaska. She’d made it as far as that scene and then quit. “Not a joke. You and he can stay with Maura and me until Margarita leaves, if it will help.”
“I think she only has a few treatments left. She’ll be fine when her sense of smell returns to normal.”
“That’s good. Before I take my shower, which room am I sleeping in? I’m going to take a nap before Zeeb shows me the l ” she faltered on the word lab , afraid to apply the term she associated with torture and desecration to the Lowells’ home. “The greenhouse.”
“I’ll put your bag in front of it for you. Enjoy your shower.”
“Thanks.”
With a towel wrapped around her, Harsha poked her head into the hall and looked for her bag. The nice, hot, steamy air of the bathroom dissipated as the cooler air in the hall rushed in to crowd it out. She spotted her bag and made a beeline for it. Mumbling, she scolded herself for not taking fresh clothes into the bathroom with her. As her hand closed around the handle of the bag, a door opened behind her.
Of course. Not only do I forget to take an outfit in with me, I get caught. Without turning around to see who caught her, she hoisted the bag. The weight of it staggered her and she let out an involuntary groan.
“I’ll get it for you.”
It would be Zeeb. Even Ralph, with his official doctor status, felt like a better option than Zeeb if she had to be spotted in a towel. She answered without turning around. “I got it.”
She doubted her own assertion, but she planned to kick her luggage into the room before she let Zeeb take it in for her. Not because she was too proud to accept help. Because she’d spent her shower trying to banish the picture of him spending the long Alaskan winter nights entertaining voluptuous, flexible women who found him impossible to resist. Letting him into her room seemed like a bad idea.
“It’s no problem.” He grabbed the suitcase, opened the door, and went inside.
Harsha looked away to avoid forming an image of herself filling the role of enthralled female and waited for him to exit the room before she went in. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She started to close the door. At the least, she wanted to be dressed before they discussed her state of being.
“It’s just, that bag weighs half what your backpack weighed last summer, but the way you were trying to haul it, I assumed it weighed more.”
His words hit her like a punch between the eyes. She paused in closing the door. “What?”
“It can’t be heavier than twenty pounds.” His gaze swept her. His furrowed brows implied his scrutiny came as the result of concern, nothing else, but his eyes left pinpricks wherever they landed.
Harsha turned her face away, cheeks tingling.
Margarita burst out of her room. “That’s why! How dare you? She’s not even ”
Zeeb shoved Harsha the rest of the way into her room and slammed the door shut. Margarita shouted at him. The solid door and walls filtered out the words, but failed to mask the angry tones.
She took a deep breath to steady herself. A part of her wanted to puzzle out the snippet she heard before Zeeb pushed her, she assumed, out of harm’s way, but most of her stewed over what he’d told her before it started. If a bag weighing twenty pounds gave her trouble, the trip to Ireland had taken a heavy toll o
n her. Either that, or her time was growing short.
Harsha sat bolt upright, screaming. With tears coursing down her face, she looked around the dim room. Bed, nightstand, window, dresser, none her own but all simple, standard pieces of furniture. The images that woke her faded and she remembered where she was. With shaking hands, she covered her face and smeared the tears away.
The door burst open. She bounced in surprise and her heart leapt within her, its pace not yet calmed after her nightmare. It beat so hard and fast, she doubted its ability to take the strain. Seraph, Zeeb, Ylva, and Ralph all swarmed into the room with ashen faces, with Maura trying to push her way through the adults.
Behind them, Margarita called, “I didn’t do it.”
Sighs of relief ran round the room. Seraph sat on the bed next to her. “What happened?”
“Nightmare.” Harsha shuffled to make space for Seraph, then Maura, and then Ylva.
Most of the light in the room came from the hall. The early night of the wintry north blackened the short windows, and the little clock on the nightstand, which read four-thirty in the afternoon, contributed little. She’d been the only one sleeping, as far as she knew, but Harsha felt like a naughty child who woke the whole house for nothing.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ylva brushed a strand of hair out of Harsha’s eye, much like her mother had done when she was a child.
“I don’t remember it.”
“Was it ”
“Thanks for checking on me. Can you give me a minute, please? I’ll be out soon.”
Ylva nodded and shooed the men out. Seraph stared at her for a few seconds, then took Maura’s hand and led her away. The selkie girl walked backwards, her eyes flitting over Harsha as though she was searching for a physical reason for the scream.
As soon as the door closed, Harsha pulled a pillow over her face to muffle herself and cried. She’d lied. She did remember the dream. In it, she saw herself stretched out on a lab table next to Jason’s desecrated body, surrounded by black garbage bags labeled with the names of everyone dearest to her and leaking blood onto the tile floor.
Aware the others expected her to come out before long, she pulled herself together. Dressed in multiple layers of clothing to ward off the Alaskan chill and hide bruises, she emerged from her room. No one loitered in the hall, but she heard voices from upstairs and started that direction.
Margarita stepped out of her door and blocked the way. Remembering the earlier fight, Harsha retreated to her room, but the werewolf caught her and covered her mouth before her scream left her throat.
“I won’t hurt you if you leave him to me.”
With grief, illness, travel fatigue, nightmare, and a werewolf all working against her, Harsha accepted the coming faint without resistance. She let her eyes roll back and her knees buckle. She lost consciousness before she hit the floor.
This time, she awoke in an easy chair in a new room. A mobile vitals monitor stood next to the chair and various instruments of research, such as microscopes and test tubes, occupied wooden counters along the sides of the room. A bookshelf lined the far wall. Tucked among the books, a miniature stereo playing eighties soft rock and a tabletop fountain competed for most notable among the quiet background noises. Potted plants lived near the large picture windows and in the corners of the room, interrupting the laboratory items and adding their earthy, green fragrance to the aromas of hospital-grade disinfectant and fresh coffee.
Ylva, in a white lab coat, swirled a red liquid in a test tube and peered through the bottom half of a pair of bifocals at it. After a moment, she pulled one of the three pencils from her bun and bent to write on a yellow pad. Ralph entered the room. Without looking Harsha’s direction, he went over to Ylva, rubbed her backside, and nipped at her ear. Ylva leaned back to kiss her husband.
Harsha quirked a brow. Looks like even werewolves get their happily ever after . With her disease progressing into the degenerative stage, she doubted her chances of living to find hers amounted to much. Mermaid hunts and werewolf doctors served as distractions now.
Effective, awkward distractions. When the kiss lasted longer than a minute, Harsha decided to draw their attention to her presence. She cleared her throat. Without the slightest hint of embarrassment, the two broke it off and smiled at her.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Ylva set the test tube in a rack and walked over. “Mind if I check your vitals?”
Harsha shook her head and stuck out her arm for the blood pressure cuff.
“We brought you up here after you fainted.” Ylva peered into Harsha’s eyes and waved her hand in front of them. “Dilation is good.” The vitals machine beeped. “Looks good. For you. What happened? Zeeb found you in the hallway and then took off running in his wolf form before telling us anything.”
Harsha hesitated. She preferred not to cause trouble for people, and Margarita’s behavior, if she understood correctly, stemmed from factors beyond her control. The possibility of another attack, however, prompted bean spilling.
When Harsha finished her explanation, Ylva pressed her lips together and looked up at Ralph. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “The next treatment ought to take care of it. In the meantime, you better let Ylva mark you as a pup.”
Harsha dropped her chin and lifted her brows in an unamused expression. The term marking implied things she preferred not to have done to herself. “Mark me as a pup?”
Ylva rolled her eyes. “My husband thinks he’s clever. He means you should borrow one of my sweaters. I already leant one to Maura.”
“Oh.” Sweater borrowing sounded much better than being peed on. “That’ll work?”
“It has every time we’ve needed to use it.”
“Sure. An extra sweater sounds nice, actually. I brought clothes for Ireland, not Alaska.”
“I’ll go get one,” Ralph volunteered. “In the meantime, there’s fresh coffee in the pot, if you want a cup.” He pecked Ylva on the cheek before leaving the room.
Chapter 26
Armored in one of Ylva’s sweaters, Harsha felt like the most under-prepared soldier ever allowed to walk into battle, but Margarita pouted and went to her room rather than forcing another confrontation. Harsha wondered if the woman had misunderstood the scene earlier: Zeeb standing at the guest room door while she stood there in her towel. Margarita had seemed nice up until then.
Maura greeted her with a side-hug when she returned to the living area. “Are you okay?”
Harsha hugged her back. “Yes.”
“But you are…” Maura looked up into her hair. “ Sick , aye?”
Harsha took a deep breath. “Yes.” She thought of Kel. “I’m very sick.”
She kept Ms. Hernandez’ card in her planner for safekeeping. An update on Monday had reassured her he was doing well with his new foster parents, but Harsha felt a need to check. She worked the time difference in her head and decided to wait until the next day to call. She wanted Ms. Hernandez to like her, not despise her for calling at the end of business hours.
Maura cuddled one of Harsha’s arms, bringing Harsha back to the present moment. “But don’t worry,” Harsha reassured the girl. Zeeb will take good care of you.”
“Zeeb is gone.” Maura stared at the back door. Or rather, she seemed to stare through it with her wide, forlorn eyes.
“I’m sure he’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
Seraph was sitting on the couch, reading her Bible. Harsha and Maura squeezed themselves next to her to look at a picture book together. The closeness felt nice, Maura bunched against her while she leaned into Seraph. Like she was part of a family again. She read until her eyes watered with the effort of keeping open and her throat felt dry and scratchy, but she held tight to the feeling of belonging while it lasted. In spite of her nap, faint, and efforts, she wore out before ten o’clock and dragged herself to bed, leaving the werewolves and dragon to pursue whatever pursuits they enjoyed in the dark hours. Maura stayed with Seraph, lookin
g at another picture book and asking questions in Irish, which Seraph answered in English.
To her frustration, Harsha found sleep difficult to grasp. Exhaustion weighed down her limbs, her eyes insisted on staying closed, but her brain refused to shut up. Recalling the same difficulties on her faerie hunt, she wondered if the credit for the phenomenon belonged to Alaska instead of herself. Hours stretched on, but Harsha’s whirling thoughts gave no indication of settling down.
A wet nose bumped her hand. Thinking one of the dogs wanted a snuggle-buddy, Harsha opened her eyes to check the size of the prospective cuddler. She squawked when she saw the huge beast, then recognized it.
Smiling, she stroked the fur of Zeeb’s head. “Did you have a nice run?”
He bumped her hand again and looked into the hallway.
“I fainted.” She was guessing at his meaning. His reasons for staying a wolf instead of changing—and putting on clothes—for the conversation escaped her, but she figured he had them. “Margarita ”
Zeeb emitted a low growl.
“She startled me, that’s all.” She reached toward him. Her logical mind insisted on pointing out this wolf was, in fact, a man. A man she liked enough to be sure she’d better not pet him. His delicious golden fur beckoned, though, and she reasoned… nothing. She was sick of her brain’s activity.
He batted her hand away. His massive tongue shot out from his mouth to slime her from chin to forehead.
Harsha wrinkled her nose and wiped her face with her sleeve. “Yuck. Dog slobber.” She lifted her hand and got another lick in the face. “All right, all right. You’re not a pet.”
He wagged and settled on the floor next to her bed.
Harsha leaned over to see him better. “But you’re acting like a pet. What’re you doing?”
He looked toward the hallway and growled.
“Guarding me? Like a pet?”
He made a noise between a whine and a groan and laid his head on his paws.