The instant he murmured the words, Toni felt something, she didn’t know what, unravel inside her.
Jesus, what the hell was it?
It was like drinking a glass of wine after a long shift. It was like tasting the first spoonful of ice cream after being on a diet for twelve weeks.
It was… everything.
But it was nothing.
Her mouth worked, and to her embarrassment, nothing came out, only a low moan. All the men swerved their attention her way, but she didn’t care, not when the youngest man trapped her in his gaze, his own eyes widening.
She licked her lips, saw his glance track the movement, then whispered, “What’s going on?”
The guy the younger man had called Mars cleared his throat. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“She’s looking at him the way Annette looks at you.”
“Shut up, Jarvis,” Mars spat at one of the cubicle’s occupants.
“No, she is, Prez.”
“Kiko, don’t be ridiculous.”
The names whirled past her in a raucous twister that dragged at her ears but didn’t lodge in her brain. All she knew, all she could see, was the man on the chair. He was gorgeous. So handsome her lower belly burned with a heat she hadn’t felt for a long time. He was dark, as dark as her. His eyes were a rich green like shamrocks, and his skin was a golden bronze that was only enhanced by the dullness of the light in the cubicle.
His nose was strong, his chin square and stubbled. He was tall, and large—barrel-bodied with muscles on top of muscles hidden beneath an MC cut. Squashed into the small stool reserved for relatives, he looked ridiculous. And yet, he looked divine.
Betsy coughed. “Dr. Juarez? Is everything okay?”
The noise had her blinking free of the daze and turning to face the nurse. Her features were alive with a curiosity that had Toni grimacing. This would be all over the staff room before she clocked off her shift. The Robot had been fascinated with one of the new patients.
Gossip. Just what she needed.
“Have you run blood work?”
“We’re just waiting on the results.”
Toni nodded her approval because Betsy’s foresight saved her time. Ordinarily, Betsy would have had to wait for a doctor’s agreement, but in this, where Shifters were concerned, all protocol was different.
On any ER team in any hospital around the country, each shift had to have at least one attending healer and aid on staff. They had extra training, extra skillsets, and followed a different rule book.
On this rota, Toni and Betsy were the Shifter healer and aid.
“You can leave me to handle this,” she told Betsy. “Show the other gentlemen where they can wait, then come back for further instruction.”
The nurse made no complaint, took a step back from the cubicle, and waited for the four men to follow her.
They did so but weren’t happy and dragged their feet until the younger man said, “Go on. It’s okay. He needs me. As long as I’m here, that’s fine.”
They all grunted, but the guy called Mars bit off, “You take care of him, doc. This man’s prized in my Clan.”
Toni, feeling her eyes widen at what was obviously a threat, shrugged off his aggression. She was used to being spoken to with sharp tones, but it didn’t stop her from being surprised by the words. Shifters rarely discussed their Clans, even in passing. Rather than show him her shock, she murmured, “I can only do what I’m trained to do.”
He sneered but kept silent, especially when the young guy pointedly cleared his throat.
Closing the curtain behind the other brothers, Toni stepped closer to the fallen man. Opposite the young Shifter male, who could have been anything from twenty to sixty, as they aged differently than humans, she had to fight to focus her attention on the injured Shifter.
“It’s okay,” the other guy murmured. “They’re just concerned. Justiss will be all right. I know he will.” She blinked at him, and his answering smile was tender. Beautiful. Pussy-melting. “I’m Graver.”
“Graver?” she asked, voice a little hoarse because it had been a long time since she’d met anyone who had made her core burn enough to melt.
“Yeah. It’s my surname. Not a weird MC nickname. We’re not emos or Goths or anything. Just Bear Shifters.”
She checked the case notes even though she could remember the history verbatim. “And you’ve been involved in a blood sacrifice?” Talk about unique.
He ducked his head in silent confirmation.
“What happened?” She remembered the tiny segment in her training on Shifter healing that had been about blood sacrifices. There had been little to no information on the infrequently held ritual. Hell, it had been more a case of learning that they happened. Period. That one Shifter gifted blood via a bite to a mated female, and on rarer occasions, another Shifter.
She had no idea what it meant when something rare happened within something rare, but it probably wasn’t good.
Jesus, she’d never felt the lack of information as she did now. She hated being kept out of the loop. But it was a loop in which no one seemed to know anything anyway. As far as she’d ever been able to discern, even Shifters were in the dark when it came to this unique practice.
“Justiss was attacked. When I found him, he was bleeding out. I gave him blood. He survived the attack. I don’t think we even need to be here really, but by the time I woke up after giving him blood, we were en route, and I think the guys would prefer you to check us over because our usual healer is AWOL.”
She blinked at him again. “Graver, you were unconscious?”
“Yeah. For a short while.”
“Enough to be transported to a vehicle and actually travel from one place to another in a moving car without knowing it?”
He nodded.
Toni grunted. Lifted her hand and rubbed at her temples once more. Why had they had to come in at the tail end of her shift? Why not at the start of the next or at the beginning of hers?
And then, when she looked at Graver once more and felt the weight of the punch he packed, regrets and wishes fled.
This man was… She gulped. She didn’t know what he was to her, but she knew she’d never had this reaction to any other person before.
Since her parents’ deaths, she’d never been able to connect to anyone.
The double tragedy had been compounded by that.
Not one of her grandparents had been able to break through the ice she’d bricked around herself. Not an uncle or aunt had been able to get through to her, to warm her up.
And yet, this stranger was making her feel flushed with his attention.
Earlier, she’d pinched her cheeks to bring color to their paleness. Now? They were burning up.
The contrast wasn’t lost on her, because the heat was more than just in her face but in her chest and stomach too.
This was bizarre.
“Graver?” She cleared her throat and decided to just throw it out there, “Do you feel this too?”
She wasn’t sure how to describe this… didn’t know what this actually meant. She just knew that most women would have avoided this kind of conversation with a man they’d met mere moments before. Hell, it could simply be sexual arousal. Nothing more, nothing less. But as Toni had spent most of her sexual maturity in an asexual haze, bored more than intrigued, to suddenly be feeling so much, meant something.
Clinically, she had no choice but to see if he shared these sensations. Even if his answer was a mortifying ‘no.’
“Yes.”
The one-word answer had her swallowing roughly. She put the clipboard on the bottom of the bed by the patient’s feet and pressed her hands to the blankets for support. Letting her head fall, she sucked in a breath as relief flooded her.
Whatever this was, she wasn’t alone.
He felt it too.
Gulping in another breath, she sought him out once more, not stopping until he was locked in her stare. “What’s going on?”
Her mouth fell open, and as she was about to squeak and demand what the hell he was going on about, Justiss moaned and started rolling his head from side to side in agitation. Then, before she even had time to reach his side, his eyes opened, and he shot up into a seated position.
“Oh, dear, that was the worst thing you could have done,” she said, her tone loaded with sympathy for the hammers that were about to start pounding at his temples and behind his eyes. His groan was all the confirmation she needed to press a gentle hand to his shoulder, the other to his back, and help him fall back against the mattress. The move involved her brushing closely against him, a move that she’d done a thousand times before and would do a thousand times in the future. Only this time, it was different.
Graver different.
What the hell?
The burn from Graver’s presence seemed to be torn down in a fiery explosion when she got a chance to breathe in this man’s scent. Jesus, it was like a firestorm. It rained down over her, cascading her in a heaven-like hell she’d never known before.
A moan escaped her, a moan that had Justiss’s eyes popping open. As he stared at her, she fell into his foamy blue eyes, part hazel part blue-green, and knew she could get lost in them. Forever. Another moan fell from her lips, the sound urging her to pull her gaze from his. Toni Juarez did not make sexual noises in front of patients.
Only, these weren’t regular patients.
Her mouth watered with how irregular they were, and as she swallowed, she turned to Graver, got caught up in his gaze once more, and knew she was drowning.
She didn’t know why, but now that both men were awake, it was like a one-two punch to the ovaries.
Before, she’d felt a connection. Now? It was… indescribable. She could almost see the lines uniting the three of them, the energy that cocooned them in a haven that was their own making.
“What the hell’s going on?” she whispered on a breath.
Justiss’s voice was croaky, but it drew her attention back to him. “You’re my mate.”
Unfortunately, Graver said it at the same time as he did.
Justiss’s head banged like a bitch.
In fact, that was bullshit. It banged like a hangover, burned like he’d been pistol-whipped, and managed to combine every single migraine he’d had in his one-hundred and sixty years into an explosion of cerebral torture.
The pain was irrelevant though. All that counted was that scent.
The scent of a woman. His woman. The woman he’d been seeking for nearly the entirety of those one-hundred and sixty years. His mate.
“I-I can’t be your mate,” the intoxicating creature whispered, her beautiful caramel-chocolate eyes blinking owlishly between him and someone else in the room.
After letting his gaze drift about the tiny cubicle, he identified he was in hospital, a fact confirmed by the stench of ill humans and death. He also identified that the other person to have laid claim to this dazzling woman was Graver, the youngest sibling of two men he’d considered not just brother by MC but by blood too.
“What’s going on?” he asked, voice groggy as he posed the question to Graver. Anyone else, he’d have been angry if they’d have dared to call his female theirs, but Graver didn’t fuck around. For someone with so few years, Graver was the least likely person to joke about any damn thing. Never mind this in particular. He was solemn to the point of ridiculousness. It was like sitting with a vicar or a priest sometimes.
The younger man flinched at his question then ducked his head. “Moses attacked you. You nearly died.”
“I figured I felt rough,” he rumbled, amusement lacing his tone. When a man hit his years, he stopped being so goddamn afraid of death. Few Shifters actually feared passing. What scared them was leaving someone behind or, if they were mated, dying and robbing their mates of the years they should have had on Earth. That’s how a mate bond worked. Once united, if one lived, so did the other. If one died, then the other passed too.
Graver’s mouth twitched, but his usual solemnity spilled over any humor he’d found in Justiss’s words. “I saved you, brother.”
It was the double dose of solemnity that had him narrowing his eyes and studying his brother. “How?”
“You were nearly dead.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the silky black locks before dragging his hand down over his jaw and cupping his chin. “I had no choice. I couldn’t let Ma lose you. It would kill her. It would kill me, J.”
Justiss frowned and tried to sit up again and then immediately regretted it when agony spliced through his head. “What did you do, Graver?”
“I initiated a blood sacrifice.”
Feeling his mouth drop open, J recognized that for the first time in his life, in a life where his mother accused him of having the gift of the gab and being able to sell ice cream to the Inuit, he was speechless.
“Mr. Justiss?” The doctor, his mate, hesitantly whispered his name then took a step closer to the bed. “You need to rest. The minutiae of blood sacrifices have never been shared with us, but I can assume they’re wearing for both parties.” To Graver, she shot a glance and murmured, “I think we should get you onto a stretcher too. You’ve both probably lost a lot of blood.”
His mate’s beautiful voice, as smooth as the chocolate color of her eyes, was enough to prod his brain into functioning. His tongue too. “No, guapa, we don’t need to rest. We probably need to shift.”
She frowned at him, but he sensed it was more at the endearment than his instant disregard of her dictate. “You can’t do it here.”
“No. There are too many eyes, J.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we shift here, Graver. Jesus.” He rolled his eyes. He’d been injured, but that didn’t rob him of all fucking brainpower. “I don’t think the humans would appreciate having a bear appear in one of these cubicles.” He grunted. “What did the council bring me here for anyway? What the fuck did they think a human healer could do for me?”
“You know all hospitals have healers trained for our kind. None of us wanted to lose you, man.”
“The way I’ve been treated these last couple of years? You’d never guess.” He was too tired to really be bitter about the way his brothers had abandoned him. And the truth was, Mars, Kiko, Mundo, Major, and even Jarvis, had never really cut ties with him. Even Mars, who’d been second in command under that dickhead Jefferson’s rule, had always made it a point to slap him on the back in the rec room or shoot some pool at night.
No, Justiss couldn’t begrudge the current council for their treatment of him. They’d done their best with a brother who hadn’t exactly been exiled but was still as far out of the loop as a new goddamn patch.
He sat up, relief flooding him when the dull throb in his head didn’t make him want to puke again, but he felt the sting of new wounds healing, as well as the weird energy buzzing through his veins that he could only register as being magic.
Or, he supposed, holy, if Graver wasn’t talking out of his ass.
Hunching his shoulders and letting his neck take the weight of his head, he was about to speak when the doctor murmured, “I really don’t advise you sitting up, sir. Whether or not your wounds are healing, any sudden movements will pull on the newly mended tissue.”
He peered over at her and smiled then felt his own cheeks flush a little when she let out a sharp gasp at the sight of his smile. For a second, the atmosphere between them pulsed with life, an oscillation that tugged and swayed between them. That weird energy riding him, the one which could have been magical or holy, seemed to ping off him though. Not just heading her way, but tri-angling its way toward Graver too.
He cut a glance toward his brother and saw that whatever was going on, it definitely had something to do with the blood sacrifice. Which meant a Goddess (or plural) was involved, so this issue wasn’t going anywhere.
Shit, he w
as too old for this crap. Sure, he’d shared women in the past, but he’d never intended on sharing his fucking mate.
As he watched, Graver stared with longing at the doctor, and it was a glance that was reciprocated. The connection was there, burning like live wire between them all.
There was no avoiding it. He saw it in that look.
Whatever the fuck Graver had started, it was ending with the two of them sharing the one woman.
Anger tried to pulse its way through him. He’d have been a liar if he’d said it didn’t. But the truth was if it wasn’t for mini-G, as he’d always called Aaron, Justiss wouldn’t be here to see his mate. Period. Never mind claim her.
And that was supposing that the beautiful little Latina was even his mate at all. She could have been meant for Graver. They’d never know, and he guessed that was for the best.
The doctor cleared her throat when the temperature in the cubicle seemed to swelter like a tropical jungle. And though it got fucking hot this side of Houston, it didn’t burn up like the heat the three of them were stoking. She took a shaky step back from his bed, took a quick glance behind her, saw a shitty stool, and plunked herself down on the plastic seat with a heavy gulp.
“This is crazy,” she mumbled then peered over his legs to stare at Graver, when her cheeks burned, she coyly ducked her gaze, then peeked up at J. A small shiver seemed to rattle down her spine as she stared at him before she returned to looking at her scrub-covered lap. “How can two Shifters share a mate?”
Graver cleared his throat. “It’s not usually possible.”
“Anything’s possible where a blood sacrifice is concerned,” J retorted, lifting a hand to rub his eyes with his fingers. “Jesus, my head’s banging.”
“All the more reason for you to rest.”
The doctor’s prim tone had J’s lips twitching. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
“Which you could have been. Do as the doctor says, jerk-face,” Graver ordered.
J reared back at the annoyance in his little brother’s tone. If anything, he should be the one who was annoyed. He’d been attacked by one of his MC kin, nearly killed, and then dragged back to life without any say so.
Justiss And Graver (MC Bear Mates Book 4) Page 3