by Sylvia Frost
My computer screen went to sleep, casting me in shadow and I shut the book. One last cloud of dust puffed up from the pages.
Thump.
I bounced up in my office chair, my whole body tensing at the sound.
Thump. Thump.
Swiveling, I noted the sound was coming from the conference room. I pushed the rolling chair toward the noise, still in shadow and spotted a misshapen silhouette pressed against the glass walls. It had four legs. Like an animal?
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The silhouette twisted and I realized it wasn’t an animal, but two people, one on top of the other.
A feminine moan joined the thumping. “Oh, Rex.”
Rex was not turning into a werewolf. He was having sex. In his office. With Cynthia. Blonde, beautiful, but still just as curvy as me, Cynthia Cinders.
He groaned back, then he grabbed her and slammed her onto the floor. The motion was so violent it made me worried for her. Until they rolled over, changing positions and she bowed her head over his body and nipped him.
My throat clenched so hard I couldn’t push air through it. I had to get out of here.
Praying they didn’t notice me, I grabbed one of the more subdued purses from my Mamma’s latest collection, a big leather bag piped with lime-green accents, stuffed my book and phone into it, and headed to the elevator. I stabbed the down button so many times my finger ached, but finally the doors opened and I hurled myself inside.
The doors closed, blocking out the symphony of sex noises behind me. I made myself focus on the light marking the floors as it fell downwards. My cheeks were as wet and hot as my eyes now. Oh Sweet Jesus, I was crying.
Mamma would’ve been tempted to slap me if she saw me like this. I was tempted to slap me. Just because I was a virgin didn’t mean I had to be an idiot.
Ding.
I dabbed my eyes one last time before venturing out into the reception area for Rom Investing. With its marble columns and glossy modern decor the entry way looked like what would’ve happened if the Romans designed a spaceship, but I felt very much earth-bound as I exited onto the street.
Outside it was dim for a New York night and loud. A brisk March air wooshed through the streets, making the people around me have to shout to be heard. I tried to block them out, stepping over the curb and into the street.
This is the last time I’ll ever allow myself to get so wrapped up in fantasy, I promised. I never wanted to feel so much over something that wasn’t even real ever again.
Someone honked. Once. Twice. I covered my ears and turned, frowning. My frown expanded to a dropped jaw. I screamed. A cab barreled toward me, lights flashing. It was slowing down, but not enough.
I jumped to the left and my purse flew out of my hands. Beasts, Blood and Bonds arched upwards, its spine opening like the wings of a bulky bird. My orange bottle of hormone pills and phone followed. All my life was suspended midair, so much smaller than I ever realized it could be.
I’m going to be hit by a car, I thought.
And then I was.
Chapter 2
DANIEL
My inner lion flicked his tail back and forth nervously in time with my footsteps as I strode down the hallway of Astrum General Hospital toward the ICU. Tuning out the nurse briefing me on a patient, I counted my pulse. 260—no, 273 BPM. Normal for a werebeast was around 200. For a while, after I had escaped the facility, I ran 240 all the time, but now, I rarely pushed 150.
We rounded a corner and the sounds of the hospital crescendoed. Nurses barked out commands, the metal wheels of gurneys squeaked and machines thrummed. The din put my inner lion on edge.
I adjusted my name badge. On it was a picture of a man so barrel-chested he barely fit the frame. He had shoulder-length copper hair and a stiff smile. His title read Dr. Daniel Ward. Sometimes it was hard to remember that man was me.
You’d think ten years would be enough time to remember that I’d escaped the facility where scientists held me captive and that I became a doctor in order to prove that I could use my enhanced senses and intellect to heal as well as hurt, but you’d be wrong. Sometimes, I still forgot.
“Dr. Ward,” the nurse, a man named John Lang, raised his voice. “Did you hear me?”
I shook my head and tried to smile politely. It felt like a twitch. Still, being polite was important. It helped me blend in. “I’m very sorry about that, John. I was distracted. Would you mind —”
John started again before I could finish my sentence. “Twenty-three-year-old African-American female hit by cab. Upper East Side. Cracks skull on pavement. Tech thinks no bleeding in brain and only minimal swelling, but she’s still unconscious. Pretty straight-forward.”
“Thank you.” I kept up my smile through force of will.
John’s posture loosened, his hands slipping into the pockets of his scrubs and then, finally, he returned my substandard smile. “She’s down on the end, then. I’ll leave you to it.”
The crowds thinned as I reached the last door in the hallway, and the voices faded. A curved metal handle stuck out, commanding me to pull it open and do my damn job, but I couldn’t. My hair thickened against the back of my neck. The first sign of an unwanted shift.
Something is wrong, my inner lion murmured.
I know, I told him. But that’s what we do. That’s our job. Fix what’s wrong.
My inner lion growled but said nothing else.
I opened the door.
The room on the other side was perfectly normal in every way. Benign gray wallpaper and a steel sink were the only distinct decor beyond some machines and a few posters.
My inner lion caught the iron tang of blood on the air. Not strong enough to be a serious wound. Probably just a few lacerations. Below that was the stink of cleaning fluid and a strangely fresh smell. Lilacs.
My heart panged. No, it wasn’t her.
I took a step closer, peering more intently at her face.
So many sleepless nights in the cage I imagined what my mate might look like, and with only her voice as a guide I’d come up with thousands of different images. Sometimes she had ebony skin and a sly smile, other times she was almost as pale as I was, but with more African features.
But this girl’s jaw wasn’t heart-shaped, like I’d imagined, but as rounded and soft as her body. Freckles dotted her brown-sugar skin and her long box-braids pooled around her head in a dark halo. Her lips were kissably smooth and pink.
Another wave of her scent hit me. Clearer this time. Certainly lilacs.
No.
It couldn’t be her. I remembered so well the night my matemark had grown cold on the back of my neck. The night the scientists told me that she was dead. The night I escaped.
I snatched the tablet containing her chart from the counter near the sink and brought up her CT scans. Folded illuminations of her brain tissue lit up the screen. Nothing marked her as my mate. In fact, besides minimal swelling around her prefrontal cortex, nothing marked her as someone in a coma.
I paged over to her blood work. It showed normal blood-alcohol levels. No pills or other substances in her system. Slight hormonal imbalance, but the patient was otherwise clean.
The patient? She’s your mate and you don't even know her name, my inner lion hissed.
She's not our mate.
I loosened my hold on the tablet. Rainbows of distortion rippled outward from where my thumb had pressed onto the screen. When they cleared, I read her name.
“Rose.” My hand fell against the wall, like I’d been hit. “Rose Briar.” I threw down the tablet.
Then, grinding my teeth together so fiercely I probably grated off the enamel, I walked over to the computer and dug deeper into her chart. I would find out what was wrong her with like she was just another patient, because that was all she was.
My mouse cursor converted to an hour glass as I tried to click over to the next screen. This computer was moving so slowly, I wanted to tear off each of the keys on the keyboard. Finally
, a fuller version of her chart appeared. It elaborated that her father had died in a car crash and that her grandmother had died from a brain tumor in her early sixties.
I made a note to put in a request for an MRI to check for tumors, then I scrolled down through the list of Rose’s medications. At the top was birth control. My lion bristled. She’s lying with a human man. I don't like that.
She’s not ours. There’s nothing to be concerned about. I thought.
I paged further down the list past a few hormonal supplements, and there, at the bottom was something I didn’t recognize. Erostoxifam.
I put the name into the hospital’s database, but nothing came up. Google was a little better. The drug was an old variation on a thyroid medication, and while I could find information on the generic equivalent, there was little about the name brand.
All I could see was that it was produced by a company called GR Scientific. Their website was full of corporate-speak like “diversified solutions for the modern world” and pictures of people walking in parks. The last time it had been updated was three years ago. I found zero information about the drug in question, beyond stating what Google had already fucking told me.
If this drug hurt our Rose, I’ll eat them, my lion offered.
She’s not ours, I chided, and you can’t eat an entire corporation.
Watch me.
I stood and slipped my hand deep in my lab coat pocket, searching for my phone. As it was an older model with a tactile keyboard, I could dial on feel alone. It was already ringing by the time it reached my ear.
Once, twice, three times. Then the flatline beep of an answering machine.
“This is Dr. Ward. I’d like to speak to a representative about your drug Erostoxifam and possible side-effects. Call me back immediately.” I left my number and hung up. It was only a few beats later before I realized I hadn’t said please.
My hands vibrated from anger, making the view on my phone flip back and forth from horizontal to vertical alignment. The collar of my ridiculous human button down felt tight as a noose and far too hot. I was dangerously close to shifting. But why?
She isn’t mine. My mate is dead. I’d prove it.
I pivoted and forced my feet to carry me to her. My lion cringed as we approached. It hated feeling helpless. Rose’s body was obscured by tubes, and the nurses had already changed her into a flimsy hospital gown. She looked breakable.
I brushed back a braid from her cheek, and I braced myself for my matemark to flare up at the contact. It didn’t. Because she wasn’t my mate. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from cupping her cheek and running my thumb along the edge of her upper lip. This was inappropriate. I shouldn’t be doing this. She was my patient. Why couldn’t I stop?
My heart rate calmed as I inhaled more of her lilac scent. It smelled like pure blue skies and dew on fresh green leaves. As I closed my eyes, it didn’t matter that I hadn’t dreamed of Rose for years or sensed her presence. I wanted to kiss her. Now.
I darted back at the impulse, my hand balling into a fist. Unless I proved to myself that she really wasn’t my mate, my attraction would only grow worse. That wasn’t fair to Rose. It wasn’t her fault she smelled exactly like my long-lost mate.
Making sure to support her head, I lifted her neck. My touch was casual as I sought out fur. I didn’t expect to find any. Then I did.
My heart stopped and my jaw unclenched for the first time since I entered the room. Mouth open I got a fresh wave of Rose’s scent and almost groaned. Then I stroked down on the matemark fur, off-balance by how much it felt like my own.
She was really here. She was alive.
Rose groaned back.
I ignored how the sound vibrated in my gut down to my cock, and I forced myself to focus and pressed down on the mark.
Her eyes fluttered open.
My lungs forgot how to inflate and deflate. She was waking up. I caught a sliver of her deep brown-gray eyes. Then they closed. Her lips grimaced in pain. Her heart-rate spiked.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Each noise came faster and louder than the last, until they were dangerously close to melting together into a single, flatlined whine.
I stopped pressing. The heart rate monitor calmed.
Wait.
Brown-gray?
Gray?
I pulled her eyelid away from her cornea. And yes, her irises while mostly brown, were rimmed with a color I had first pegged as gray, but now realized was more metallic. Silver.
I exhaled, rocking back on my heels in shock. Suddenly, I understood everything.
Rose wasn’t just suffering from a head-injury. She had silver running through her blood— and a lot of it. As a heavy metal, silver couldn’t be filtered through the bloodstream and so remained in the tissue. Most famously it turned people’s skin blue, but a lesser known side effect was how it changed the pigmentation of the eyes.
Silver had kept her from connecting with me all these years. Silver was keeping her from waking up. Silver was killing Rose. My Rose. My mate.
Chapter 3
ROSE
Daddy died when I was ten. Car accident. Until I was fourteen I dreamed about it every night. The headlights on the country road. A tricked out pickup cutting through three lanes of traffic. The g-force slamming me into the side of the minivan and my seatbelt slicing across my shoulder so hard it drew blood. When I was fourteen, I went to a specialized doctor about the hair on the back of my neck. Since then, I hadn’t had any dreams, bad or good. At least, not any that I could remember.
Until now.
I drifted through the darkness, staring up at a pair of golden eyes floating above me.
A voice that sounded like velvet and smoke whispered my name. “Rose.”
A firm oh-so-masculine hand touched the back of my neck. Heat radiated down my spine. My limbs felt numb and floaty. A sharp smell pricked at my nostrils. Disinfectant.
“Rose.” This voice was higher, colder.
I groaned and tried to bury my face in the pillow, but the sheets stank of cleaning solution. I hated that smell. When Daddy was in the coma and we were waiting for him to wake up, I’d spent so much time in the hospital I felt like the stench of it came out of my pores.
“She’s waking up,” said the now certainly female voice. In the movies those words were always said frantically, but this nurse just sounded bored.
I rolled my tongue around my dry mouth and experimented with trying to move my head to look around, but every inch of my body ached, like my muscles were new shoes being broken in.
“Get Dr. Ward,” said a male voice. “He insisted on being notified immediately after Ms. Briar woke up.”
The woman whistled through her teeth. “Damn, I’ve never heard Ward use language stronger than ‘If you wouldn’t mind, please.’”
“I’ve never heard of a doctor ordering chelation therapy to wake up a coma patient, so life’s getting weird today, Rhonda,” said the male nurse.
“Message received, John,” said Rhonda. “I’m going.”
I rested for a moment on my back and tried to sort my senses into understandable categories. There was the feel of the sheets against my arms and the bitter taste of plastic in my mouth. No breathing tube in there anymore, but maybe there had been?
A door creaked open, letting in a stream of distant shouts and barked commands from the busier part of the ER. Then it closed.
“Ms. Briar.”
The same voice from my dream resonated through the blank hospital room, rich with warmth and a hint of a rasp. It was gentle and professional, except I felt like it was being whispered right in my ear.
“My name is Dr. Ward, and I’ll be looking after you today. You’ve been in a brief coma.” His footsteps echoed through the tiled room. Each one was louder and took longer than the last. When he reached the bed, he sat down on a metal stool, and I saw his face.
Before I describe it, let me just say that I wasn’t taught to swear growing up. Mamma never hit me, even when I hid out
in the bathroom reading Mates of Darkness or The Forgotten Four Directions instead of doing dishes. But if I let loose so much as a “damn,” I’d earn a firm swat on my behind. So far New York hadn’t broken me of my squeaky-clean mouth, but when I saw this man’s face, I could think of only two words.
Fuck me.
My doctor wasn’t gorgeous. He was a god. He had a chest like a Viking, barreled, cut, and hard. Ditto for his jawline. It was square, not like Rex’s was, all ruler-straight lines, but rugged with a hint of stubble. Waves of tawny hair flowed down to brush against the white lapels of his lab coat.
Wait, lab coat?
Uh-uh, I thought, there is no way this man has a medical license. He should be out leading raiding parties with the rest of his clan or riding his midnight stallion on a quest to save the soul of his lost true love.
I gulped and watched in a daze as he laid one of his massive hands on my arm. Every single weird hair on the back of my neck stood up. And stayed up.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he purred. “You’re awake now. You’re safe. I just need to do some tests. All right?” His thumb brushed across my forearm so slowly I could count every molecule of me he touched.
“O-okay,” I mumbled.
“Good.” He patted my arm, then pulled a black stick the length of a pencil out of his breast pocket. I was too busy mourning the loss of contact to remember what that black stick meant. Then he blared the flashlight directly into my eye.
“Ah!” I lunged backward.
He followed me so I couldn’t escape the light. “Stay still, please.” He smelled like spices. Cloves.
He switched the light to my left eye and I welcomed the blindness. In this moment, I would’ve let him do anything to me. I was very very lucky he was a doctor and not a Viking.
He clicked off the flashlight and stowed it in his pocket. “Your pupils are normal. Slightly dilated but within range, and the color of the iris is right. Do you remember your name?”