by K. C. Hamby
“And what is your relation to the patient?” Mark asks, finally looking at me but like I shouldn’t be talking.
This makes me bristle.
“I’m her fiancée. We are here visiting her father. We live in Greece for my job and the long flight probably stressed her out,” I growl.
He goes back to assessing Nina, checking her pulse on her wrist. His face doesn’t change, but I can smell the annoyance in his scent. Thick and sour like bad candy. “Your job, huh? What kind of job has you both out there?”
I grit my teeth at his skepticism. Might as well use Nina’s lie to my advantage.
“The CIA.”
He pauses his assessment, eyes flicking to me, and Charlie coughs. The two other paramedics’ eyes are wide, and they fidget where they stand. I let my stare rest on Mark until he grows immensely uncomfortable and looks away.
“I didn’t think the CIA was supposed to tell people they are in the CIA…” he murmurs.
“Well, since it involves Nina, it’s patient confidentiality now, isn’t it?”
He gulps and nods, probably straining not to piss himself.
“So, usually for seizures like this, sir,” he’s talking to Charlie now, looking over his shoulder, “we make sure the patient isn’t injured and get them some fluids as they recover. We don’t take them in unless there is an injury because this kind of thing is normal.”
Thank goddess.
“That’s wonderful news,” Selene interjects and stands, walking to Charlie with relief flowing from her. “She’ll be alright, love.”
He visibly relaxes.
“Alright, well. Will you get her those fluids? I want her to be as well as possible.”
Mark looks to me…for approval.
“How good are you with IVs? Because if you fuck it up, we will have a problem. And I will do it instead,” I snap.
“You have medical training, huh?”
“I was a paramedic once,” I lie. I mean, the level of training I got is the training they get to be a paramedic, so…
“I’m pretty good. Let me go get my stuff.”
He hurries over to the ambulance and grabs a bag of fluids and an IV kit. I look down to check on Nina and her eyes are finally closed.
I’m really not meaning to be an asshole to the poor guy caught in my wrath. At least I think I’m not. My attitude seems justified in my mind at least. But now it’s hard to tell if my thoughts are rational or from the Monster.
“Charlie, will you hand me that washcloth?” I ask and reach my hand out, releasing Nina.
“Sure, here ya go.” He tosses it to me, and I gently go about cleaning the blood from under Nina’s nose.
Nina, if you could wake up soon, that would be great, I whisper in her mind.
She stirs a little at my request.
“Okay, now. Nina, I’m just going to take a look at your arm so we can get some fluids in you to make you feel better,” Mark tells her as he ties a tourniquet to her right arm.
He presses the vein in the crease of her arm with his gloved fingers before wiping the spot with alcohol.
“Alright, now big poke,” he mutters as he concentrates, probably terrified of what I’ll do to him if he fucks it up.
As he should be.
But he gets the IV needle in the vein perfectly and starts the fluids. One of his buddies behind him holds up the bag and hangs it on an empty plant hook above us.
About halfway through the bag and a lifetime of awkward silence with Mark doing everything he can to avoid eye contact with me, Nina’s eyes flutter and open.
I lean over her and place my hands on her cheeks.
“Hey, babe. You’re okay. Just stay down.”
What…happened..oh, god. I had a vision. She blinks, looking around at everyone. Fal, why are there ambulance people here?
You passed out on your dad. I really tried to make him calm down, but he called them. I told him you get seizures because that’s literally the only thing I could think of. It doesn’t necessarily require a hospital visit, so it wouldn’t be strange if I told the paramedics to fuck off.
“Oh, did I…?” She tries to lean up, but I hold her shoulders down. “Did I have another one?”
“Hi, Nina. I’m Mark. It seems like you had one of your seizures. Do you remember what happened at all?” he asks, shining that damn flashlight in her eyes again.
I growl under my breath.
“Um, no. Not really.” She cringes away from the bright light. “Me and my dad were talking and here I am, on the ground with….” She looks down at her arm.
Panic strikes through the bond.
Fal. Why is there a needle in my arm?
It’s not a needle. It’s just a catheter. They are giving you fluids.
“Ah, shoot. I should have said somethin’, Nini. She doesn’t do well with needles or IVs. She had a pretty bad trip to the hospital once.”
Her breathing is rapid and she’s on her way to having a tremendously bad panic attack.
I place my hands on both sides of her head and push my energy through our bond.
You’re okay. You’re here with me. I would never let anything bad happen to you. I would never let them take you. You are okay and safe.
Her wonderful eyes watch me, reddening with the tears pooling into an ocean against glaciers.
I’m with you. I am safe, she repeats back at me and I nod.
You are with me and safe.
“You doing okay, Nina?” Mark asks, attempting to look at her from around me.
I growl again.
Fal. Stop it, Nina scolds and I only respond with a chuckle.
If she’s scolding me, she’s feeling better.
Nina relaxes with a big sigh. “Okay, I think I’m feeling a lot better,” she tells a worried Mark. “I need to sleep, though. That’s usually what I do after…um, the strokes.”
Seizures! Not strokes! Panic floods me as Mark’s eyes widen.
Crap!
“Uh, wait. Seizures. I meant seizures. My mind is too foggy to get my words right. The sleepiness doesn’t help either.” She yawns to punctuate the statement.
Goddess. I’m going to have to teach Nina how to lie, aren’t I?
After a slight hesitation and enough time for me to have a small heart attack wondering if he bought Nina’s coverup, Mark smiles and nods. “Alright, let me take this IV out for you and we will be on our way. Glad you’re feeling better.”
Mark takes out the IV and wraps up Nina’s arm. When he stands to move away, I stand as well and decide to be petty and show my strength to let him know he shouldn’t assume anything about me again.
“Alright, you know what to do,” I tell Nina and she nods, wrapping her arm around my neck. I lift her in one smooth motion, staring at Mark the entire time.
Chapter 54
Edelina
“I dinnae ken why she’s still here, Ashy,” I grumble as I lean against a tree on the edge of the training grounds.
Raven walks around like she may have a cattle prod shoved up her arse as Thane gives her another tour of Olympia. Seems she can’t remember anything from the first one. Or the second.
“Probably to get under your skin, babe,” Ash answers with a grunt, slinging his axe into a straw dummy until it is no more.
“Somethin’ you need to talk about, mo chridhe?”
He sighs and drops his axe on the ground, his arse following soon after.
“I’m still pissed. And I’m confused.”
“About Angus? Your da?” I ask and sit in front of him in the grass.
“Yeah. All the above. It gives me the creeps how I have no memories at all of what Angus did to me or how he did it. I just can’t wrap my brain around it. I know he’s bad news…but I don’t know how he ties into any of the bullshit going on right now. Like how did he do all that in such a short amount of time? Why is he hanging around with Raven?
“And with my father, obviously, there is a lot Fal and I don’t know, yet I can’t help but be resentfu
l. He abandoned us when we were still grieving Mom. I didn’t mind taking care of Fal. Really, I didn’t. It was the fact that I had to basically become her guardian when I was only two years older than her. And now I know he could just poof back to us in a cloud of smoke and he didn’t?”
“You have all rights to be ragin’, Ash. Angus is a fuckin’ cuntpuddle stinkin’ like a sick granny’s fanny and a rotten spunktrumpet.”
“…spunktrumpet..” Ash mutters always confused with my talk.
“I just called Angus the equivalent of a diseased gran’s twat and you’re stuck on the spunktrumpet?”
His opens his mouth to counter, but coughs as confusion takes over his face. “Wait, I thought a fanny was an ass?” His brows furrow as he tilts his head.
“An arse? Why the hell would a fanny be an arse? It’s on the other side, Ashy,” I inform him, confusion of my own settling over me now.
“Oh. Oh. I get it now. When you say fanny, you mean like….”
“A twat,” I finish for him when he stares at me with a red face, eyes wide and a bit shocked. “The lassies’ fun bits.” I wave my hand in the direction of my fun bits between my legs to make sure he completely understands.
He chokes, eyes watering a wee bit. “Uh, right. I got it, babe. Just so you’re aware, in America, fanny means ass.”
“Daft pigeons,” I grumble. Americans and their backwards slang give me a fucking migraine.
“Wait. So, when you say someone is ‘talking out of their fanny flaps’….” His eyes widen after he wipes them of the liquid embarrassment attempting to fall. “Oh.”
I cackle at the deepened redness of his cheeks, my breath leaving me soon after with humor on the air. “You thought I was meanin’ someone talkin’ out of their arse cheeks?” I roll on my back, laughing. The grass tickles the back of my arms and my bare, lower back and all it does is make me laugh harder. My stomach is in stitches and it aches to take in another lungful to keep myself cackling. “Ashy!”
“Oh, come on, babe!” he insists, sputtering and leaning over me with squinting eyes like a petulant child. “It makes more sense to call someone out for talking out of their ass and you know it.” His face is scrunched like he’s playfully disgusted. “You Scots and your incessant need to insult people’s reproductive equipment baffles me to no end.”
I grab the back of his neck and pull him toward me until our lips meet, stanching the flow of my giggles for a moment. I smile into the kiss and carry it with me when he pulls back. “I love you, you daft pigeon.”
“I love you, you…”
I kiss him again before he can get out his insult.
Chapter 55
Falen
Charlie and Selene follow as I carry Nina inside.
“Why didn’t ya tell me about these seizures, Nini?” Charlie asks and I turn around so Nina can face her dad. “Ya could have called to just let me know.”
“I didn’t want to worry you. I’ve pretty much got it under control, and they don’t happen that often,” she mumbles, leaning her head into my shoulder, exhaustion catching up with her.
I hold her close to me and shift her weight so she’s more comfortable. But now Charlie is gawking at me like I may break Nina if I move too quickly.
What he doesn’t know is Nina is probably stronger and harder to break than I am.
“I make sure she gets the best healthcare possible, Charlie,” I tell him and lean my cheek against Nina’s hair, my wolf glad her Mate is safe and no one else is touching her. “Stress is a big factor.” I look down and catch Nina’s icy gaze. “It was probably the flight earlier and how rough it was.”
She nods and turns to her dad. “Seriously, Daddy. I’m okay.”
He opens his mouth to object, but Selene instead says, “If you are sure, then we should just leave it at that. Besides, Nina should get some rest. You seem exhausted.” The goddess turns to Charlie with a slight smile on her lips. “And we have catching up to do, my love.”
Oh, god, I’m going to vomit, Nina whispers.
I turn to take Nina to her room, but I get a glance of the front door and freeze. The sinister smirk of the Monster is clear as day in the window.
Not real. Not real not realnotrealnotreal, I tell myself over and over, squeezing my eyes shut and breathing in Nina’s lavender vanilla scent weaving through her soft, white hair.
When I open my eyes again, the Monster is gone.
I got rid of her by myself. I told myself she wasn’t real; I believed she wasn’t real, and she is gone.
“Alright, well, good night, Nini,” Charlie grumbles and kisses Nina on the forehead. “Get some sleep. Night Fal. Take care of her and let me know if anything changes.”
“I will,” I promise.
With that and a nod to Selene, I take Nina to her bedroom and close the door behind us. When I place her on the bed, the exhaustion has her sinking into the mattress.
We get into pajamas—me in my boxer briefs and sports bra, Nina in a pair of my boxers and a unicorn tank top—and slide into bed. Nina wiggles herself into my arms and rests her head on my chest.
“Before you ask, can we not talk about my mother or what happened tonight with her and my dad?”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever you want, babe.” I kiss the top of her head and rub small circles on the soft skin of her lower back.
“Where did you go tonight?”
“London.”
She looks up at me. “Like…England?”
I smile down at her and nod my head. “I had another job. It woke me up like I was lying on a bed of fire ants biting my ass.”
She giggles and my heart flutters. I love making Nina laugh.
“That sounds uncomfortable. Wait...you didn’t need to…uh…like…get rid of the…um..”
“Frenzy?”
“Yeah, that. I was trying to find a nice way to say your inner, horny maniac, but I was falling short.”
My face heats and I stare at one of the creepy stuffed animals across the room. It’s like a unicorn, but it’s a cat. A caticorn? “No, I found a group of Poachers to take it out on. I figured, you know, with your dad here….”
“Oh, right. Okay. That...would be super awkward.” She goes quiet for a minute, cheeks a little pink and I can only imagine what’s running through her head.
I know I wanted to come here and climb on top of Nina. The need for her hands to be on me was humming in my very bones. My skin ached as I clenched my jaw, fighting the Frenzy swirling hot and dark in my blood. Goddess, it was hard not to come here, not to take Nina in every way.
Her dad’s proximity be damned.
But luckily, I had some semblance of control and sniffed out a group of Poachers, readying to attack a young Lupi on the street.
Not as satisfying, but it got the job done.
My spine tingles as the Monster reminds me of the Poachers’ screams as I…
“Can I ask you something?”
I blink away the glaze in my mind and focus on Nina. “I suppose,” I joke and tickle her a little. Not enough for her to flip her shit, but enough for her to jerk and nearly headbutt my face.
Enough for me to come back from my little homicidal episode.
“How are you doing? Like, really. Talk to me. Tell me how you’re feeling.”
I sigh and take a deep breath. “Honestly, I’m struggling with the bad parts of me. They want to take over and eat away what little good parts of me I have left. But when I’m with you, it goes away, and I can think clearly. It’s almost like I’m myself again. Until she shows up out of nowhere.”
“Yeah, you seem like my Fal when I’m right with you. Your right eye even goes cloudy,” she states and nods her head.
“Wait, really?” The slight imperfection in my right eye the time I watched myself in the mirror registers. Maybe that’s why Nina looks at me weird sometimes.
“Yeah. I think it’s a sign of your humanity. Your scars and the cloudiness of your eye are a part of what makes you who you are.
I think it shows that you’re not perfect in the Monster’s eyes because, like you said, she views humanity as weakness. And when you are taken over by the Monster, your eyes are the same.”
I furrow my brow and ponder this theory. It makes sense. She always appears to me like a perfect version of myself. No scars. No imperfections. That’s how I look when I am the Monster; it’s how I look when she has complete control.
“And I saw what you were seeing when she appeared in the kitchen. She looks like you when she has complete control over you. And I don’t blame you for being terrified. She seemed so real when I looked through your eyes.”
“Now you know why I’m so confused all the time. And anxious out of my mind. Nina, this is what I was afraid of when they told me about Burning. I knew the darkness was strong. I knew it was going to push to take over. I’m not strong enough to fight it off,” I say and by the time I finish, I’m whispering. “I’m scared I’m going to lose all of myself.”
“Fal,” Nina whispers and scoots closer. “You are the strongest person I know. Even so, it doesn’t make you immune from the dark stuff. You won’t lose yourself because I won’t let you. I told you I would always protect your heart and soul. I’m not going to give up on that. You know that. I’ll kick that Monster’s fine, yet evil, ass right out of you.”
I blow a laughing breath from my nose, hoping we are both enough to stop the Monster.
“But tell me something.”
“Okay,” I reply.
“You say you want to be the light parts instead of the dark parts of yourself. Why can’t you be both? Why not be the gray area in between? Life isn’t black or white; nor is it darkness or light. Everyone has darkness in them just as everyone has light. It’s the balance between the two that makes us who we are. What if you stayed right in the middle?”
“Nina, I don’t like the dark parts of me.”
“Darkness doesn’t make you bad, you know,” she mutters. “How are you supposed to appreciate light without the dark?”
I open my mouth to object, but she’s right. As usual. “But how do I become both?”
“I…don’t know,” she admits, and her hand leaves my stomach to flail in the air in front of my face. “It’s your own demons you have to make peace with, I think. You must accept they are there and a part of you and that’s okay. Like, you have to appreciate the things that part of you does for you.” She pulls back and lies on her side to face me, so I do the same to face her.
