by Lucy Leroux
It didn’t really matter it was her life he’d been trying to save. Wounded animals weren’t exactly rational. But he knew he hadn’t hurt Nina. It simply wasn’t possible. She was his mate. Even at death’s door, he’d chew his own arm off to keep her safe. But she didn’t know that.
He shuddered, praying to a God he didn’t really believe in. Don’t let her be afraid of me the way Mother was afraid of Father.
What if Nina ran? Sure, she’d made sure he received medical help. She was a physician. That do-no-harm and help people oath doctors took was a part of her. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t freaking out somewhere, losing her mind after the fact.
The human psyche was a fragile thing.
No, not her. Nina was strong. Her mind was flexible. She hadn’t just dumped him here and left.
It was quiet so long Dmitri forgot he had company. The nurse was staring at him wide-eyed, and it was more than sexual interest. He seemed amazed.
Dmitri lifted an eyebrow. The man coughed, closing his mouth. “Sorry, it’s just such a pity Dr. Briggs is going to be moving on. She’s such an amazing surgeon.” Breaking off, he gestured to encompass Dmitri. “I mean…look at you up and around already.”
Dmitri’s lips parted, and he peeked under his hospital gown to see the rows of neatly precise stitches, two sets of them. “Nina did my surgery?” he asked.
“Yes.” The man’s face was bright with admiration and awe. “The surgical team on call is whispering about it—they say they’ve never seen anything like it. She was so quick, so sure. You should have died.”
“Huh,” Dmitri hummed. He didn’t doubt the nurse’s assessment. His healing ability was good, but it may not have been two-bullet-wounds good—not where these stitches were.
What if the bullets had been silver?
Luckily, they had been standard bullets. And Nina had been the one to remove them. That spoke volumes for her state of mind. At least, he hoped it did.
He narrowed his eyes at the nurse. “What did you mean by she’s moving on?”
The man leaned closer conspiratorially. “Oh, it’s all over the hospital. Dr. Briggs quit. They tried to reprimand her for operating on a loved one. It’s against hospital policy, you see. They were trying to railroad her.”
“Fuck.” Dmitri had a bad feeling about what was coming next.
The man nodded sagely. “Exactly.”
“What happened?”
“Well, they were just using it as an excuse to give Dr. Lawrence the big Downey fellowship, but Dr. Briggs called them on their bullshit. She quit instead. Said she was moving to Portland.”
The dread pooling in his gut dissipated. Dmitri could breathe freely again. “She did? Nina specifically mentioned Portland?” Moving gingerly, he threw his leg over the side of the bed.
“Oh, no.” The nurse hurried forward. “Bad idea. You’re fresh out of surgery. You can’t get out of bed yet.”
“I need Nina.”
Something in his tone convinced his gossiping new friend he meant business. “All right. I’m not sure if Dr. Briggs is here, but I can page her and find out.”
“Bring my pants while you’re at it,” Dmitri called after the guy as he left the room.
His clothes came long before Nina did. By the time she arrived, he was dressed, sitting up in bed, with his rapidly healing bullet wounds covered by a clean pair of scrubs someone had managed to find in his size. His shirt had been full of bullet holes and covered in blood.
“Where have you been?” he growled at his mate as she finally came into the room. He checked behind her to see if they were alone. Across the hall, the nurses behind the desk were pretending not to watch them.
He lowered his voice. “From now on, you don’t leave my sight,” he hissed, forgetting to be grateful for his life.
Nina huffed, checking his chart just like a doctor on television. “You’re not really in a position to give orders.”
He motioned her closer. Instead of coming into his arms, she checked his pulse. Dmitri grabbed her hand, holding it tight.
Their fingers were both cold, but they warmed quickly in each other’s hold. “We need to get me out of here,” he whispered conspiratorially.
She leaned in as well. “Because you’re a werewolf? Yes, I am aware of that.” Nina twitched the neckline of his shirt, moving to peek down it instead of making him remove it in front of their audience.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know,” she said blandly before whistling. “You’ve done almost three days of healing in as many hours. So, yeah, we will be checking out before anyone else has a chance to realize what’s happening.”
All right, that was a little…clinical.
Under the circumstances, that was to be expected. Her analytical mind would step back and consider the situation from all angles. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he told himself.
“There’s more,” he said, pushing aside his misgivings about her weird attitude. “We need to make sure anything with my blood is burned. Everything with any trace of me—fluids, tissue, the whole shebang.”
Nina took a deep breath. “Believe it or not, I know all this. I just got a little crash course in the rules of your world. The hospital autoclaves its medical waste. I tossed your blood-typing kit in a little early. There will be no trace of you after it’s treated.”
He heaved a sigh of relief, but immediately regretted it. Despite his advanced healing, the bullet holes ached and stung when stretched. Ignoring the burn, he cocked his head. “From who?”
“From Cass.”
Nina reached into her pocket, then handed him his phone. Her lips firmed as he took the device.
Dmitri didn’t ask how she’d unlocked it. He’d used severed fingers to get past lock screens before. Thankfully, Nina had only borrowed his fingers while he was unconscious.
There was a glint in her eye he didn’t like.
“Cass was very helpful,” Nina continued. “I found her very informative.”
Ah crap, she knows everything.
It was a contest of wills, a battle unlike anything he’d ever faced. If he didn’t prevail, he would lose everything.
Nina narrowed her eyes, drumming her fingers on the Caislean’s small breakfast nook table.
Their hurried exit from the hospital had been interesting, to say the least.
He’d checked out AMA—against medical advice—but since he’d been taking their best surgeon with him, there hadn’t been serious arguments to try to stop them. Not from the doctors, anyway. The nurses had been a little more vocal, but they had cheered as he rode past them, waving from that inadequate little wheelchair. Nina’s friend Jesse had pushed him out as if he’d been a celebrity.
“I’m waiting for the explanation you promised,” she said, her voice carrying an edge that rivaled a surgical instrument for its sharpness.
He leaned back, adjusting the cushion she’d provided for his comfort. “I’m trying to figure out exactly where to start.”
“Start with the person who hired you. How long have you been working for Matt?”
He drew his head back, insulted. “I’m not working for your ex. I was working for his father, Lawrence Senior. However, I didn’t know that at the time we met. The transaction was meant to be anonymous—on my end, anyway. I always check out my clients thoroughly. I found out at the wedding he was connected to you. It was a rather rude awakening, actually. I make it a point not to mix business with pleasure.”
Dmitri shifted again. “But even if I had known, I would have taken you anyway. You are my mate, my heart, my life. For you, I will always make an exception.”
She didn’t say anything, just kept watching him from across the table. The air felt heavy as he waited for her judgment. Couldn’t she feel the truth of his words? If only she could smell it like he did, then things would be so much simpler.
Guilt beat at him as tears glinted in her amazing brown eyes. “Then our meeting wasn’t faked?”
> “What? Faked how?”
She rocked in her seat. “You were on that plane because of your business with Edward Lawrence, but you didn’t orchestrate running into me? He didn’t tell you to…I don’t know…distract me?”
“Hell, no!” Dmitri was furious. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to show her that she was wrong. However, the holes in his chest forced him into uncharacteristic restraint.
“Meeting you was pure chance—and a hell of an inconvenience,” he said.
“I see,” she said, her mouth tightening.
Fuck. He was screwing this up. That was the problem when he tried to use words to make his arguments. Dmitri took a deep breath and planted his feet on the ground, forcing himself to stand.
Nina’s head snapped up. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She rushed over, trying to urge him back into his seat. He refused to cooperate, pressing her into his side instead, the only kind of hug he was capable of at the moment.
“I didn’t mean it that way, love,” he murmured. “I should explain. I’ve always been pretty blasé about finding my mate. Weres only get one true life mate, you know. We’re actually more faithful to our partner than real wolves.”
Nina snorted lightly. He pushed her away a little, so he could see her face. He needed her to read the sincerity in his eyes.
“If I’d known you were the one waiting for me, I would have searched for you,” he said, realizing it was the truth. He was just like those ridiculous love-at-first-sight shifters after all.
“But I wouldn’t have chosen to meet you on a plane,” he continued. “That’s the worst thing that could have happened.”
The cute little line between her brows deepened. “Why?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Because you smell too good. It was all I could do not to tear your clothes off the minute you sat next to me—before then really. I could smell you the second you walked into the airplane door.”
Her expression of incredulity made him want to laugh.
“I can’t smell that good.”
“You do to me. That’s how shifters know our mates, by their scent. Yours is unmistakable and unforgettable. I could find you in a crowded room with my eyes closed—provided there was nothing truly disgusting in there—like copious amounts of pepper spray or anything like that.”
“O-kay. Do I smell that way to other Weres? There are other male werewolves, aren’t there?”
“There are,” he said, the muscles in his neck tightening involuntarily. He made an effort not to sound like a jealous ass. “Why do you ask?”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Not to replace you, douchebag. I just need to know if I should expect a similar reaction if we run into more of your kind.”
Well, that was a legitimate concern. He calmed down. “You’ll smell appealing to most single male Weres until we finish bonding, which is why I’m glad we haven’t run into any yet. My kind avoids cities for the most part. We need open spaces to run.”
Nina ran her fingers over the table. “So…what do we have to do to finish bonding?”
He smiled, pleased to detect an uptick in her pheromone levels. “More of the same. A lot of lovemaking and then…”
“Then what?” she asked.
He touched the base of his neck. “I bite you here.”
Nina scowled. “I thought you said you were a werewolf, not a vampire.”
“I’m not going to drink your blood,” he said, sniffing disdainfully. “I’m just going to get a quick taste. Once my saliva is in you, your biochemistry will change. Our scientists have studied this, but it’s still a bit mysterious. I won’t pretend to understand the details, but your scent will alter—it won’t be as potent for our males. More importantly, there will be something of me in there. They’ll know you’re taken. The power of your scent will wane a bit for me as well. It’ll become easier to live with.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You mean you can’t live with it now?”
She sniffed her armpit surreptitiously. He tried not to laugh, but only because it hurt.
“Nina, love, do you think I usually walk around with a hard-on—twenty-four-seven? I’ve been shot, and I still want to jump your bones.”
“Oh.”
He loved the blush on her cheeks. Dmitri touched the spot at the base of his neck again. “I wanted you to have a choice about bonding, the one my mother didn’t get.”
Nina’s face clouded. “What happened?”
He scanned back through his memories, eyes unfocusing as he dragged buried recollections to the surface.
“My father was a dangerous man—wealthy and immensely powerful. In his part of the world, he was almost a king. And kings are used to taking what they want. Mother was his true mate and she was strong, so she adapted in time, but I understand that those early years were extremely hard on her. I didn’t want that for you, so I kept waiting for the right opportunity to reveal myself. I was going to tell you everything after dinner. My plan was to bring you back here and show you, but I guess I waited too long.”
“Yes, you did.” Nina ran her teeth over her upper lip as she considered everything he’d said.
He waited. The tick of the clock on the wall seemed very loud suddenly.
Dmitri couldn’t wait any longer. He had to know. “So, will you do it? Will you bond with me and be my mate forever?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nina’s lips parted. She sucked in a deep breath, her mind working and reworking all the facts Dmitri had shared.
He was waiting for an answer.
Every second she hesitated hurt him. He didn’t say so, but it was almost as if she could feel his burgeoning pain. It was like a living, tangible thing.
And this is before this bonding bite. What would she feel from him afterward?
Despite having been engaged before, Nina had always been a self-contained person. She’d loved Matt in her own way, but it didn’t compare to what she felt for Dmitri.
You won’t lose him to another like you did Matt. This bonding was the ultimate insurance policy against infidelity. But there were other ways to hurt people, other ways to lose them.
Dmitri had just been shot. Whatever web he was tangled in, it was dangerous, lethal.
The only way to protect her heart was to walk away from the bonding and Dmitri now. Stay or go, you’ll be devastated either way.
She needed more information. “Tell me about this deal with Edward Lawrence.”
Dmitri’s disappointment was palpable, but he leaned back with an air of resignation. He knew she wouldn’t be able to make a life-changing decision without all the facts.
“He must have found out I double-crossed him.”
A niggle of unreality stole over her. It was one thing to find out her boyfriend was a werewolf—it was quite another to believe that the staid and snobbish Edward was involved in anything criminal.
Another thought struck her. Her head drew back. “Wait. Am I supposed to believe he is the one who shot you? Because Edward is a lot of things, but he’s not exactly the hot-blooded get-revenge type.”
Her ex’s father was almost Victorian in his sensibilities. Descended from German and English nobility, the man had been an arrogant prick from the day she’d met him. That had been one good side to her breakup; she didn’t have to pretend to like him anymore.
“I don’t really think there’s another strong suspect,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong—I do have enemies, but I’ve been careful. Most don’t know where to find me or what I really look like. I’m afraid I tipped my hand with Lawrence. I shouldn’t have confronted him, but under the circumstances, I thought it was the right thing to do. I realize now it was a mistake, and I’m sorry. Honestly, I didn’t think he had it in him. I didn’t mean to put you in danger.”
Unbelievable. “You were the one he shot.”
“Lawrence isn’t the type to do the deed himself. I’m sure it was a paid shooter, most likely local talent.”
&
nbsp; “Well, I won’t argue with your expert assessment,” she said, pointed sarcasm creeping in despite her resolve to stay objective. “But why? What is it you were doing for him?”
Dmitri took a deep breath, but then winced.
“Be careful with those stitches,” she muttered, waiting.
He nodded. “They are moving to the itch-like-mad phase. What did you tell your coworkers about my being wheeled into the ER naked?”
“I told them nothing. They probably assumed the EMTs cut your clothes off.” She folded her arms. “Now quit stalling. What did Lawrence hire you to do?”
“I was supposed to acquire something for him. That’s the sort of thing I do.”
“You’re a thief?” she gasped. It was almost a relief. Her imagination had painted a much darker picture.
“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m just muscle, but I’m the intelligent kind. Force should be applied judiciously and only when all other options are exhausted. Or if they would take too long. I pride myself on efficiency. My clients pay a high price for it.”
The arrogant charm was wearing a bit thin. “So you failed to get this item you were meant to steal? What was it?”
Dmitri smacked his lips. “I didn’t fail, but the item wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Things got complicated. I had to wade through a few bodies to get to it. That’s when I decided to find out what it was.”
He fished out his phone, swiping a few times before turning it so she could see the screen.
Puzzled, she took the phone to study the picture of a bejeweled bronze piece. “It’s a crown, right?”
“No, it goes around your neck like a collar.”
“Are those stones rubies? How much is it worth?”
“A few million for the stones alone, but that’s not where its true value lies. It’s what it does that makes it worth killing over.”
He reached for the phone, shaking his head at the picture. “After I learned what I was searching for, I did some research. My contact told me the item had been stolen from some powerful people…and they wanted it back. Before I could retrieve it, I saw the ghastly thing in action. I saw it kill.”
