Reflected (Silver Series) (3 page)

“Sure.” The tech gestured inside without looking, too deep in calculating angles that would allow him to lift Tom without jarring the injuries.

A bell tinkled as the human woman pushed back out through the glass-paneled front door and held it open for Selene. “Calling my boyfriend,” Selene said and nodded inside. “Thank you so much for your help…”

The woman chattered more reassurances—Selene was very welcome, she was sure her dog would be fine—until Selene slipped past with a worried grimace. The woman seemed to read that Selene’s attention was on her pet, not conversation, and left for her car with a final wave.

The vet’s waiting area was shiny and clean, with a linoleum floor, plastic couches, and acrid odors of sickness and cleaners. The scent made Selene’s eyes water and she wavered until Felicia arrived and pressed herself against her leg. It didn’t give her quite the feeling of security Death’s presence did, but Selene couldn’t see Death—if he was even real. That question was far, far more than her mind had room for at the moment.

The counter had no entrance from the waiting room, only from a hallway that led somewhere back behind the exam rooms, but Selene could see the phone. She stood on tiptoe, snagged it, and set the whole thing where she could punch the buttons.

She smacked into a mental obstacle with a force that felt almost physical. She didn’t know Andrew’s cell phone number. Or the numbers of any of her pack, because she’d met many of them after her memory could no longer grasp such things. Selene stifled a sob at the promise of being able to speak to her mate coming so close and then being yanked away.

But she could do this. John. Her beta and her cousin. She’d known his number before, when she’d been Selene. She didn’t think he would have changed it. He’d be closer than Andrew, even, because he was at the hunting grounds just up the hill rather than at the pack house a twenty-minute drive away.

John picked up on the second ring, voice flat and distracted. “Hello?” He didn’t recognize the number, Selene realized.

“John.” She was anxious to get her words out and hang up before he asked questions about her mental state, or other things she couldn’t properly answer with humans around. But a name for Tom escaped her. What
did
humans name their dogs? She accepted the first name her memory threw at her, from television or something. “Lassie got hit by a car. Someone stopped, so we were able to get him to the vet right away, but I left my wallet in the car—can you drive down here and pick us up? We’ll probably be done before Andrew—” Selene caught herself. As Silver, she always called her mate by his last name. “Dare could get here, so if you do call him, tell him to meet us at home, okay?”

John’s silence was resounding for a breath, before he apparently set aside everything that was wrong with what she’d just said and ran with the part that did make sense. “Which vet?”

Selene’s head swam for a moment. She hadn’t looked at the name above the door. Fortunately the business cards in a holder next to her elbow had it in large font: Squak Mountain Animal Hospital. She read it out to him, then hung up and offered the whole phone back to the gray-haired, white-coated woman who had arrived from the back. The vet, she presumed.

“We let our dogs off-leash on our land, up—” Selene pointed in the vague direction of the hunting grounds. “There must have been a hole in the fence, he got out onto the road, and the car came out of nowhere…” She scrubbed at her face. “I’m sorry, I’m pretty shaken.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” the vet assured her with a brisk smile.

“Thank you.” Selene made it to one of the plastic couches before her legs collapsed. Felicia watched Tom being carried in and whined as the door to the back shut behind the staggering tech. It took her two trips from the door to Selene and back before Selene got it: the vet wouldn’t let another dog in to watch her work, but she would allow the owner back.

Selene leaned over her knees and pressed her palm to her face to hold herself together. Her prayers to the Lady would be no more fervent for being made from Tom’s side rather than in another room. The blood scent twisted into her nostrils even from here, though that might be the lingering scent of his passing through the entryway. Blood had been in every breath when her pack had been killed, blood and silver metal. Each breath now brought her one step closer to reliving those moments in full sight and smell.

“Hold down the den for me, would you, girl?” Selene buried her hand in Felicia’s ruff and surfaced gasping from the bloody memories into Silver again.

Silver folded over, forehead to her knees, and held herself together. John would be here soon. Death said nothing, but his silence had an approving quality as he sat straight upright beside her.

*   *   *

Felicia tried going back to the door to the exam rooms one more time, even though she knew Silver had understood her. Apparently Silver preferred to go off into her own crazy land rather than check on Tom. Felicia paced back and forth from the counter to the couch on the opposite wall. Lady, how could she have been so stupid? It was her fault Tom was hurt, and now she couldn’t even help because she was trapped as either a dog or an inexplicably naked woman in front of the humans.

Silver had handled everything better than Felicia had feared, she had to admit. She’d thought the woman couldn’t use phones unless someone dialed for her. She smelled upset enough about it, though. Some of her pure white hair had slipped from the long braid she kept it in, hiding her face from Felicia’s angle. She looked frail, sharp angles under pale skin, hard to match with the intensity of her normal body language as alpha.

Felicia’s nails scritched on the polished floor. Wasn’t this all sort of Silver’s fault in the first place? If she hadn’t showed up, they never would have run toward the road. The moment she thought it, Felicia knew that wasn’t fair, but she indulged the tight satisfaction of imagining things that way for several paces anyway. In the end, it was Felicia’s fault. Her fault for getting Tom hurt.

A vehicle turned into the clinic’s parking lot, and Felicia pricked up her ears as she recognized the engine’s sound. Tom’s pickup. John must have found Tom’s jeans and keys and brought down the vehicle that would be better for transporting Tom home.

Felicia darted to the front doors and accidentally forced John to shove her aside with the glass because she forgot they opened inward. He looked reassuring at least, the solid muscle of him in the doorway, brown hair disordered as usual. Felicia skidded on the way to the door to the exam rooms, but the infuriating man stopped at Silver first.

“Selene?” John set a hand on her back and she slowly sat up. The rank mixture of her fear and worry wafted to Felicia. “Are they working on him right now?”

“Silver,” Silver said, almost too soft to hear. “He’s—” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the back of clinic, then scrubbed at her temple and frowned at Felicia. “Take her in, would you?”

Felicia waited, ears pricked high for sounds of what was going on in the back of the clinic, but John opened the front door instead. He waited pointedly, smelling of exasperation.

Oh, of course. John meant to take her inside in human. Felicia sprinted for Tom’s pickup and John followed to undo the canopy and tailgate. Felicia nosed around in Tom’s detritus, including his toolbox and extra pair of hiking boots. No clothes unless you counted a raincoat. John returned from the cab and tossed her backpack onto the bed. The very blankness of his expression was a louder comment than a snicker would have been. How had he figured it out? As soon as Felicia got her nose close to the backpack, she realized. It reeked of sex, transferred from her hands where she’d touched the zipper and pulled it open.

No time to worry about that now. The moment the tinted canopy door closed, Felicia shifted back and started pulling on her jeans before the soreness in her muscles from all the back and forth faded. She was lucky it was near the full, not the new, or she’d have collapsed by now. She dispensed with underwear and knocked on the window for John to let her out so she could sit on the tailgate and jam on her shoes.

She jumped down and would have sprinted right back to the clinic, but John caught her shoulder in a tight grip. Not so tight she couldn’t have escaped, but tight enough to remind her who outranked whom. “You look like you squeezed through the middle of a blackberry mound,” he said, and smoothed down her hair with rough efficiency. “Now.” He released her shoulder. “Go.”

Felicia let herself into the exam room now that she had hands. The vet looked up suspiciously from where she was stripping off her gloves, apparently done with Tom. John entered a moment later with smooth explanations about how this was his friend’s dog, and Felicia his friend’s daughter. Felicia left him to it and hurried to the metal table that held Tom, still unconscious. His side looked strange, shaved in a wide patch, with lines of stitches here and there where the road rash had been especially bad.

She petted his ears. Intellectually, she knew that if werewolves didn’t die of their injuries immediately, they wouldn’t die at all, given food and rest. But that didn’t convince her emotions as she stood here, smelling the blood and sheer wrongness hanging around him as a miasma.

John nodded as the vet told him how lucky they were that the internal damage had been so minimal, and he made the right noises of embarrassment as she chided him about the lack of collar and license. Then the vet disappeared back into the clinic and the tech took John up to the front counter to talk payment. Given the illusion of being alone with Tom, even though she knew the humans could hear from the other rooms, Felicia leaned in to rest her cheek against the soft fur on top of his head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She hadn’t meant any of this to happen.

John returned and tossed Felicia a brightly colored zippered foil bag. She barely caught it after hesitating too long figuring out what it could possibly be. She turned it over to stare at the foolishly grinning German shepherd puppy on the front. Dog treats? Was John trying to insult her, or Tom, or both? She sniffed and brought the bag closer to her nose. Well. It didn’t smell bad. Smelled pretty good, actually.

“He should get his calories as soon as possible.” John made a show of grunting and settling the weight carefully when he picked up Tom to hide how easy it was for him.

Felicia assumed John’s emphasis meant
before he shifts back.
She nodded. He did have a point about that. She jogged a few steps ahead to open the doors for John, but when she started to follow him across the parking lot to the truck, he jerked his chin in a clear order. “Get Silver,” he said.

Felicia turned back to eye the woman huddled on the couch. What if she didn’t want to be the crazy-person guide? She went to grab Silver’s wrist to pull her up, but Silver reversed the grip at the last minute, catching Felicia’s wrist tightly instead.

“You were on the other side. He was chasing you,” she said as they stepped outside, voice steady. Felicia avoided her eyes, not just to be polite and avoid the measuring of dominance but because that slightly scary intensity her father’s mate usually displayed had returned.

“I know it was my fault,” Felicia hissed under her breath. “I’m sorry.” She’d make her apologies properly to Tom once he was awake, but beyond that, what else was she supposed to do? Promise not to do it again? Of course she wasn’t going to run out on the road again. She hadn’t even meant to do it then, she’d just got so caught up in the game of it all, running before Silver arrived and figured out what they’d been doing—

Felicia stuttered a step. She’d forgotten about that in her worry about Tom. Did Silver know? John knew, definitely. Would they tell her father? Surely he wouldn’t come down on Tom, not injured as he was. As long as Tom didn’t get in trouble, Felicia would be happy to take whatever consequences her father dished out.

Felicia tried to lead Silver around to the passenger side of the truck, but Silver dropped her wrist at the back and climbed up beside Tom. After a moment of hesitation, Felicia threw Silver the treats and closed the tailgate and canopy. She’d wanted to ride with Tom, but better the cab than awkward silence in the back.

The passenger side door never shut properly on Tom’s truck unless you slammed it, which usually amused Felicia, because the driver’s side was the junkyard replacement of the wrong color. Felicia had to open and slam it again before it caught, but John waited patiently, not starting the engine.

The silence was pretty damn awkward up here too, she realized. She turned and faced straight ahead out the windshield into an overenthusiastic bush at the edge of the parking lot, but John still didn’t turn the key.

“Playing chasing games as well as literally chasing, were we?” he said. Felicia stayed stubbornly silent and stared at the bush. He knew the answer already. Was she supposed to apologize for that too? That wasn’t the part she’d done wrong.

He snorted. “And a bonus game of ‘piss off your father.’” He turned the key and the truck cranked into reluctant life. “Tom doesn’t deserve to be part of
that
game, especially now. I didn’t smell anything—this time. You two start playing chase regularly, someone’s going to tell Roanoke Dare.”

“Someone like you?”
Felicia muttered in Spanish. It was childish, but her father liked to nag her about the rudeness of speaking in a language others couldn’t understand. Even though he wasn’t here, flicking her tail at him that way still made her feel better.

John didn’t seem terribly insulted by her Spanish. “Lady preserve us from roamers who haven’t left yet,” he commented generally to the air and turned his attention to driving in silence.

Felicia twisted to look back into the bed through glass dimmed by grime too ingrained to wipe away. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean. She wasn’t some kind of lone, wandering around without a pack. Maybe in North America that was an insult.

John drove over a set of railroad tracks and growled in frustration along with Felicia. Silver kept Tom braced, but he was still jarred enough that his head came up groggily. Silver murmured reassurances and dumped some treats onto her palm for him. He accepted them delicately.