Chapter 2

Roman

I stretched deeply, groaning with appreciation as I felt each vertebrae pop and click throughout my back. I removed my hairband from my hair then flipped my head upside down to place a messy top knot on my head. Nightshift was dragging on at Kempthorne Memorial Hospital. It was four in the morning and not one person had come in to be triaged in the last few hours. Two more hours before I could head home, collapse into the pillowy down of my bed and sleep for eternity.

Home time couldn’t come soon enough after pulling a double shift. People thought I was crazy for pulling double shifts all the time. But the truth was I loved being a nurse. Scrap that. I loved being an emergency department nurse. Usually, the emergency room was chaotic with drunken students and their stupid decisions, which gave me a great distraction from my life. Helping the doctors reset dislocated shoulders or pulling artifacts from places they shouldn’t be, was like a drug; addictive adrenaline that coursed through my veins.

I was used to distracting myself these days. When I wasn’t at work, I was training and when I wasn’t training, I was having hot sex. Eventually I would tire myself into a state that would sedate my wolf and I would be able to sleep.

My wolf Rue was volatile, hence why I needed the constant supply of distraction. She had always been a little on the bitchy side, the complete opposite of my happy-go-lucky character. But over the last five or six years she seemed to have gotten progressively worse, and now I was using any means necessary to keep her calm.

We hadn’t merged which I had long accepted that it was never going to happen. I had even gone along to see Doctor Todd, the pack doctor to discuss a theory that I couldn’t merge with her because she was rabid. He chuckled lowly and told me that my wolf was high-energy and dramatic but not rabid.

Dramatic. That was the biggest understatement of the century. For a while, I had repeatedly woken up and found that I wasn’t in my bed. Not only was I not in my bed, but Rue had taken me halfway across the province while I slept. I didn’t even know that it was possible for her to do that! The first few times it happened, I full on panicked. The next few times I was angry, then I became resigned to the fact my wolf was untrustworthy.

We would argue heatedly each time this happened. Each fighting for dominance when I tried to return to Blackfern Valley. It wasn’t that she wanted to be rogue, that idea was abhorrent even to her. She just physically didn’t want to be in Blackfern Valley. She wanted to be elsewhere. She needed to be elsewhere.

I would have said it was the mate-bond that was making her act this way. But I couldn’t feel the mate-bond. It froze and shattered into a million pieces the moment the words left my mouth, Rue’s voice echoing through mine. I think that was the first time we had ever been on the same page; the moment we rejected our true-mate.

No, there was definitely something else wrong with Rue.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” she grumbled sleepily, her black ears twitching as she lay her head between her front paws.  I rolled my eyes and walked towards the vending machine by the front door. Being a werewolf meant that I had an enormous appetite, and the majority of my pay was transferred straight into the big black box of junk-food.

Boredom also did not help in this situation. I scanned through the glass front tossing up between Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a bag of All-Dressed potato chips. Both. I smashed the keypad and watched as the little springs released each item in turn.

I bent over and a sterile scent wafted by my nose seconds before I heard the voice say, “Salty and sweet?” I snapped upright and looked over my shoulder, flashing a megawatt smile at Simon, a ward nurse. Very sweet, very human, very breakable. His eyes groped my body before landing on my face as they often did when he saw me. I knew he was interested in me, but the feeling was definitely one-sided. It had nothing to do with the fact Simon was human, and more to do with the fact that I would break him both physically and mentally. I used sex as a tool, a weapon, and an escape but I also had a firm rule: No one from my workplace.

“Just something to tie me over for the next couple of hours.”

“You should let me take you out for a proper meal. We both finish at six and you know the new pancake house is now open?” His eyes were full of suggestive intent which made me certain that pancakes weren’t the only thing on his mind.

“Excuse me, but this is a proper meal! It covers all the food groups, carbs, protein and chocolate.”

“So I see.” He smiled at me again, adjusting his gold-rimmed frames and nervously running his hand through his hair.

“How is the world of the surgical ward going?” I asked directing us both out of the doorway and back into the nurse’s station. The TV screens were flickering between the ambulance bay, the public entrance and the foyer. No movement was seen on either screen. I suppressed the urge to sigh.

“About at quiet as down here, but you know, it’s supposed to be quiet up there.” I nodded but said nothing. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three... “Extremely dead down here tonight, eh?” Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Crickets would have had better conversations.  An eyeroll almost escaped.

“Yeah it is a bit, hence the junk-food fix.” Rue let out a big fake snore and I suppressed the urge to grin and laugh at her.

“You know maybe if we show him what’s between your legs he would come up with more interesting topics.” I pretended to focus on opening my potato chips. It was a trick I had learnt to do around humans to hide my wolf spirit. Thankfully Rue was too exhausted most of the time to push forward and show her lilac aura.

“What are you on about?”

“Your pussy is the holy grail. He wants to worship at its altar. I say let him, that way these dead-end conversations get better.”

“My pussy isn’t that special.”

“Then even better, fuck him and maybe he will leave us alone.”

“Or cling harder.”

“Shit. It’s a lose-lose, we are never getting rid of this guy.” She huffed and flicked her tail.

“He is a nice guy, Rue. Most girls would kill for the opportunity to date a nice guy. Just not me.”

“That is because he is a bore, and you know it! I can always come out and play for a bit, you know if you want me to.” Her voice had taken on a sultry playful quality which made me instantly flash her a warning look and she responded with a wolfy chuckle.

“Oh it looks like duty calls,” Simon said morosely, nodding towards the screens where a bus had just pulled into the ambulance bay. “Think about having a meal with me, okay?” I scoffed my mouth full of chips instead of answering and tossed the bag into the trash can, wiping my hands on my purple scrub-pants and sanitizing before I walked out the side door to see if they needed a hand.  I was more than grateful for the interlude. If I had stayed talking to Simon any longer, I may have taken pity on him enough to actually go to the Pancake House with him. I may have given in and shown him my holy grail. I may have broken him in like a horse and then broken him, just because the boredom was killing me so much. Thankfully my action came in a different form—a gushing headwound. Yup, that will do.

***

I drove up the gravel road that led to my cabin. The sun penetrated through the canopy above me and twinkled through the leaves, creating a mottled effect on the road as I turned around the bend. 

A large log cabin burst out of the woods, and I smiled as I parked my car and cut the engine. My bed was awaiting me. I closed the car door with a small bang and took a gentle sniff, appreciating the earthy smell after the harshly sterile scent of the hospital. The strong chemicals irritated my nasal passage and often burned my nose so badly that it often took a while for Rue to heal it. Either that or she was just being a bitch.

I sniffed the air again as I turned the door handle of my front door— was that lasagne? I followed my nose to the kitchen as my stomach vibrated at the smell. Sitting in the warm oven was a large pasta dish. Familial smells wafted at me, and I knew that my elder sister Arizona had been here. Trust the smell of real food to make Rue heal my nose faster. I sniffed again and detected the tones of my brothers, Israel and Jordan. I looked around and saw the telltale signs that my family had been in here. The couch cushions were fluffed, the floor had been vacuumed and my laundry had been washed and folded. I opened the hide-a-away trashcan and rolled my eyes at its sparklyness. It wasn’t that I was a slob, I just didn’t really have time to clean with my busy schedule. Or shop. Or cook. Or eat proper food. Canned tuna or brown beans on toast was fine for me, as I was constantly running between the hospital and Blackfern Valley.

I didn’t live in the Valley anymore. I lived alone in my log cabin in the middle of nowhere. Blackfern Valley and Kempthorne were in the middle of nowhere too, but my cabin was even more secluded than them. This place was my first attempt to stop the erratic behaviour of my volatile wolf. It didn’t work, but the independence and isolation grew on me, so I stayed. I stayed in the hope that one day I could bring my kid sister Indiana here to live with me.

But that hope was in vain, my baby sister was gone. And my so-called true-mate was the reason I was never going to live with her again.