Pack of Her Own, page 9
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked as I followed her into the clinic. The waiting room was small, only a handful of chairs lining two of the walls, and a young blond man sat behind the reception counter. He glanced up at us curiously, but evidently knew better than to interrupt whatever was going on. Clearly a lesson I could learn. “I can’t tell how badly she was hurt, but she passed out on the way back.”
“Let me take care of her and I’ll let you know.”
I followed her past the reception desk to a long hallway where she kicked open one of the doors. She disappeared into the room, and I peeked in before the door closed. I only caught a glimpse, but it was much nicer than any examination room I’d ever seen in a doctor’s office. It looked almost like it was a full-on hospital suite—but that was impossible. Why would it be like that?
I didn’t get a chance to even ask. I started to follow the doctor into the room, when suddenly she was standing there, arms empty, holding up her hands. “No. Please wait outside. I will make sure she’s okay.”
I stared into her eyes through those tinted shades and faltered. She didn’t know me from Adam, I couldn’t blame her for not letting me in. “I’m not the one who hurt her,” I whispered.
Her mouth curled up in a hint of a smile. “I know. But let me help her, then we’ll talk, okay?”
I nodded and she closed the door in front of me. With nothing else to do and nowhere to go, I returned to the waiting room, took a seat, and tried to keep my mind occupied with anything besides what had happened to Meg.
Unfortunately, that left me only a couple of options. The past, or Wren. Or what the hell I was doing here. I mean sure, it was great of Rory to let me borrow the cabin, to get away from everything and try to put myself back together. I honestly didn’t know if I could ever thank her. But what the hell was I doing out here? Why was I sitting in a waiting room at a clinic with a girl I barely knew, others I didn’t know at all, all while hoping the one person I’d met only a couple of days ago arrived soon to take my mind off everything?
Never mind that I left her out in the wilderness with no vehicle to get home. I jolted to my feet at that thought. I needed to get out there and go back to her. I reached for my phone, thinking to call her, or Rory, or something, but the pocket was empty.
Fuck. It was still in the kitchen back at the cabin. I’d been in such a rush to catch up to Wren I must’ve forgotten the damned thing. That settles it. I opened the door but stopped still when a small hand shoved it closed again. Dr. Maru was beside me, staring up at me from a few inches down, but in no way did I feel she was smaller. Her posture, her presence, took care of that.
“No, girl,” she said quietly, “she will be fine. She would want you to be safe.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”
She glanced over her shoulder at her receptionist. “Call Sheriff Zeke and let him know to head east and look for Wren.” He nodded without question and picked up the phone. She turned back to me with a small smile. “Come, my dear. We’ll talk.”
She led me deeper into the clinic, past the examination room she’d taken Meg into, and to another door. It opened into a large office, the entire back wall of which was lined with massive bookshelves that were full to bursting. A window on one wall let in the sun, but it didn’t quite reach the large desk on the other side of the room, where two plush chairs faced one side and a nice leather executive chair was on the other side. She took a seat on the far side and gestured to one of the plush chairs. I glanced around, noting the sofa against the wall under the window, but it didn’t look like it got a lot of use.
“So, you must be Natalie. I’m Yoshimaru Hikaru. Call me Dr. Maru.” I looked at her, confused, at the sound of my name. “Wren told me about you.”
I opened my mouth, with my mind too full of questions to be sure what I was going to say. “Is Meg okay?”
“Yes, Megan will be fine.” She gestured to the chair again. “Please, sit. Wren would wring my neck if she thought I treated you as anything but royalty.”
I took the offered seat. “What do you mean, royalty?”
She smiled as if she were offering to share in the joke, but it only made me more confused. Her eyes met mine for a long moment and I couldn’t decide what unnerved me more—the purple lenses or the eyes behind them.
“Well…you’ve been around Wren a lot the last day or two, so I assumed something might be going on—”
I shook my head quickly, desperately dismissing the memories of that dream. “No! No! There’s nothing going on between us. We’re just—I mean—she’s been really nice to me, and I didn’t know anyone here and…” I drifted off, knowing I was rambling and protesting far too much. I glanced around the room to get an idea of something else to say. “So, what’s with the glasses? Why the purple?”
She smiled again. “I have Irlen syndrome,” she said, shrugging. “Fluorescent lighting gives me migraines. The glasses help with that.”
“I’ve never heard of that before.”
She chuckled. “Not a lot of people have. It’s kind of a newer thing and there are a lot of scientists that don’t agree or refute it. But hey, the glasses help, and I can still do my job to the best of my ability, so suck on that, stupid science gatekeepers.”
Dr. Maru was a puzzle. Looking at her, I’d guess she was maybe in her early thirties at most, but the way she held herself spoke of someone older and more confident. Then she opened her mouth, and said that, and it made me take almost a decade off her age.
“So, you’re friends with Wren?”
“It’s a small town, you kind of get to know people. I was here when Wren showed up several years ago, wad of cash in hand, and looking to buy the diner.”
“She just showed up?”
“Yup. Drove into town in a beat-up old station wagon, ratty clothes, and covered in dirt and grime. I swear the girl had been homeless for a while or something. I offered her a place to stay, just for a while, when she saw the For Sale sign on the old diner.” She smiled. “I owned the building, and this girl just pulls out a huge wad of cash and asks to buy it! I didn’t know what the hell to do!”
“So, you took the cash?”
She nodded. “Yup. Took what it’d cost me, not a penny more, and helped her find all the right people to get the place up and running again.” Her eyes took on an almost faraway look. “It was so nice to see the diner put back together.”
“What had happened to it?”
“One of the owners died. His husband didn’t want to stay in town, so it closed down and he sold the building to me. It was a few years before Wren showed up.” She smiled. “That girl had no idea how to run a business, never mind a diner. But we all chipped in, the whole town, and she was a damned quick learner to boot. Had the place up and running within four months.”
I tried to read between the lines, to glean any sort of information about Wren that I could. I didn’t want to stop Dr. Maru from talking about the past, but how much of this was Wren okay with me knowing?
I opened my mouth to speak, but it was cut short when she leaned forward, elbows on the desk, steepling her fingers.
“But enough about the past,” she said. “What about you? Why are you in Terabend?”
I took an extra minute just to find my breath and steady my nerves. “I’m staying up at the Gale cabin. I work for Rory—Lorelai Gale. She gave me a vacation and let me stay at her cabin.”
“Rory must be a good friend,” Dr. Maru said. “People would pay good money to rent out a cabin like that one.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? I’ve never actually thought about it. I’ve never even been outside the city before.”
“And how are you liking being closer to nature?”
I remembered the injured wolf. “It’s not so bad, but I feel there’s a lot I don’t know.”
Her eyes locked onto mine and I could almost feel myself drowning in the purple tint.
“So are you enjoying your vacation? Is it serving your purpose?”
“I’d like to think so,” I said, unable to look away. I hesitated, unsure if I should say more before continuing. “I kind of…lost myself. In another person. And when it ended, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be. I couldn’t be that person anymore, but I didn’t know how to be anyone else. It was starting to affect my work, and Rory, well, she told me to come out here and find myself.”
She smiled. “And have you?”
I started to shake my head but stopped. “Maybe? I don’t think so, not yet anyway. But I hope I’m on my way.”
She leaned back and the tension between us snapped like a rope pulled too taut. “I hope so, too,” she said, then glanced toward the door. “Come in.”
The receptionist didn’t look surprised at all as he opened the door, glancing between the two of us. “The sheriff is out looking for Wren. Meg is awake and asking for her.” He nodded to me.
Dr. Maru’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? She’s awake already?” She glanced aside with a quiet word, then got out of the chair. “Thank you.” He nodded again and left back down the hallway as I stood.
“Can I see her?”
“For a minute or two. She still needs time to rest, but it should be okay.”
Dr. Maru led me to the room across from the one where she’d originally brought Meg. She was lying on a large hospital-style bed with an IV in her arm and an oxygen line around her nose. She glanced at us with bleary eyes and smiled.
“Natalie, right?” Her voice was barely louder than a croak.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
She glanced behind me at Dr. Maru and gave her a small nod. I don’t know what passed between them, but the good doctor gave us some space. I walked up beside the bed, taking Meg’s non-casted hand in mine. Her other arm had a cast that ran from thumb to elbow, one of her legs had another one that sat mostly over and around her knee joint, and the number of bandages and Steri-Strips I could see almost made me gag. The poor girl. Why did all this happen to her?
“I wanted…” she said. She seemed to lose her voice as she gulped for more breath. “I wanted to thank you. And Wren. Both.” She looked around as if expecting to see her boss.
“She’s not back yet, but the sheriff is out looking for her,” I said. “And you don’t need to thank me. We were just doing the right thing.”
She shook her head and grimaced. “No. Wren was. She always does. But you came too, even if you weren’t a part of this.”
I looked around as if wary about eavesdroppers. “What is this about? Why did those people hurt you? Take you?”
“I don’t know. I was getting ready for work this morning and they just kicked in the back door. I was so…panicked, I couldn’t do anything!” She stopped and took a deep breath as I rubbed circles into her hand with my thumbs. I wanted to be comforting. “Until the tall one grabbed me. Then I struggled and fought back.” Her eyes glazed over a little like she was lost in a memory. “Then the other guy hurt me. And he talked about Wren. About taking her down a peg. Showing her who was boss or something? I don’t know.”
I hesitated. “Do you think this only happened because you work for Wren?” I didn’t want to sound accusatory, or blame her for anything, but that’s what this sounded like. Then I remembered what Wren had said before, acting like it’d been her fault the whole time.
“I mean, maybe? It’s not like it would stop me from being with her anyway.”
At those words, my heart sank. There was only one thing being with her could mean. Clearly, I’d been barking up the wrong tree this morning. And last night. And yesterday.
Her eyes caught mine and she looked a little confused. “I love working for Wren. She’s a great boss. She always listens when we have a problem and helps us with scheduling if something comes up. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”
I nodded along, trying not to let the pang of heartache cross my face.
“And shit,” she scoffed, then followed it with a couple of coughs. “I don’t know why they took me. It’s not like I’m her girlfriend or anything.” She gave me a look that made me all too uncomfortable. “I’d say you’ve got a better chance of that than I do.”
I stared at her. “Wait, what?”
“I’ve seen the way she looks at you, how she acts around you,” she said, smiling a tired little smile. “It’s not every day she not only goes out of her way to tell us to get you anything you want on the house, but also makes a date to cook you supper.”
“I…I mean…that’s not…we were just…”
She pulled her hand out of my grasp and waved it tiredly. “Just calling it like I see it. Whatever happened, I’m glad she had you watching her back. And mine.” Her eyes slowly started drifting closed. “Thank you, Natalie.”
I stood over her, staring at the now-sleeping woman. “You’re welcome,” I whispered, then turned and ran out the door. I was through the waiting room and out of the clinic before Dr. Maru or anyone else could stop me. I dropped Wren’s keys on my way out the door. I didn’t want to take them with me. But I couldn’t be there right now.
I shouldn’t have come out this morning, shouldn’t have gone after Wren. What the hell was I doing? Getting involved with someone else right now? I mean, I was supposed to be here to find myself, not shack up with some chick who clearly had a hell of a lot more going on than she wanted to tell me about. Who the hell was she in this hick town to earn one of her workers getting beaten and kidnapped, and then going after them herself without calling the police?
I must be losing touch with reality. That was the only rational answer to all this. I didn’t know how to live without Misty, so I was starting to lose it. Fuck it all, this might even still be a dream. Maybe I was still in the cabin, curled up on the floor next to the wounded wolf. Or in bed! Maybe the wolf was a dream too! I didn’t know what was real anymore.
“Back to the cabin,” I told myself. I remembered the streets that led back to the highway, and right across it was the clinic truck, still parked in the diner lot. I bumbled my way across the road, jumped in the truck, and pulled out as quickly as I could, flooring the accelerator until the truck started to shake from the abuse.
It was time to pack and leave. I couldn’t stay here with Wren, but I didn’t want to get back to Rory and have her tell me I didn’t try hard enough. I shook my head. Enough of this. It was time to get my stuff and get out of here. Whatever came after that, well, I’d figure it out as I went.
And Wren, well, I guess she could have whatever mob life she was a part of. I needed to find me. Somehow.
Chapter Seventeen
Wren
I warred with myself about how to get back to town. On the one hand I could move fast, even in human form, and taking the woods would get me back rather quickly. But the problem was Heather, who couldn’t move as fast as I could, and the fact that I didn’t want to risk being seen either partially shifted and carrying the girl, or leaving her in the dust moving at my top speed even in human form. This meant traveling at a quick walk along the roadside, hoping someone might come along to pick us up.
At least the company wasn’t too annoying. Heather kept right on my tail, no grumbling or complaining, which was surprising. She still hadn’t said what Jason had promised them, or told them, to get them to take Meg, but it was clear he didn’t have Heather’s loyalty in the traditional sense. She looked like someone who’d been kicked so many times that she didn’t know whether to accept a helping hand or bite it.
If I were a regular werewolf in a regular pack, I would say that she hadn’t found her place yet. She wasn’t an Alpha, but she didn’t seem to stand out as anything else either. Not that most wolf shifters had any special hierarchy embedded in our bones. Other than Alphas, as far as I knew the idea of dominants and submissives was only something that old pack culture pushed on their wolves. But damn if there wasn’t still something off about Heather, and the longer I kept her scent in my nostrils, the more I felt certain that she was corrupted somehow.
But that wasn’t for me to pry into. Everyone deserved privacy, to live their own lives. That’s what was missing from most of pack life. Always being surrounded by other people who all seemed to have a say in your life. All because you were considered pack or family. There were plenty of reasons pack life wasn’t for me, and that was one of them.
“Tell me about Jason, about what’s going on,” I said. My voice filled the silence of the empty highway. “What pack did you come from?”
She shook her head as she moved up next to me. “We were in the Cardinal pack, down south. I don’t know a lot. I was really low in standing so no one ever really talked to me.” She looked away from me, letting her light brown hair fall over her face. “Callum was a little higher than me, but neither of us were anything special.”
“So, he went looking for expendable wolves,” I said, not surprised. I’d grown up in the Cardinal pack and knew exactly how a lot of those wolves operated.
“I guess so.”
The asphalt rumbled beneath us as a semi roared by, spraying up dirt. Heather cried out and I spun. I pulled her into me and shielded our faces. She clutched hard to me, and I had to resist the urge to shake her off. She trembled a little, eyes shut tight, and I tightened my grip on her. Okay. Maybe I had a soft spot for strays somewhere deep down inside, but that didn’t mean she was going to get off lightly with what happened to Meg. I’d make sure of that.
“Tell me what happened at Meg’s.”
“I didn’t want to do it. I stood back for most of it. Jason kicked the door open, and he and Callum went for the girl. He yelled at me to grab her, but I refused. I didn’t get involved in this to hurt innocent people, especially not humans.”
“Why did you come with him?”
