Gladiator Cheetah, page 9
part #2 of Gladiator Shifters Series
A complex expression of interest, surprise, and suppression darted over Ulwazi's face as she glanced between Shannon and Aeolis. Then she went to wash her hands, saying, "Tell me more," with such command that Shannon felt like the doctor was one of her old coaches.
"I hid him from the raiders so he could heal. He said shifting helped them heal. But instead he screamed and looked worse, so I smashed their truck—"
"Brave," Ulwazi said. "Stupid, but very brave."
"Thanks. I think. Anyway, I told him to shift again after we chased them out of the village and he said 'bullet' and passed out."
"Wash your hands," Ulwazi ordered, drying hers. Shannon ran to do so, biting back a gasp at the strain it put on her hip. She washed her hands, then pulled on a pair of gloves that Ulwazi nodded at. The doctor cut away Aeolis's shirt, briefly examining the wound, then said, "Hold him down. This will hurt and he may wake up."
"I'm not—" Shannon bit back the protest and put her hands on Aeolis's shoulders, leaning in a little. She didn't think she was strong enough to keep him in one place, but arguing with Ulwazi would just make everything take longer, and from Aeolis's rapid, shallow breathing, he didn't have time for that.
Ulwazi took a thin pair of forceps from a clean tray and with ruthless efficiency, opened the wound in Aeolis's chest. Even unconscious, he went rigid, then collapsed into a deeper sleep as Shannon, helplessly, whispered, "It's okay, Ay. It's okay. Dr. Ulwazi is helping."
She was sure it really only took a few minutes for Ulwazi to dig the bullet out, but it seemed like hours. As soon as the metal cleared Aeolis's body, he shapeshifted two or three times in a row, as if he had no control over it. The third time he awakened, gasping, then curled on his side, one hand clutched over his chest like he was trying to understand what had happened.
Shannon had the almost overwhelming urge to crawl onto the operating table with him, to curl up behind him and hold on, like she could keep him safe that way. She thought she might have even done it, if Ulwazi hadn't spoken in the most disapproving tones possible.
"Look at you, leaving fur all over my clinic. You'll clean it up."
A weak laugh came from within the ball Aeolis had curled into. "Yes, Auntie."
The doctor's voice gentled. "Are you well?"
"No." Aeolis shook his head, as if the word needed emphasis. "That bullet…"
"Silver," Ulwazi replied softly, and panic suddenly knotted Shannon's stomach.
"Silver? Like—like for werewolves?"
"And vampires, and other supernatural creatures, including ones that really exist. Like me." Aeolis, clearly straining, rolled onto his back and fumbled a hand over the wound in his chest.
Ulwazi slapped it away. "You are not done healing!" She sounded surprised, even angry. "Shift again, Aeolis. Finish healing."
"I can't."
Both Ulwazi and Shannon made incredulous sounds of protest, but Aeolis shook his head, wincing at the ceiling. "Silver. It's hard to heal from. I can't keep shifting right now. It's exhausting. I need food, I need rest. And besides." He fell silent a few seconds, clearly gathering himself to speak again. "How many people just saw me get shot? How many more saw you drag my bleeding body from the Jeep into the clinic?"
"All the hunters," Shannon said after a long moment. "Me. And probably a bunch of people peeking through windows. And…there were a lot of people watching us get you out of the Jeep."
"So I can't go out there fully healed." Aeolis curled on his side again, and this time Shannon did bend over him protectively, her eyes closed as her heart hammered.
She had almost lost him. She barely knew him, and she'd almost lost him to hunters. The idea made her body ache, worse than her hip did already. Without meaning to, she whispered, "You scared me."
A little to her surprise, Aeolis chuckled, a very soft sound. "You saved me."
Shannon smiled a little, almost against his skin. "Somebody had to."
Ulwazi said, "I will tell the village that you were less hurt than it seemed, that you will be well," in a tone that sounded an awful lot like get a room, you two, and left the clinic.
The doctor's tone made Shannon realize how weird her behavior must look, and how invasive it must seem to Aeolis. She stepped back, suddenly flustered.
There was no excuse for glomming onto her boss, even if he had just nearly died. And honestly, the thought that he might have died shouldn't send gut-wrenching waves of fear through her. She'd barely known the man 48 hours, and while it would be really bizarre and uncomfortable to be hired for a new job and have the boss wind up dead a few days later, it shouldn't feel like it would be the end of her world.
"Shannon." Aeolis rolled back toward her and reached a hand out, though the action made him flinch.
"Stop that." She stepped forward, catching his fingers in hers. "You're hurt, Ay. Stop that."
He curled his fingers, pulling her another step closer. "Shannon."
"Aeolis…" She didn't know what she wanted him to do, or say.
Well. That wasn't true. She knew exactly what she wanted him to do and say, but having her new boss pull her into his arms for a delicious, toe-tingling kiss would be difficult to explain under the best of circumstances, and difficult to do when he still had a gaping chest wound.
"You look awful," she said, ill-advisedly, and Aeolis gave a sort of gasping laugh, sitting up so he could look down at himself. Then he cringed, because he did look awful. His color was terrible, his chest was a bloody mess, and there was a deep hole punched in it.
Not as deep as it had been, though. Shannon ghosted her fingers above the wound, not wanting to touch it, and whispered, "You need a bandage on this, Aeolis. You're still bleeding."
"I should be dead. I would be, if it weren't for you."
"Dr. Ulwazi would have gotten the bullet out. Probably sooner, if I hadn't driven off with you like a lunatic."
Aeolis shook his head. "Giving me that moment to shift in the Jeep, even with the silver in me…I would have died, without that shift. You saved my life."
Shannon smiled, tremulous and shaky. "Well, thank god, because I'm not—" She swallowed her words and tried to step back, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. "I should go."
"Please don't." Aeolis released her hand so she could leave if she wanted to, but his soft voice kept her in place. "'Because I'm not' what? What were you going to say?"
"I'm not—I can't…" Shannon shook her head. "I don't know. Nothing…I don't know." There was nothing she could say to her boss, even if I want to stay with you forever was a reasonable thing to say to a near-stranger. "I'm glad you're okay, that's all."
"Shannon." Aeolis took a breath that looked like it hurt. "Could I ask you to pretend, for just a minute, that we've known each other a long time? That I'm not your employer? That we're—that we're friends, friends who can tell each other anything? If I asked you to do that, could you tell me what it is you can't say right now?"
"I already feel like I've known you forever," Shannon said, almost before he finished speaking. She might regret it later, but she wasn't about to reject the opportunity to say what had been weighing on her for—well, only for two days, but somehow it felt like much longer. "I feel like this is the most incredible adventure I've ever had in my life and it's killing me that you're my boss because I feel like I fell for you as soon as we met and I don't want you to die because I don't want to lose my chance at a lifetime with you and that's completely insane and somebody just shot you with a silver bullet which means they know you're not human and I'm terrified of what that means for you and Imvelo and I just want to hold on to you and make sure you're still with me and—"
To her huge relief, Aeolis Savio pulled her close with his good arm, and kissed her.
CHAPTER 14
Shannon Kavanaugh was warm and tall and strong and delicious, her kiss hungry with relief, and then she fell out of Aeolis's arms into a heap on the floor.
He tried to catch her, and couldn't: the wound in his chest made it too hard to hold her weight. She landed with a grunted, "Ow," that turned into a wincing laugh as she looked up at him. "Uh. Heh. Sorry. I, um. I hate to be a stereotype, but I went weak in the knees and then my hip gave out. Hang on, let me—no, don't do that." She batted Aeolis's hand away as he tried to offer her a hand up. "I'm at least mostly healed up. You just got shot."
"You need Ulwazi to look at your hip," he disagreed as she clambered her way to standing again. "You should lie down over there."
"I don't want to be over there," she said, her voice gone suddenly soft. "I want to be right here with you. Or are we not pretending it's okay to say anything we want, anymore?"
"It'll always be okay." Aeolis stopped trying to shoo her away, and she stepped close to him, touching her forehead against his. She smelled tired, and in pain, and like his blood and her own sweat. Expensive perfume couldn't be better, though he wouldn't mind having not bled all over her. It didn't matter, though. All that mattered was that she'd taken the risk he'd asked her to, and that the emotion and desire he'd been feeling could be talked about now. "I felt it too. I feel it. I was already prepared to quit the game reserve, if that's what it took to be with you."
Shannon murmured, "Well, that's crazy," and he laughed quietly.
"I know. I know, but it's what I feel. My people believe that we know, when we see the person we're meant to be with, Shannon. You're my destiny. My—my fated mate."
To his relief, she laughed, but didn't withdraw. "Mate? I'm sorry, but 'mate' sounds ridiculous."
A little smile crept over Aeolis's lips. "It does when you're talking about humans. We don't usually call animals' mates their husbands or wives, though. Or girlfriends and boyfriends," he added hastily.
She blushed a bright pink. "Is that what we are? Just like that?"
An ache rang through Aeolis's chest, deeper than the wound. "What if I said I hoped we would be? Maybe not now, but…soon? Would that be too much?"
Her smile blossomed again. "No. No, that's okay. I just need a minute to make the transition from 'boss' to 'more', 'cause I don't believe in fate. On the other hand, I guess it's as likely a reason as any for me to end up on the far side of the world and falling for the first guy I see there."
"You saw Melokuhle before me."
She gave him a wry look. "I saw hundreds of people at the airport, too. Give me a little poetic license here, dude."
Aeolis smiled. "Sorry." Relief—joy—greater than the pain in his chest filled him. "Shannon. I'm sorry. I know this is mad. Everything. Everything you've had thrown at you in the past few days. I didn't mean to throw this at you too. But—"
"But you thought you were going to die, and all of a sudden missed chances seemed much worse than taking the risk? Believe me," Shannon said quietly, "I know how that feels. All at once, I know how it feels. I thought I'd lost you and I didn't know how I was going to cope with that. What are we going to do about the hunters? Where did they get silver bullets? Why did they get silver bullets? I mean, how did they know to? We can't let them just get away, knowing you exist. Ow." The last word was spoken on an inhalation, like she might have other things to say but had been distracted by pain.
Aeolis frowned. "You need to sit down. The—you ran into their truck, didn't you? Twice. It's blurry, but you literally ran them off, didn't you."
Shannon, feebly, said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," and this time she did limp over to the other bed, hoisting herself onto it with a grimace. "I was thinking about keeping you safe. I didn't think about wracking up my own hip by doing it. Ugh. I don't think I broke anything, but god damn, it hurts. The adrenaline's wearing off. Dr. Ulwazi is going to kill me."
"Not until she's made sure you're healthy." Aeolis tried slipping off his bed, and discovered that 'standing' was going to be a very optional activity until he'd gotten some food and rest and another shape change or two under his belt. He groaned and sat back down, taking a deep breath to steady himself, and Shannon chortled.
"We make a great pair, don't we? What a romance, two people lying on opposite sides of the room whimpering with pain, not longing, at each other." Shannon's face contorted with discomfort as she rubbed the heel of her hand into her hip flexors. "Yeah," she said in a tight voice, "I don't think it's broken again, but I could use some top-notch painkillers."
"Which are in your bag." Aeolis lay down, wincing all the way, but grinned tensely at the clinic ceiling. "In the yellow toiletry kit, and cunningly labeled 'painkillers'."
"I like a man who listens." Shannon sounded absolutely sincere, although that was softened a little by the following laugh. "Yeah. That's where they are. Too bad my tent is over…there somewhere." She waved a hand loosely, pointing in entirely the wrong direction, then sobered. "How did they know about the silver, Aeolis?"
"None of them were shifters," he replied. "I'd have smelled it on them. Someone told them."
"The wolves we met last night." Shannon's tone indicated it wasn't a guess.
"Yeah. I think so. I don't know if they were working together from the start or if it was a marriage of convenience, but…yeah."
"Aeolis…" Shannon pushed up on her elbows, looking toward him. She was both pale from pain and blotchy from the afternoon heat, but Aeolis thought he'd never seen anyone more beautiful. "Aeolis, if you could just keep transforming back and forth, how long would it take you to heal completely from a silver shot?"
"A couple of days? I don't know. I've never been shot with silver before." He started to raise himself on his elbows, too, and mind-wiping pain rolled through his chest. Dizzy, he lay back down, and waited a minute before he even dared to try speaking again. "I've been shot before," he said faintly. "Knifed, too. And bitten, and beaten."
Shannon said, "Jesus," with feeling, but let him continue without asking any of the obvious questions.
"None of it felt like this. A few shifts takes care of the littler stuff, and the gunshot took a day or so. But even that didn't feel anything like this. The first few shifts took the worst of it away, then. Right now I don't think I could shift if my life depended on it. Not before I've eaten and slept."
"So there's no way you're fighting that red wolf guy tonight," Shannon said slowly.
A spike of pure panic shot through Aeolis, momentarily burning away the pain. "I forgot. I have to. I have to."
"No." Shannon sat up again, exhaling sharply, but not as whey-faced as she'd been. "No, don't be ridiculous. You can't fight. There must be another way. I could just shoot the son of a bitch."
"Shannon!" Aeolis was, for a moment, genuinely appalled, even when Shannon gave him a rueful I-didn't-really-mean-it look. "There isn't another way. We have…there are rules."
"Rules like the ones that say some random asshole can come challenge you for a wildlife reserve that you've been running for years?"
Aeolis looked pained. "Exactly like those." His voice dropped into worry. "And even if we didn't have rules…he's a shapeshifter, Shannon. He's dangerous. You can't just shoot him. Not in an arena challenge."
A touch of wicked humor spilled through Shannon's tone. "So there are circumstances under which I could just shoot him?"
He gave her a horrified look and she laughed. "I didn't really think that was what you meant, but it did kind of sound like it. What do I have to do in an 'arena' challenge? And what's an arena challenge, when there's no arena around?"
"There are…" Aeolis shook his head, trying not to wince. The wound in his chest didn't hurt as much as it had, but he was more exhausted than he'd ever been after an injury. Willpower alone was keeping him awake, and it wasn't doing a very good job, at this point.
"Rest," Shannon said quietly. "You're exhausted, Ay."
A little to his own surprise, he smiled. "'Ay'. You called me that before."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know us, uh, what's the word you use? Cheeky? Americans, bestowing nicknames all over the place."
"Dad would say cheeky. Mum might've said stroppy." Aeolis closed his eyes, not wanting to. He wanted to keep looking at Shannon. Wanted to memorize the lines of her face and the worried furrow of her eyebrows. She was pale right now, or rather, paler than usual: her hip obviously hurt, but she wasn't letting it stop her from fussing over him. He could hear the hitch in her step as she got up to get a chair, and came back to sit next to him.
"'Stroppy' in American is somebody looking for a fight."
"Which you are," Aeolis said without opening his eyes. "But Mum used to tell me I was being stroppy when she meant I was being bold."
"See, now, 'bold' means 'brave' in American English. Never mind me learning Afrikaans and Zulu, we've got a whole language in common we're going to have to learn to translate." Shannon curled her fingers around Aeolis's, sending warmth through his whole body. He would have been happy to fall asleep there, holding her hand, but she said, "I'm going to get you something to eat, but first explain to me about these challenges."
"We have three kinds of fights." Aeolis fell silent, gathering himself to explain. "The pit fights, they're for the entertainment of others. Those are the ones we're called to fight when we become adults. There aren't any formal challenges in those. We just fight who we're told to fight."
"Okay. So it's, like, not personal."
"Right. Then there are arena challenges. The formal ones require witnesses for both sides, and they're issued over things like this. Land or rights grabs. Refusing a formal arena fight means forfeiting the…" Aeolis breathed a laugh. "The coveted object."
Shannon, dryly, said "'Coveted'," and Aeolis smiled at her tiredly.
"The language around it starts getting formalized, too. But this isn't a formal fight, not like that. I wouldn't lose the reserve by refusing to fight."
"But you would risk your people, because they have that database."
"Right." Aeolis closed his eyes again, astonished at how tired he was. There were stories about silver disrupting a shifter's system, but nobody he knew had ever suffered from it before. Up until today, it had been the stuff of legend, as far as he'd been concerned.
