Chapter 4
Briar
We’d barely gotten Leo situated on the couch in the living room when we heard another vehicle pull up.
I half expected Maverick to bolt to the door to greet them after the way he’d hurried from the bedroom to grab my phone, but much to my surprise, he didn’t move and instead remained seated on the couch beside Leo.
I reached the door just as the medics were coming up the stairs, the blonde pair so closely resembling each other that I’d have sworn they were twins.
“I hear we’ve had a bit of an accident,” the first one said as they stepped inside.
“More like Leo suppressed a bit of a shock that resulted in a fainting spell,” I explained and gestured towards the couch.
“Really?” The second asked as I closed the door behind him and crossed the room to pull the coffee table out of the way, so they’d have easy access to Leo. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No sir, this was the first,” Leo said.
“How are you feeling right now?” The first medic asked as he knelt in front of Leo and placed his bag on the floor beside his knee.
“Fine aside from the lump on the side of my head from where I hit it on the floor.”
“Let’s take a look at that, shall we?” The medic said as he pulled on gloves. “My name is Philip. Can you tell me what happened right before you fainted?”
I was shocked when Leo glanced in my direction, a questioning expression in his cobalt eyes.
“He saw us shift from our snow leopard forms to human ones,” I admitted, appreciating the way he’d sought to protect us by keeping silent.
He couldn’t have known that one of the reasons I’d felt comfortable booking our stay at this resort was because it came highly recommended in the shifter community.
I trusted that the medics they had on staff here already knew about our kind and would not be thrown in the slightest by my words, and sure enough, the only response from Philip was a small smile and a brief nod.
“That can be a bit jarring the first time you witness it,” Philip assured him as he gently slid his fingers through Leo’s hair, searching for the spot he indicated.
When Leo hissed and winced in discomfort, my inner cat hissed right along with him.
Not only did that shock the hell out of me, but the urge that came next completely threw me for a loop.
My cat wanted to rip Philip away from him and snarl out a warning never to touch him again.
Even Maverick appeared a tad riled up, until I noticed his claws digging into the material of his sleep pants and realized 'a tad' was putting it mildly.
He was furious.
“Oh yeah, you’ve got a heck of a knot back there,” Philip said as his partner rummaged in his bag for an ice pack, cracked it, shook it, and passed it over. “Let’s see if this helps.”
Leo sighed when Philip placed the ice on it. “Stings but definitely feels nicer than having it throb.”
“You can refreeze that as needed,” Philip said.
“You’ll want to leave it on for twenty-minute intervals until you no longer feel like it’s needed.
If you feel the need, you can take over-the-counter pain medication like ibuprofen or aspirin.
I’ve got a few packets here I can give you.
If you need more, just call over to the reception desk and they’ll send some over, though I can’t promise it will be a speedy delivery, as things are a bit chaotic down there right now. ”
“I can only imagine,” I muttered, as Leo carefully shook his head.
“No thanks, I have some in my bag; you’d better save those packets for someone who doesn’t,” Leo declared. “I doubt I’ll be the only one suffering a shock today.”
The medics made eye contact and grinned.
“You aren’t even the first. One visitor suffered a sprained ankle after being chased by a grizzly he tried to shoo out of the hot tub behind the cabin they are now sharing, and a porcupine got stuck beneath the bed and had to be carefully extracted after he tried to hide from his human roommate.
We’re hopeful that the injuries stay minor to nonexistent while the folks up at registration sort out this bit of calamity.
“I would not want to be the person responsible for double-booking every damn cabin in the place,” I muttered.
Phillip shuddered at that and nodded. “You and me both. I’ll happily stick to the paperwork that comes from bandaging cuts and splinting sprains, thank you very much.”
“I bet.”
“Leo, I just have a few more questions for you, and then we’ll leave you in peace,” Phillip said as the phone his partner carried started beeping.
“And business is already picking up again,” the quiet medic muttered as he read the message. “We’ve got to swing by the pond when we’re finished here to dig a hook out of someone’s hand.”
Phillip shook his head and groaned. “That’s never pretty.”
Mav and Leo both cringed at hearing that and subtly shifted a closer together.
“Alright, Leo, you’re not feeling queasy, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Was there any queasiness when you came to?”
“Nope, just the lump.”
“Any dizziness, double vision, or spotty vision?”
“None.”
“Anywhere else that hurts beside your head?”
“Does my pride count?”
Philip chuckled at that. “In this case, no. Seriously though, you have nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about. Fainting is one of your brain’s ways of protecting you when something happens that’s too overwhelming to process. It seems like things are okay between you guys now though.”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Leo said. “I think I caused these guys as much upset as they did me when I walked in on them curled up sleeping, so it’s all good.
Honestly, I’m kind of glad this happened.
The only reason I booked this vacation alone was because all my friends were wrapped up in their holiday plans, and my dads were heading off on a cruise for the holidays, so there was nothing going on at their place either. ”
“Sounds like a fortuitous mishap in your case then,” Philip said.
“I really think it is,” Leo said.
I was pleased to hear those words from him and to see Maverick nodding along too. At least the earlier bout of frazzled energy had faded back to his usual calm, laid-back demeanor.
“Alright then, we’re going to go deal with a hook; you guys don’t hesitate to call if he experiences any dizziness, vomits, or starts to feel queasy later in the day.
While I don’t foresee there being a problem, head injuries are nothing to play around with, even minor ones, which this one is.
As long as you keep from frightening him into another fainting spell, I’m certain he’s good to go. ”
“Thanks for coming up,” Leo said. “My headache is already starting to fade thanks to the ice.”
“Good deal,” Philip said as he peeled off his gloves and tucked them into a pocket on the side of his bag before he and his partner, who never did introduce himself, took their leave.
“Glad I didn’t scare you so bad you wound up with a concussion,” Maverick said after the pair were gone.
“No shit,” Leo said. “I’ve had one before, and it took weeks before the last symptoms faded.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like,” Maverick said.
“One of the perks of being a shifter is that we heal extremely fast, so unless we were to fall out of a window and fracture our skulls or something, concussions aren’t very likely to happen.
Even broken bones heal quickly for us, though it still sucks when something goes snap. ”
Leo cringed and adjusted the ice he had pressed to his head.
“Okay,” I said. “I think we’ve had enough of accidents and injuries for the day, yeah?”
“Works for me,” Leo said. “Oh shit.”
“What? Are you okay? Do we need to call the medics back?” Maverick asked, immediately hitting pre-frazzle mode again.
“No, but I do need to get my food in the freezer before it all melts,” Leo declared, beginning to get up.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said, spotting the TV dinner box sticking up out of the brown paper sack. “I’ll need to do some rearranging if all of that goes in the freezer.”
“Did you guys buy out the frozen food section too?” Leo asked.
Mav snickered at that while I just shook my head. “Not a chance. Processed food is not shifter friendly. We tend to get sick and sluggish if we eat too much of it, so we cook our meals from scratch. We brought more than enough food for two weeks if you’d like to share our meals with us.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Seriously,” Maverick said. “Not to criticize, but I doubt that many frozen meals in a row are good for humans either.”
“You’re not wrong but trust me when I say it’s far healthier for everyone when I don’t attempt to cook, which is kind of ironic, considering I worked in a kitchen all through high school.
Fortunately for everyone involved, my only job was to load and unload the dishwasher, scrub pans, and get everything put away in time for the cooks to destroy the place again.
At least I can admit to sucking and went in there looking for a dishwashing job, while some of the folks who came through there tried the fake it until they make it route, to varying degrees of sheer and utter failure. ”
“Oh man, we’ve had a few of those come through the cookie shop,” Maverick said as I carried the brown paper bag to the kitchen and started rummaging around in the freezer, rearranging things until I’d gotten everything, barely, shoved inside.
Fortunately, it was one of those stainless-steel models with the pull-out drawers for packing food in, because if it had been an old-school model with the top freezer, we’d have been completely screwed.
“You work at a cookie shop?” Leo asked. “Oh my god, best job ever.”
Maverick giggled at that and, in his typically humble way, did nothing to correct Leo’s assumption.
“We’re the owners,” I called back from the kitchen as I pulled out lemons, butter, asparagus and the fish stock I’d made last night in preparation for our first meal in our rustic cabin.
“Seriously?”