Chapter Four
Eamon
Hemlock Memorial Hospital, Hemlock Mountain
Rhomas was on the move and so was I. Had something gone wrong?
His thoughts gave away so little. He was headed towards the lab but where was that?
I’d never gotten blood drawn at this hospital before.
I tried to search his thoughts but because he couldn’t sense me as our link was only half open, he couldn’t help me.
I wandered the halls for a few minutes before a nurse found me.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her eyebrows arching so high on her forehead I thought they might fly off.
“I’m looking for the lab,” I said.
“Who sent you there?” she asked.
“Uh…”
“Let me see the lab order,” she held out her hand.
My wolf snarled and threatened under his breath to eat her candy-scented face but I swallowed down the growl that accompanied his threat.
“I’m looking for Rhomas and he’s in the lab. He’s my true-mate. We only met tonight,” I said, hoping that explained why I was wandering around off-limits parts of the hospital looking like a crazy wolf.
“Rhomas Hemlock-Knight?” she asked.
“Do you know him?”
“The weirdo who walks around with a dog all the time?” she asked and it took all my might not to lash out at her with my teeth.
“Ummm… Manners,” a man walked up from behind her. “Don’t mind her. She’s jaded. She asked him out a few months ago and he told her she stank.”
“What?” I blinked, looking back and forth between the nurses.
“Yeah. He told her straight up that she stank,” the guy laughed.
“He said he didn’t find my natural body odor pleasing and that would make mating difficult,” she rolled her eyes.
“Anyway. Yeah. Your man told her she stinks. Come on. I bet he’s at the vampire lab since that belongs to his parents and all that,” the guy smiled.
He wore peach scrubs but smelled like a mango.
“He’s Lee Knight’s kid?” I blinked. “I never put that together….”
“Yeah, he’s on the clock tonight. We heard about you two meeting.
Everyone heard. We were all taking bets on how long it took them to call someone else in to door watch.
Congrats by the way. Rhomas is a good guy and Jolly is a good wolf when he wants to be.
He’s a bit of a glutton but aren’t we all? ”
“My friend is having surgery. Rhomas was the watcher and --- something happened but I can’t figure out what.”
“I don’t know anything about that, but this is the lab.
Smells like your guy is here,” he said. “Next time someone gives you trouble in the hospital just tell them who your in-laws are. Seriously, Patty is always a pain but don’t let the likes of her stop you from getting around. She’s not the boss of shit.”
“Thanks for showing me the way,” I said, managing to remember to thank him before pushing open the big, double doors.
The lab smelled both sterile and bloody. Glenn would love it here even if this was merely the place they collected specimens.
“Eamon!” Rhomas’s voice reached my ears before I spotted him, eating crackers and little slices of salami in a cubicle while a machine sucked out his blood.
“What happened?!” I asked, fighting off the urge to crawl over all the lines and into his lap.
“Glenn is a vampire,” he shrugged. “He needs blood.”
He filled me in on the barest details because he was uncertain how much he was allowed to say by his contract with the hospital.
I was marked as next of kin on all Glenn’s stateside legal forms just as he was on mine.
Glenn was mostly bear but his great grandcarrier came from a coven of vampires in the highlands and he had inherited some vampyric tendencies.
“Want a chair, sugar?” an older, grey-haired wolf woman asked me. This one smelled like hard peppermint candies.
“Please,” Rhomas said before I had the chance to answer. “Could I get another soda too, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“I’ll even bring one for your mate,” she winked at him and disappeared.
A very wolfish part of me wanted to sink onto the floor and sit between Rhomas’s legs.
I needed to touch him. I needed to feel his skin against me and the pressure of his body.
I needed the world to stop spinning and…
. I about hit my ass on the floor when the room spun but the grey-haired wolf scooted a chair right under me in the nick of time.
“Can you bring him fluids? Maybe some cookies?” he said, nodding at all the blood sucking tubes as the reason he couldn’t get up.
“Of course,” she said but I wondered if we were asking too much.
“She’s not mad,” Rhomas said, reading my scent. “She’s worried about my job. Before you got here we were discussing bureaucracy. See, I broke every rule by entering the OR and giving Glenn blood. It’s okay, though. If they need to make an example out of me they can.”
Only, for all his nonchalance, he did care if he got fired. He enjoyed his job and would miss it. Though, he’d stand his ground because he believed he did the right thing.
“Knock, knock,” Guard Tantra said just as the nurse came back with cookies and a fluids bag for me.
I scrunched my nose up at the idea of an IV but relented because Rhomas was worried.
He was already sacrificing himself to feed Glenn and I was a little hungover or maybe a little drunk.
I wasn’t sure which. How long had we been at the hospital?
I only had two glasses of wine, but felt like someone sucked out all the water in my body with a straw and I needed a shower.
“We have them here. When we’re finished, I’ll take you to the suite my parents stay at when they need to be at the hospital overnight,” Rhomas said and I arched a brow. He shouldn’t have been able to read my thoughts yet. “Showers that is.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked, ignoring the guard while the needle wiggled under my skin.
“You watched how much soot she took off your arm for your IV. I didn’t notice earlier or I’d have offered. I was caught up in your beauty and your tears,” he said, flashing me a sad smile.
My cheeks turned pink and the guard cleared her throat.
“Yes, Guard Tantra, how may I help you?” Rhomas asked. “Are you here to kick me out of the hospital for saving a life?”
“Uh… They’d have to call someone else for that.
It would be a conflict of interest because I’m on your side.
I just wanted to let you know that we arrested the fireworks shooter’s friend.
He fessed up that his friend had meant to hit someone.
Anti-vampire sentiments, I’m afraid. He threw around the slur ‘fang-fucker’ a lot.
I’ve already informed the pack leadership. This is a hate crime.”
“After his bag finishes can you show Eamon to my parents’ suite?” Rhomas asked the guard.
“And where are you going to be that you can’t show him yourself?” the nurse asked, standing akimbo.
“In the Pit if I don’t change my ways,” Rhomas smirked at her and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“I’m sure Kat can show him to the suite. I’m off duty, technically, and if you’re going hunting, I want in. My wife’s a vampire. You know that, right?”
“Lalala Lala Lalalaaaaaaaaaa,” Kat said, walking by with her fingers in her ears. “I’m singing my grandson’s favorite song so I don’t hear this nonsense hunt talk.”
I opened my mouth to say he couldn’t possibly be thinking of hunting the guy down. Only I shut it because that’s exactly what he had in mind. Part of me wanted to demand to go along with him but the other part of me knew I wouldn’t leave the hospital while Glenn was still admitted.
“Let me take care of it, mate. Injurious hate crimes are serious business and its every pack member’s job to put an end to such criminals,” he said, mischief playing in his eyes.
I had never wanted an alpha so much in my life. I would’ve let him claim me right there in the lab but I didn’t think Kat would appreciate it. My eyes shifted to that of my wolf and he peered out at our mate.
“You just hang on before you run off, though,” Kat said. “You have to eat some real meat before you run off to hunt. You’ve given a lot of blood, young man! I have some deer sandwiches in the fridge. Do you two want some as well?” Kat asked, looking back and forth between me and Guard Tantra.
“They do,” Rhomas answered for us and Guard Tantra nudged him with her toe. They’d been friends for a while. From the glimpses of Rhomas’s thoughts that I managed, they met because his parents saved her wife’s life when she had a rare vampyric blood disorder.
I ate my sandwich in silence, hoping that Glenn would live and eat lots of sandwiches. I’d kick his ‘friend’ in the shin later for leaving him in the fire like that.