Chapter 17
DAWN
About ten days after I’d arrived, Vance took me to town to see the doctor—the human doctor.
My heart raced in my chest, and I was pressed as close to Vance as I could get, but he didn’t say anything about my anxiety or tell me it was unnecessary or stupid.
He just rested a big hand on my thigh and leaned over occasionally to kiss the top of my head.
There was something about Vance that relaxed me, and I was self-aware enough to know that it was the fated mate bond, coupled with the Alpha pheromones he naturally pushed out, but if I thought about either of those things too much, panic rose in my chest.
“So this doctor knows you’re bears? And that I’m a wolf?” I asked softly, and Vance screwed up his nose. It was cute as hell on his entirely masculine face.
“Yes and no. He knows, there is no way he doesn’t after all these years of practice and the things he’s seen, but we’ve never had an out-and-out conversation about it. He knows that if he ever said anything, we’d stop coming, and I’m sure he wonders if we’d eat him and his family if he did.”
I looked up into his handsome face. It was broad with a sharp jaw, his skin a golden color from spending so much time outdoors. “Would you eat him if he said anything?”
He looked down at me and smiled. “No. Well, probably not. I’d have to make sure he wasn’t collecting any evidence, but he’s of an age now that if he started rambling about man-bears, they’d think he had some kind of brain illness.
When he goes, I’ll see if I can pull some strings and get one of ours to take over.
There are enough shifters up here now that it would keep a doctor who wants a quiet life busy, especially if they take on human patients too.
The town is just as much our home as the mountain. ”
We fell into silence again, but it was comfortable.
We pulled up in front of a wooden building that sat high on posts, with several steps leading up to the door.
I crunched through the snow toward the door.
The guys had somehow acquired an entire wardrobe for me, but I knew most of it was donated from the females in the den.
Vance must have told them a little of my situation, because they were always friendly but kept their distance.
Their looks spanned from empathy to straight up pity, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that yet.
Well, everyone kept their distance except the female bear who ran the kitchen, Marla.
Since that first day, she’d made it her personal mission in life to fatten me up.
She’d bombarded me in the dining room the other day and made me recite any food that I even moderately enjoyed.
I started finding carrot cake muffins, mac and cheese, and steaks on my plate every day.
It was working too. While I was still brutally thin, I wasn’t as skeletal as I had been.
Vance held open the door for me, and the receptionist smiled widely. “Vance! It’s good to see you. I didn’t know you were coming in today.”
She was an older woman, and Vance smiled warmly at her. “Bringing a family friend in for a checkup. She had an accident up at the farm, and Doc said to bring her in after ten days.”
Her eyes flickered to me, and there was knowledge in them. She knew about my condition.
“Janine is Doc’s wife and the only reason this office continues to run with anything close to organization,” Vance told me softly, the unsaid sub context meant she probably knew about the bears and shifters in general.
“You aren’t wrong, Vance. You know where I found his stethoscope yesterday? In the refrigerator. Why?” the older woman said, her gray curls bouncing along with her jowls in perplexity.
The doctor appeared, and I didn’t recognize him at all. I was obviously closer to death than I thought when he’d patched me up.
“Stop telling them my secrets, Janine.” His eyes fell on me, and they swept up and down, doing a quick examination. “Come on in, Dawn.” He looked at the Alpha bear beside me. “You can stay out here, son.”
I hesitated, and Vance stepped up behind me. “No offense, Doc, but if Dawn wants me in there, I’m coming in.”
I sucked in a deep breath, smiling up at him. He had my back, even now. I squeezed his arm. “I’m okay. I won’t be long.” I followed Doc back to his examination room.
He shut the door softly, and I realized this was the first time I’d been without one of the guys since I’d arrived.
“Climb up on the exam table, and I’ll check out my handiwork. Not going to lie to you, kid, I thought you were a goner. I thought I was going to have to look at the big guy out there and ask him not to eat me.” I blinked at the doctor. “But here you are, looking right as rain.”
I wiggled my shirt up and lay down on the exam table. “Good genetics, sir.”
He let out a low, coughing laugh. “Isn’t that the long and short of it?” He looked at the wound. “You’ve put on some weight too. Good. I was worried your poor condition would hamper your healing.”
I cleared my throat. “Vance has been taking very good care of me.”
He looked down at me, his cloudy brown eyes concerned. “You’re okay up there, right? I didn’t…” He sighed. “Can I be straight with you, Dawn? In a way that I can’t be with Vance?”
“Sure.”
“I know that you and all those up there on the mountain are some kind of supernatural beings. I’m not sure what kind, but I’ve been running this doctor’s office since I was fresh out of medical school.
I grew up in this town, and we’ve always known that there was something…
different about the people up on the mountain, but we keep to ourselves and don’t ask questions, and honestly, the only patients I get here are the normal things—kids with broken arms from climbing trees, the odd workplace injury from the lumber business, and the boss up there with his bad crush injuries a few years ago, which was nasty business.
Anyway, they are different, and heal at a rate that defies belief, but they’ve been ordinary in every other way until you.
You turn up there, obviously gutted, and I’ve barely slept a wink, worried that I left you with people who could tear you to pieces.
Janine said that we knew Vance, Talbot, and Franklin—honestly, they’ve been in and out of my office dozens of times since they were boys—and that they wouldn’t do something like that.
Logically, I did know that, but your injuries were the worst I ever saw.
The most vindictive.” He cleared his throat.
I pushed some of my Omega calm toward the old man. “Vance and the guys have always been my saviors. I came from a bad family situation out west. They saved me. You saved me. Thank you.”
He gave a little sniff. “That’s good. The wound almost looks healed, and there’s no sign of infection. Any pain?”
I shook my head. “None.”
“Can I ask what happened? If it had been anyone else, anyone more average, you would have been dead twice over.”
I patted the old man’s hand. “Best you don’t ask, Doc, but I promise it’ll never happen again. Vance will make sure of it.”
He gave me a tight nod and stepped back.
“Good. Well, I think your recovery has been miraculous.” He raised an eyebrow at the word, and I laughed softly.
“You’re welcome to come see me if you have any problems. I might not be all that” —he waved a hand toward the waiting room and Vance— “but if you’re in trouble, I’ll do my best to help. ”
Brave old man. “Thank you. I know Vance really appreciates your help and your discretion. It can’t be easy knowledge to carry.”
He nodded and opened the door. “Come back if you have any concerns or it starts to get red or swollen.”
“Will do, Doc.” I walked into the waiting room, and Vance was holding a coffee cup and chatting with Janine. Doc didn’t know, but I did, that Vance would have heard our whole conversation. Shifter senses were no joke.
He drained his mug and placed it gently on the desk in front of Janine. “Thanks for the coffee, Janine.” He bowed his head low. “Thank you, Doc.”
Doc waved a hand. “Anytime. Stay out of trouble, and tell that to your two buddies as well. Franklin still holds the record for the most amount of X-rays in town.”
I laughed softly, and Vance shook his head. “I make no promises for those two.”
Vance opened the door, and we walked down to his truck. He held the passenger door open and lifted me gently, even though I was healed enough to climb in myself. “Everything’s good?” he asked, probably trying to convince me he wasn’t listening to every word.
“Everything is perfect.”
He closed my door and walked to the other side. “Marla gave me a list of things she wants me to pick up, so how do you feel about grocery shopping, and then we’ll get hotdogs and ice cream on the way home?”
It was so… normal. “I’d love that.”
I rested my head on his shoulder and hoped this was what every day of my forever looked like.