84. Wraith
Wraith
One of Ivy's hands is in mine, typing on her phone with the other to Valek and Plague about the cat we rescued and the pet store supply run while we sit in the corner farthest from the door.
Whiskey, who was supposed to stay in the parking lot, is on the floor.
He's cross-legged in the middle of the waiting room, building a tower out of wooden blocks with a kid whose arms are wrapped in white bandages from fingertip to elbow, a compression garment covering most of his neck and the left side of his jaw.
"No, no, see, you gotta put the big one on the bottom, little bro," Whiskey is saying, way too loud for a medical facility. "We learn that shiii-zzazz in the Marines."
Nice save, I sign to him.
I watch him physically fight the urge to give me the finger.
"You were in the Marines?" The kid's eyes go huge.
"Hell yeah I was. Well. Heck yeah. Don't tell your mom I said the other thing."
The kid's mother is sitting three chairs away, watching with relief as Whiskey keeps him occupied. She glances at me, and her eyes catch on my face for a moment too long before she looks away.
Maybe wondering if I'm what her son might look like in twenty years if the surgeries don't go well and the grafts don't take.
The block tower collapses loudly enough to make several waiting patients look up. Whiskey cries out in anguish like his entire world just ended, and the kid shrieks with laughter, kicking the rubble across the carpet.
"AGAIN!" the kid demands.
"Okay, okay, we gotta go taller this time. We're buildin' superhero headquarters here."
"Belmont?" a staff member calls from the doorway.
Ivy stands immediately, pulling on my hand. I tower over her by two feet, but somehow she's the one leading me. She bumps her hip against my thigh as we walk toward the hall.
"We've got this," she whispers to me.
Whiskey looks up from his block tower and gives me a thumbs-up with both hands, grinning.
It's a different exam room today. This one just has a cot and a few stools. No medical tray covered in syringes and other torture implements. I lower myself onto the edge of the cot and Ivy scoots her rolling stool right up against my leg.
Dr. Jackson enters a few minutes later.
"Wraith." She smiles over her glasses. Hot pink today, matching her shoes as always. "Good to see you. And good to see you, Ivy."
"Hi, Doctor," Ivy says.
She pulls up her stool and sets the clipboard on the counter. "How are we feeling? Scale of one to ten, pain at rest."
I hold up two fingers.
Her eyebrows lift. She writes it down. "And with the hood up like this? When the fabric brushes your scars?"
Three fingers.
"That's significantly better than last time. How are you managing without masks?"
I hesitate.
In some ways, even most ways, it's been torture.
But with Ivy by my side…
I guess I've been doing okay, I sign.
I can see Ivy's smile even without looking directly at her.
My doctor nods, satisfied, and leans forward to peer at the exposed lower half of my face. "May I?"
I nod.
Always hate this, but I feel less miserably fucking panicked about it than usual as she presses along the nerves behind my ears, pausing lightly every few touches. I brace for the lightning strike of pain that usually follows.
There's a low ache of soreness, but that's all.
"Hmm." She tilts my chin to the left. Then right. Presses along the hinge of my jaw, where it used to make my vision white out. "Any episodes since the last injections?"
I shake my head.
"Twitching in the hands?"
I hold them up. Steady.
"And the BioMuzzle?"
She looks at Ivy for this one.
"He's been doing better. Plague's been administering the injections," Ivy explains.
Administering is an interesting word to describe having Whiskey sit on me like a dog at the vet.
"Good," my doctor says, nodding. "Well. Your nerve response is considerably better than I expected. And without neural inflammation, your ferality should be dampened, even without the BioMuzzle. How has your sense of smell been?"
I sigh. Not great. A little better this morning.
"It'll be back soon," she assures me. "Well. In any case, you don't need more injections today. I want to see you again in six weeks, and we'll reassess then. But right now, the improvement is significant enough that giving you more could actually interfere with the healing process."
I nod, but I have one question before I'll let myself breathe.
My hands lift from my thighs.
Can I mark my mate?
My doctor's eyes move from my hands to Ivy, then back to me.
"A bonding bite," she says carefully.
I nod.
"On the standard site? Over her omega mark? Or… will this be more symbolic?"
Ivy tugs the collar of her sweater aside, baring the silver layered marks over the burn scar on her shoulder.
Dr. Jackson leans in, adjusting her glasses. Her fingers hover over the marks, brushing slightly against them.
"Four alpha bonding bites," Ivy tells her. "Layered deliberately to build up the scar tissue before Wraith's mark."
"Clever," Dr. Jackson says, hesitantly.
I know.
She examines my mate's shoulder more closely, pressing and feeling the tissue. "This scarring is substantial. This is considerably tougher than virgin skin."
Ivy catches my eye and mouths told you.
"However." Dr. Jackson straightens, turning to me.
"I still have some concerns. Your teeth are sharp, almost certainly even sharper as a result of your ferality, and your bite force as a feral alpha is substantially above average.
A standard bonding bite requires controlled pressure.
Enough to break skin and trigger the hormonal cascade, but not so much you cause structural damage to the muscle beneath. "
My stomach sinks.
"I'd like to do a bite-force test before I give you a definitive answer."
She crosses to a supply cabinet and retrieves a block of medical-grade silicone, dense and flesh-colored.
"Bite it the way you'd bite during a bonding," she says, placing the block of silicone in my palms. "We'll see if it will be safe."
I stare at the silicone.
My jaw aches at the thought of marking her. Of what my teeth could do to my mate.
What if I go too deep?
"That's what the test is for," Dr. Jackson says with a tight smile. "Better to find out on silicone than on your mate."
Fair.
I pick up the block. It's heavier than it looks, firm but with some give when I squeeze. I turn it in my scarred hands, finding the angle, and lift it toward my face.
My jaws open, the exposed muscle pulling and twinging, but there's no real pain like there usually is when I open my jaws this wide.
Ivy watches with nothing but curiosity as I position the silicone against my teeth, feeling the material compress slightly under the points, and I glance warily at her.
My teeth sink in.
The silicone resists, then yields.
I expected I'd have to bite harder. But my sharp teeth slide through the material easily. Like I'm biting into warm butter. I barely had to try.
My hands go cold.
That's what I'd do to her.
I hold the bite for the count, but my chest is locked tight and I can't look at Ivy. When I pull the block free, I already know the answer.
I went too deep.
There's no way I didn't go too deep.
Dr. Jackson takes it from me, angling it under the exam light to check the deep puncture marks from my upper and lower teeth, evenly spaced, clean entry points without jagged tearing.
She runs her thumb along the deepest mark, then measures the depth against a marked metal rod that looks like a meat thermometer she pulls from the tray.
"Penetration depth is within safe range for bonding," she murmurs. "No lateral tearing. The bite pattern is clean." She looks up. "Your control is excellent."
I blink.
She sets the silicone down. "Given the tissue density on Ivy's shoulder from the layered scarring, I'm comfortable saying yes. But if you feel yourself losing control, stop. You can always try again."
My hands don't move.
It takes me a second to process that what she's saying isn't terrible news.
"You're cleared to mark your mate."
Ivy makes a sound beside me.
That's the only warning I get.
She launches herself off the stool and into my lap, flinging her arms around my neck and burying her face against my scarred throat.
I wrap myself around her so completely she almost disappears in my arms, nuzzling into her hair, breathing in every last hint of her scent I can absorb with the medication dampening my senses.
Dr. Jackson smiles on her way out the door.
"Six weeks," she reminds me. "And congratulations."