Chapter 40
HIS SCENT WAS DIFFERENT.
When that migraine hit and Hodge and I had to drag him out of the gymnasium, the change struck like lightning out of nowhere.
It slammed me back to the night on the beach when I found him almost completely secluded from the rest of the town.
There was an underlying unpleasantness to his scent then that I dismissed as a result of his downtrodden emotional state.
The thing about Weres is that we have the ability to track emotions – chemosignal tracking.
Emotions are linked to pheromones and if a person is in distress or what they feel is particularly strong, it gives off a scent that we can use to find or observe them.
It's a great technique that's utilized during interrogations or in cases of missing persons when the S.W.A.T is deployed since they have Were recruits who can use it.
It's more complex than tracking bodily scent. Emotions are ever-changing and how long it lasts depends entirely on the person and situation. It can stay unchanged for hours. Other times – most times – it's as fleeting as a passing thought. That's why the majority of us never master it.
Mates, though, have an easier time of it.
The mate bond is a profoundly intimate connection that makes us virtually open books to each other.
If their emotions are strong, we feel that disturbance within ourselves.
We can even catch a scent. Negative emotions like fear, anger, hate – ugly emotions – are gross-smelling.
Positive emotions like happiness, ecstasy, sexual bliss – those are pleasant.
Human mates are trickier to deal with. There are more hurdles to jump to get to that place of real, profound intimacy which is probably why I dismissed that unpleasant scent the first time I caught it on the beach.
When that migraine hit, I didn't just feel his pain, or his fear and panic. I smelt it. When he was hunched over the bin, that smell I got wasn't the acrid stench of bile or sweat or any other bodily fluid. It was something else that propelled my own fear.
Rancid sour. Decaying.
It smelled like walking death.
I was now certain of the thing that has been settling like oil in the pit of my stomach since that night on the beach. Stewing and bubbling with every encounter over this week where he wept, denied us, pushed me away, tried to convince me we were better off alone.
He's sick.
And I don't know what to do.
More than the reality of his predicament, my helplessness terrifies me. I promised myself I would never be so useless again.
Inside the nurse's office down the short hallway around the corner of the sick bay where Jace lies with his eyes closed, breathing softly, Addy Larsen sits at her desk filling out medical forms.
She looks up when I enter, a friendly smile curling her lips, shoulder-length blonde hair fanning around her shoulders and face.
Addy is a Were, too, and my subordinate. She's been the official school nurse for about five years and during her studies, she did her residency at the local hospital to learn about human anatomy and apprenticed under Dr. Kevin Turley at Marcana to learn about Were-related medicine and anatomy.
She's brilliant and efficient and has patched me up more times than I can count during training when she's not on the clock at school.
Addy's smile falters and she narrows her brown eyes. "You didn't get into a fight or anything, did you?"
"Why is that the first thing out of your mouth?" I criticize, mildly offended as I plop into the black leather armchair opposite her.
She holds up her hands, palms facing outward.
"I know how you are during training. Brutal, even at your own expense but fighting on school grounds isn't something you're known for."
Addy raises an eyebrow, the speculative light in her eyes telling me that she's referring to a specific incident in a gymnasium that happened only last evening.
"You heard about Blake."
"The whole school's seen Blake." Addy leans forward and conspiratorially cups her hand near her mouth. "Plus, teenagers talk too much." She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest, an amused – almost mischievous – grin matching the gleam in her eyes.
Addy comes from a family of doctors and warriors. She, her mom, and older brother are in the medical field, but her father is a warrior. Her older sister is S.W.A.T., and her baby brother who is currently a senior is shaping up to be a top tracker and warrior. Her white coat is deceptive, though.
She's as good with a stethoscope as she is with a mean right hook.
"Dustin likes to gossip whenever he eats lunch with me. He tells me everything. Who's talking to who's boyfriend. Who wasn't invited to the last party. Who's secretly hooking up."
"So what? Outside of the pack, you know about the trouble those assholes have been giving Jace?"
Addy shrugs. "I heard a thing about it. Teenagers."
I raise an eyebrow. "Not if said teenager is a human and my mate."
"Touché. So, why are you here, Mr. Future Gamma?"
"Jace is in the sick bay."
Her earlier amusement flees her face, brows tightening in concern, frown lines deepening around her mouth. "What happened?"
She's already moving about, reaching into the top drawer of her desk to grab her stethoscope and a clipboard.
"There was an incident," I tell her, "during our exam. He got a migraine and he vomited. It kind of took him out of it so I brought him here. I wasn't sure what else to do."
The softness of my voice is almost foreign.
I recognize this gods-forsaken feeling currently sinking its claws into the marrow of my bones and I loathe it with every breath in my body.
I hate that it's creeping in. That those awful thoughts of being useless and the reason people get hurt is beginning to coil around me like a python – slow and crushing but absolute.
Addy must hear it in my voice – the worry and fear that's more than Jace getting a migraine and projectile vomiting into a garbage bin. All that I'm feeling and thinking must show on my face because Addy puts the stethoscope and clipboard down, clasping her hands on the table.
"Sky, what is it?"
Tears sting my eyes. They blur my vision despite the ragged breaths I take to steady my emotions. Mates are affected by each other's distress. If I'm unstable, Jace is unstable. I have to be strong for him.
"I think he's sick, Addy." Licking my lips to rid away the roiling emotions threatening to break me down, I look at her to see the shock on her face because since my mother's death, this is the first time I've cried in front of anyone who isn't Dad.
And even Dad hasn't seen me cry since I was a child.
"What do you mean sick?" she pushes. "Tell me what really happened."
Leaning forward on my elbows, I press the heels of my palms to my eyes, brushing away the incoming tears.
"You've been the school nurse since before I started here," I begin, reining in my control. Steadiness returns to my voice. "Has Jace ever been here before?"
"Outside of minor scrapes and injuries he sustained during games and practices," she pauses and shakes her head, "no."
There's a beat of silence. Her speculative stare that never leaves me says she's waiting for a proper explanation. With humans, they get sick so easily, but she knows it's serious if it has me this shaken.
"I caught a scent when he was...throwing up. It was..." My nose scrunches just thinking about it. "It's mild, almost gone now but it was stronger before. Unmistakable."
"What did it smell like?"
I swallow hard. I hate to say the words, but if Addy is going to tend to Jace, she has to know. Maybe she can help me figure it out before it's too late.
"Like death."
She frowns. "Migraine. Vomiting. A change in his scent to something pungent.
I haven't been around a lot of terminally ill or dying or dead people lately but during my residency at Jasper Falls Memorial, the general understanding is that Weres detect such things faster than a machine through scent.
However strong the pungency is usually indicative of how severe the illness is.
"How strong was it? On a scale of one through ten?"
My stomach churns not from the memory of that horrid stench but what assigning a rating would imply.
"Maybe an eight. Eight and a half. I could hardly stand it."
Addy looks down. I hate that she does because I know I'll hate it even more what comes out of her mouth next.
"If it's that bad, then there's no doubt that he's terminally ill. His health may be declining and if it gets worse, if the scent becomes...permanent, Sky –"
"Don't." The tears fog my vision again, muscles tensing as my fingernails dig into the chair's arm.
"Don't you dare say I have to prepare to bury my fucking mate, Addy."
Blinking until my sight clears, until the tremble in my chest disappears, I find myself retreating to a safe place in my mind, calling on memories of Jace from last night.
How he felt in my arms. His kisses and how he clung to me. I remember the sweet taste of his skin. His smile and that contented look on his face as if he were completely at peace in my presence.
I think about how I can listen to him talk for hours about anything that comes to mind or how he'll tell me about all the books he wants to read. I think about that feeling I get when I'm around him, as if everything is right with the world and there is no place else I'd rather be.
And then I think about how it feels being away from him.
Like I can't breathe easily unless I see him again and that fills me with a new type of fear because if I lose him, if I can't save him, then I'm worse than useless.
"I can't lose him, Addy. I just found him."
"I'm not saying you have to," she says quietly. Melancholic. "The mate bond's done incredible things before. The question is if you and Jace are willing to take that leap of faith."
A disheartened chuckle rips out of me, and I rub a hand over my face. "He doesn't even know what I am."
She hums thoughtfully. "Looks like you're both keeping secrets from each other. Life-altering secrets. No relationship is going to last if you two aren't sharing things no matter how scary they are or how much you love each other."
"I don't want to lose him, Addy." I glance over. "I don't think I'll make it if I do."
"Then you have to tell himyour secret, too."