Page 37 of Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf (Claw Haven #1)

Luna was pretty sure they were over the limit for visitors.

She leaned over to Sabine, who had graciously given Luna one of the few seats available in the tiny hospital room. “Should I…go?”

Sabine looked down at her, surprised. “What? Why?”

Luna gestured helplessly at the room. Only she and Darren were sitting on chairs.

Everybody else was standing around Grandmother Musgrove’s bed.

Or in Leo’s case, sprawled over her legs.

Grandmother Musgrove was pretending her foot was a snake under the sheets, and Leo giggled as he pounced on it over and over.

“It just seems kind of crowded. I feel like I’m intruding,” Luna whispered. In a room full of humans, that would’ve been private. But she was in a room full of werewolves, so everyone immediately chimed in with a chorus of denials from around Grandmother Musgrove’s bed.

Uncle Roy glared at her silently. He was leaning against the wall, one eye on the door.

“Anyway, the furthest you can go is the parking lot,” Ben added once the denials died down. “If you’re lucky. How far did you get last time you tried?”

Luna looked over at Oliver questioningly. The last time they’d tested it, they’d stopped when Oliver started stumbling from pain. She’d wanted to stop before that, but he had been stubborn.

“She could get past the parking lot,” Oliver said thoughtfully. “I think she could make it halfway home before I passed out.”

Luna laughed. Mostly to get the weird icky feeling in her stomach to go away.

It had formed as soon as Uncle Roy rushed in announcing that they needed to go to the hospital right now and had remained as they drove with an unconscious Grandmother Musgrove in the back seat and Oliver white-knuckling the steering wheel so hard it almost cracked.

Uncle Roy spoke up. “Someone’s coming.”

Everybody looked to the door just in time for a nurse to come in. It was the same nurse as last time, a middle-aged succubus with a tail so alarmingly tall it towered over her stout head. Luna had to squint at her name tag again to remember her name: Maeve.

“Hullo, Musgroves and co.,” Maeve said in a dubiously Irish accent. “I’m just gonna do a wee checkup. Your doctor will be in shortly.”

Uncle Roy snorted derisively. “Has he treated a lot of werewolves?”

Maeve shot him a bright smile as she moved around the bed to check the machines hooked up to Grandmother Musgrove. “Dr. Gert actually ran a clinic for monster youths back in San Fran. You’re in good hands.”

“Oh,” said Uncle Roy, some of the aggression dropping out of his tight shoulders. “Uh, alright.”

An orc walked in wearing an impeccably fitted white coat, her hair tied in an elegant knot between her horns. She saluted them all with her clipboard. “Hi, everyone. I’m Dr. Gert. Mrs. Musgrove, how are you feeling?”

Grandmother Musgrove folded her hands neatly in her blanket--clad lap. “That depends on what you tell me next.”

Dr. Gert laughed. “Well, you don’t need surgery at this stage, but I’m afraid we are going to keep you for a few days. Just to check your heart is still doing okay after that scare back there. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like I ought to get comfortable.”

Leo immediately scrambled up the bed and started patting her pillows. Luna couldn’t hold back a grin.

“Looks like you have help with that,” Dr. Gert said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Let me know if you have any questions.”

She headed into the hall, Maeve the nurse on her heels.

Grandmother Musgrove lay back against the pillow Leo had fluffed up or otherwise punched into submission. “Some of you have to go home.”

Another chorus of denials rose. Even Uncle Roy joined in on this one, though he limited his to muttering.

“Luna was right about one thing,” Grandmother Musgrove said over them. She twisted to look at Luna, giving her a warm smile. “We are a little crowded.”

Luna smiled back. She didn’t quite forgive her for burning the flower, but it was hard to be mad at a sweet old woman lying in a hospital bed.

Once Luna got past the shock of it all, it was kind of touching.

She couldn’t imagine her family trapping her with someone on the off chance that they forced her to improve as a person.

Grandmother looked over at Oliver next. He frowned before she could even say anything.

“Go home,” she said before he could protest. “Jackson can show you a thing or two about roof repair. But don’t touch anything unless he tells you to.”

Oliver took a deep breath, obviously about to argue.

She gave him a hard look.

The breath left Oliver in a rush. “I’ll come back tonight.”

He hesitated. Then he bent down and pressed their foreheads together, rubbing his skin against hers.

She held the back of his head. “Looks like you might have to be alpha sooner than we thought.”

“You’re gonna be alpha until I go gray,” he replied softly.

Luna averted her eyes. They were burning, she realized with no shortage of embarrassment. She sniffed hard. Before Claw Haven, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried in front of anything except a movie screen.

Oliver straightened, looking expectantly at Luna.

“Coming,” she squeaked. Then she winced, hoping she didn’t just give away how close she was to bursting into tears in the hospital room full of someone else’s family. She rushed out the door, only pausing to squeeze Grandmother Musgrove’s foot through the sheets like Leo had been doing earlier.

* * *

Luna spent the ride home staring out the window at the thin layer of snow, thinking about the Musgroves showing her how they put snow chains on her rental car’s tires.

Everybody had come out to watch Ben demonstrate, Oliver glowering at his side and not saying anything.

Vida had pretended not to care, but Luna saw her taking notes on her phone.

Darren had goaded Leo into a snowball fight with the aunts.

Uncle Roy kept trying to interject with lessons on engine maintenance, which Sabine shut down with a glance at Luna that implied she knew just how much Luna knew about cars: a big fat zero.

Grandmother Musgrove had stood at Luna’s side, rarely talking, so wrapped in shawls it looked difficult to move.

At the time, Luna was bemused and cold, and she was eager to get back inside and call her cell phone provider to see if she could talk them into being less shitty.

She had barely paid attention to the lesson, still convinced she’d never need those skills and would be on a sunny beach within a week.

She’d been wondering what these people could want from her.

Now she knew they’d just wanted to show her how to put snow chains on her damn tires so she wouldn’t crash into somebody else’s sign the next time she drove in the snow.

“You’re quiet,” Oliver said.

It took Luna a second to process what he’d said. Her head was still back in that parking lot, watching the kids pummel each other with snowballs.

“I thought you’d be grateful,” she replied.

“Oh, I am,” he assured her. “Just worried we’re having another medical event. You couldn’t deal with five minutes of silence on the hike.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, just because I’m not singing the Spice Girls…”

Oliver’s stomach growled loud enough to make her jump.

“Oh my god,” she said. She let out a surprised laugh that quickly turned into a gasp. “You didn’t have breakfast! I told you to eat something before we went to Jackson’s!”

“I had toast,” he said quickly.

His stomach rumbled again.

“Shut up,” he told it, scowling.

Luna grinned. The anxiety from the hospital trip was finally leaving her.

She didn’t know when Oliver’s scowl had become comforting instead of rage-inducing, but she was relieved.

It made her feel like things were going to be okay.

Oliver had been so pale in the hospital, so still and blank-faced as he paced at a speed that had Ben joking about him wearing a tread in the linoleum.

She’d take scowling Oliver over blank Oliver any day.

* * *

Jackson was on the roof. He’d offered to come with them to the hospital, but when that got denied, he said he’d get to work.

“Hi,” Luna called up to him. “Oliver’s going to come up there later; he has to have a snack first.”

Oliver’s face twisted as she pulled him into the lobby. “I have to have a snack first? What am I, in grade school?”

Luna ignored him, dragging him down the Musgrove’s hallway and into their kitchen.

“Shut up and eat something,” she said. “What do you want? We got Pop-Tarts, we have…” She poked at the solidified eggs on the kitchen table, which hadn’t been cleared in the rush of getting Grandmother Musgrove to the hospital.

“Cold eggs. Cold toast. Oooh, we have cheese. Do you want a grilled cheese? That’s so comforting. ”

“I’m fine,” he replied. He reached into a box of bran cereal and popped a piece into his mouth.

They both grimaced. It sounded like he was chewing rocks.

“Cut that out,” she told him as he reached in for another handful of dry cereal. “Let’s make you an actual meal.”

She yanked open the fridge and yelled in triumph to see multiple types of cheese. “Aw, you guys took my cheese advice! You won’t regret it. A fridge isn’t complete without soft cheese, hard cheese, feta cheese, and weird blue cheese that only tastes nice if you pair it with something.”

“Luna,” Oliver said. “What are you doing?”

Luna’s grin dimmed. She ducked out from behind the fridge door. “I’m admiring your cheese collection. It’s finally adequate.”

“Darren wouldn’t shut up about it after your fancy cheese rant when we had nachos,” Oliver said. He walked over and closed the fridge, leaning against it. “I can make myself something. Don’t worry about it.”

Luna kept her smile in place; however, she couldn’t help but let steel leak into her voice as she said, “Your Grandmother is in hospital. You broke your ankle—”

“My ankle is fine!”