Page 4 of Courted by the Sabertooth (Mori’s Mementos #3)

Inside the emergency department of Moonscale Memorial Hospital, I was swept up into a current of activity.

Nurses and interns moving too fast for me to read their tags rushed me this way and that, prodding, poking, and scanning me as if I was trampled by a herd of elephants.

A special intern who could detect spells came in and stared at me silently for three whole minutes before pronouncing me ‘not hexed’ and storming out of the room as if I dared to waste his time by coming into his hospital without being an interesting case for him.

“He can sit on a cactus and pretend he’s a record,” my dragon mumbled inside his inner sanctum.

Any time a nurse or intern stood still long enough I asked about Jon.

My mother tried to put an end to that when she arrived at the hospital.

She hissed that it made me look guilty. The guy broke my heart but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead.

I couldn’t see a path for him where he’d have a good life.

He’d trip himself up forever. Our relationship was fake on his behalf but not on mine.

So, while I wanted to kick him in the shin once a day for the rest of eternity (in the same spot of course) I didn’t want to see the wanker dead.

After the hospital workers exhausted tests to run on my fleshy human form, I was wheeled into a giant white room.

Every bit of the room was white, and its almost glowing walls were lined with silvery machines.

I almost noped straight out of there but relaxed when I saw the big red X on the floor.

It was merely the draconic medical center.

I wasn’t sure what my mother had told them but apparently, they were going to check my dragon form for a concussion too.

My dragon wasn’t too keen on coming out in the white room.

“It has no personality. He’s picky. He’s finnicky. He’s--- Well, he’s a diva. He’s the heir to a cosmetics line for dragons after all,” I tried explaining to the nurse with long red hair pulled back into a happy, high ponytail.

“You do know we’re here to help you, right?” she asked, straightened her pink scrub top and held out her hand to help me out of the bed.

“I know that. He just doesn’t want to believe it.”

“That’s why we’re going to check on him,” she smiled.

This close she smelled like strawberry cheesecake.

“All you people are making me hungry,” I grumbled and she side-eyed me. “What? Don’t look at me like that! You’re walking around smelling like food and expect me not to be hungry.”

“Once these tests clear you can have whatever you want to eat.”

“I could leave,” I said, my dragon’s anxieties rippling through my limbs.

“You could, but then you’d have to deal with the guards.”

“Why does everyone seem to think I’m afraid of the guards? I didn’t do anything wrong!” I growled. “Someone hacked up my ex and left part of him on my doorstep! Now, no one will tell me if he’s okay or not! I get it! I get it!” I threw my hands up in the air. “It’s patient privacy and all of that!”

A man in black scrubs walked in and asked the nurse if there was a problem. She shook her head and flashed him a smile.

“He’s nervous and a bit worked up. Nothing out of the ordinary for a concussion. He wants to know how the other victim is, but I cannot provide that information.”

The scrub wearing guard wasn’t fooling anyone.

He was a hospital guard, but a guard was a guard.

The hair cuts were all the same and the stance was unmistakable.

He left the room and returned a moment later with his phone.

He handed it to me. I almost asked who the hell he wanted me to call but he nodded silently at the screen.

CHEETAH SHIFTER IN CRITCIAL BUT STABLE CONDITION AFTER WILD ANIMAL ATTACK

I started to read the article but before I could the guard took his phone back and left again.

This time he didn’t come back. My dragon paced inside his inner sanctum still refusing to come out.

As he paced, I started to wonder if I did have a concussion.

Was that why everyone was acting so strangely?

Was it a me issue and not a them issue? If I had my phone I’d call someone – a friend from the salon where I used to work or anyone to see if the rest of the world was as strange as the inside of Moonscale Memorial Hospital.

“What are you going to do when I shift?” I asked the nurse.

“I’ll step out of the room and scan you. Then the doctor will look at it. I know there’s a lot of equipment in here but it’s for emergencies. We’re just ensuring that you aren’t hurt.”

“Why is everyone acting so strange?” I asked.

“Because some people believe you or someone you paid conjured up the thing that attacked that cheetah,” she said, looking sheepish. “Not me. Not the magical medicine intern either. He was disappointed with the lack of spells attached to you.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to soothe my dragon. Crilus. I’d call Crilus if I had my phone. It was still on the kitchen table back home because grabbing the morning paper wasn’t normally a contact sport.

“What if something’s wrong with my dragon?” I asked her.

“Then we help him too,” she smiled. “It’s just a precaution.”

Sighing, I tried to soothe my dragon again. He was ready to eat whatever cat attacked Jon and caused me all this trouble.

“Can you have someone check on my mother?” I asked, trying to sound more put together than I felt. “She’s in remission from cancer – wing cancer – but still over does it.”

“The whole hospital knows your mother,” she grinned. “She’ll be well taken care of. Let’s make sure you’re okay so that you can start your day and maybe get out of your pajamas.”

Slowly, I walked over to the X and sat down on the floor.

It took almost ten minutes to relax enough for my dragon to come out.

He was big. Doctors always commented about how he was in the top percentile for omega dragons.

He was also a reddish-orange sunset color that became my favorite color as early as preschool.

Why shouldn’t I love the color of my dragon?

Why shouldn’t most of my stuff match me?

The scan took less than five minutes, but it took another hour to convince my dragon to surrender control. Eventually, the nurses came in with a strawberry cheesecake and let us eat it straight from the dish. That was enough to bribe him back into his inner sanctum.

Then I was put back in the roller bed and skated into an inpatient room where Mum waited for me.

She read a book with two women in corsets French kissing on the cover.

She shoved it back into her purse and ran across the room to hug me.

I hugged her, relieved that she hadn’t spent the entire time I was gone pestering the staff or getting herself worked up.

“Rozel and Crilus are on their way,” she whispered.

“You called Crilus?” I asked, switching over to our family link in case someone was listening in.

“He called me! Clarence went to his house demanding answers! He had nothing to do with it, of course, but it was a real shit show! I’ve told them that Rozel and I will be here while you’re questioned.

He tried to remind me that you are decades old, but I told him that I’d stop making the Sparkle My Balls eyeshadow pallet and let his mate know whose fault it is! ”

Medwin Moonscale didn’t have the same shinymania as his mate, but he did like his eyeshadows from time to time.

He mostly wore a neutral pallet that didn’t show up under most lighting but kept him looking fresh.

Mom and Clarence always spent their blissfully limited time together arguing.

They were both too bull-headed to ever actually be friends but they tried and failed to be civil over and over. It as funny to watch sometimes.

“Did they let you see Jon?” I asked, as the nurse wiggled the bed into the proper spot inside the room.

“Why would I ask to see him?” she sighed and shook her head.

I opened my mouth but didn’t press the issue. She’d get irritated enough when the questioning started. She needed to go home and have breakfast and…. I almost facepalmed. My dragon was ravenous because I never got to have my breakfast this morning. No wonder he didn’t want to play nice with anyone.

“I’ve ordered in a couple dozen pizzas. They weren’t sure the doctor would let you eat but I told them all that you’d eat the doctor soon if you didn’t get some real food in your belly.

You don’t have a brain injury. So, no surgery means you should eat.

The doctor can take it up with me if he has a problem with that. ”

I was grateful that moment held the questioners at bay until I devoured a few pizzas. She’d also called one of the dragonesses who worked with her forever or at least long enough to become her best friend to stop by the house and pick us both up some clothes.

“I spent long enough in my pajamas when I was dying,” she sighed, picking up another slice of mushroom, olive, and ham pizza.

She ate it in one bite and everything inside me glowed warm and happy.

One day her door would come. Probably before mine if the cycle of life and death played out as it often did but I got to keep her a little bit longer for now.

“Stop looking at me like that. You’re the patient this time, Nic,” she winked at me.

“Here. Have some more tea. You still look so pale. You’re not still worked up over him, are you, ducky?

He was so cruel to you. Bad acts have a way of circling back around and finding you.

He’s been bit on the ass and that’s that. ”

“He’s still a person.”

“He’s still a jackass. Losing a hand doesn’t give him a clean slate for what he’s done, and he’s probably done it to other people too,” she frowned.

Soon, the ‘Jon’ conversation was put on the backburner and the empty pizza boxes cleared away by the hospital staff.

The questions came in bouts. Detectives came and went from my hospital room as if I might suddenly remember that I did after all have the magic to summon a giant cat with canines that looked more like tusks than teeth.

The whole city was searching for the cat, but it seemed the beast had disappeared into thin air.

At my mother’s insistence the hospital agreed to keep me overnight for observation.

After she left one of the nurses who knew her well from her time in the hospital admitted to me that my mother confided in her that she’s worried that I fainted from something more than the shock of finding a severed paw on the stoop.

Sometimes cancers were genetic but after she fell ill, I had a genetics panel done and I didn’t carry that gene that almost always evolved into wing cancer.

Still, I got regular screenings just in case.

I wasn’t ready to run through my death door.

I wanted to stick around for as long as I could.

I wanted to fall in love even if my true-mate never wandered into my life.

I wanted to have kids. I wanted to jump out of a plane with a parachute and feel how it felt to freefall without my wings.

I wanted so many things, and I needed all my years to experience them.

With nothing much else to do, I texted with Crilus a little bit.

He had visited in between bouts of questioning but didn’t stay long because he had a small child at home who was dependent upon him for most of her food.

I double-checked with him that he hadn’t tied Jon to me for all eternity as he threatened to do when Jon refused to come clean about his intentions for our relationship.

He hadn’t. Of course, he hadn’t. Jon hadn’t gotten back in touch with me because of a spell.

He’d done that because he knew I was still a sucker and look where it’d gotten me.

I was in the hospital wishing I’d never met him because someone out there knew that I loved him once upon a time and wanted to take advantage of that for one reason or another.

“Not even love is safe anymore,” my dragon sighed and hid his head under his wing inside his inner sanctum.