“This is Riley’s truck. He keeps a few sets of clothes in the back, Tyson, if you want them,” the man in the passenger seat says.
As if I care if I’m clothed. I care only about Ivy, in my arms, who no longer smells right, who smells like snake venom, like me, and only vaguely like she used to smell. She’s pale and trembling so hard with her ankle swollen to larger than my own ankle. I see purple marks forming on her calf. Those marks are from my fingers, from when I held her still and tried to suck the poison out. Fuck. I keep hurting her!
“Tyson? There are clothes –” he repeats.
I grunt to make him shut up.
“Ty?” she whimpers.
“Almost there, Only One. Almost there.” I press my lips to her forehead. Her burning hot forehead. Fuck.
I don’t know if we’re almost there. I don’t know if Cat will have medicine for Ivy and will be able to help her or not. I don’t know if these people mean me harm. I don’t think they do, but I spent my life with someone who I now know lied to me nearly every time he opened his fucking mouth.
I hate questioning my instinct. My instinct is what drives me. How do I proceed if I don’t know if I can trust it?
“Drive faster!” I demand.
The driver complies.
I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have gone. My scent warned any animal or shifter approaching the property and I assumed she’d cross the scent if she dared leave (which I’d hoped she wouldn’t) and it’d keep all from her, but I never counted on her wandering until she came upon mating venomous snakes who evidently bit before taking note of my warning scent. Perhaps my scent on her could’ve even been provocation.
My gut churns and acid bubbles up in my throat. We’re stopping at a grey concrete building beside a creek. Across the iron bridge over the creek is an entrance to an establishment with a small sign outside that reads Roxy’s. Several houses dot the creekside on both sides.
“We’re here,” the woman in the driver’s seat says and pushes the door open and then opens the back door. I slide out carefully cradling Ivy, whose ankle is even more swollen, whose skin is now verging on scorching hot.
I catch the scent of Cat before I’m done climbing out and she’s rushing toward the car with gloves on, two men flanking her with a cot between them. I step out with Ivy in my arms and head toward the door, ignoring the men with the cot. One gets too close, so I lunge and bare my teeth at him, resulting in his immediate submission. He cowers, showing me his throat.
“Follow me,” Cat says and leads us through a big room with several chairs and a desk. She crosses it into another room dominated by a bed with pendant lights overtop. Cabinets and countertops take up the perimeter of the room.
“Honey, I’m Catrina Savage. You can call me Cat if you like. What’s your name?” She’s leaned over my Ivy. “Set her down, Tyson, but let me elevate the end. We don’t want her prone right now.”
Ivy’s eyelashes flutter and her mouth moves but no sounds come out.
“What’s her name, Tyson?”
“Ivy Adeline Savage.”
Her eyes are gentle. “Tell me everything you know about what happened.”
She puts an instrument to Ivy’s forehead, which beeps. She looks at it and sets it down.
“She happened upon snakes mating. She was bit. I attempted to remove the poison with my mouth. Riley Savage said you could help. Her ankle is swelling more and more by the minute, she’s been trembling, and her body grows hotter by the second.”
Ivy’s eyelashes flutter and she reaches for Cat’s hand.
“Hi,” Ivy says.
Cat squeezes it. “Hi Sweetie. We’re gonna take care of you. Don’t fret. Do you know what color the snake that bit you was?”
“Gray and brownish gr-gray,” she mumbles. “And brown. And shaky sounds, rattly.”
Her body trembles again and I want to lash out and make Cat do something.
“Do you have allergies?”
Ivy doesn’t answer. Her lips part, but she just winces.
“Any allergies, Tyson?”
“I don’t know. Snake bites? Do something.”
“Ivy?” She jiggles Ivy’s cheek with her hand.
Ivy groans and her eyelashes flutter some more.
“Do something!” I bark.
“I’m about to,” she says calmly.
She has a voice that I might find soothing if I wasn’t feeling like something had to happen immediately to save my woman.
I pace back and forth in the room. The couple that brought me are in the other room that we entered into and they sit there, with eyes on me. I hear a door open and more voices assault my ears. They all smell like shifters, every one of them, though one, a female, has only a mild shifter aroma, as if a halfling. I don’t linger on that thought; I thrust my hands through my hair and a low growl rises from down deep in my bowels until it breaks past my lips. She has to survive this. She has to.