Page 35 of Shifter's Homecoming

She rolled her eyes at him and gave him one last dirty look, then she rushed out. Trent listened hard and scented harder, catching just enough to know what was going on.

Rowan opened the door. Trent scented a human female on the other side of it. Rowan spoke softly, but the other female was loud. “The augur wants a triple batch,” she said.

The augur. Theaugur.The word finally registered in his brain.

In the Tranquility Crew had lived in, there had been an augur, which, as far as Trent could tell, meant the same thing aswitch. Crew said her counterpart in their world was Mrs. White, and neither one of them could be trusted, but Trent was willing to try anything at that point. If Smokey wouldn’t talk, maybe the augur would.

His leg throbbed in time with his heartbeat, reminding him that no matter how much he wanted tomoveon this, he was sitting tight for some time.

On the other side of the partition, his mate murmured something, then the female visitor said, “Fifteen minutes works. I’ll wait.”

Trent listened and scented as she came in and sat down. Trent held perfectly still and silent and just waited. He could almost feel Rowan silently begging him to stay quiet.

Fifteen minutes passed quickly while Rowan worked with the machinery in the room. Trent smelled chemicals mixing.

Something was bagged and handed over, and then the female left. The moment he sensed the door close behind her, Trent was up and out of the small room. His mate threw him a look of gratitude laced with irritation. He smiled at her. He couldn’t help it. She was beautiful when she was irritated. She was always beautiful.

She crossed the room, something that looked like money in her hands. She shoved it in one of her pockets and sat down at the corner desk. “Quit flashing that smile at me, Trent. It doesn’t work on me anymore.”

Trent gaped a little, he couldn’t help it. She liked his smile? But it didn’t “work on her anymore”?

Hehadto know what he had done— what the other Trent had done— but more than that, he had to know how tofixit. He wanted to hold his female in his arms.

Trent put the robe back on. He sat and waited for her, legs over the side of the bed, feet flat on the floor.

Rowan came in quietly, not looking at him. “Ok, let’s see this thing,” she said.

She carefully unwound the tape and gauze that surrounded the meaty part of his thigh. For once, Trent felt no pain. His mate’s presence was enough to lift any pain from him, body or soul.

When she finally pulled away the last covering, she gasped involuntarily. Trent only stared at the mess of his leg. How did a twisted, gaping injury like this heal without reconstructive surgery? It didn’t. He would have to shift to heal this, or be permanently disfigured.

He stared at it for a long time, until he realized his mate hadn’t moved. He looked up at her.

Her eyes were wide, her hands still covering her mouth.

“Rowan,” he said, softly.

Finally, she spoke, and tears spilled from her eyes at the same time. “Please tell me you are faking this, Trent. Please tell me you can shift.”

Trent shook his head slowly, not understanding what was going on. He wanted to take her hand. He wanted to make it better for her. He did not, he could not.

She shook her head back and forth slowly. “I’ll never take you back, Trent. You have to know that, right? It doesn’t matter. Even if you never heal, even if you couldn’t walk, I can’t take you back. You hurt me too badly.”

That feeling in Trent’s lungs, in his chest and solar plexus, it intensified. It expanded and weighed him down. He felt wetness on his cheek and realized he had spilled his own tear or two for the first time.

“I’ll fix it, Rowan,” he said, completely swept along in his desire to do that for her, unable to imagine that he couldn’t. He would die trying.

She shook her head again, and this time she looked stricken. “You can’t fix it. There’s no changing your basic nature.”

Oh Rhen, what did that idiot do? Cheat on her? Trent would kill him. Trent would find him in the afterlife, kill him again, and send him to the after-after life in a bag.

“I can though,” Trent said, knowing he would or die trying. “I’m sorry, I really am sorry.” He stopped himself from saying the rest of it.… for whatever it was I did.

She backed up. She dropped her hands. Her face went cold and disbelieving. Her expression was like a knife to his midsection.

Trent took some gauze off the cart nearby. He pressed it to the hole in his leg, ignoring the pain, thinking hard. He would try to make this right, he needed ideas, he needed plans and strategies, but first, he needed to know whatever his obviously-stupid-as-shit counterparthad done. But he could not ask.

Trent stole a look at his mate. She had picked up a clipboard from the cart and was scrawling notes on it, her expression tight.

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