Page 42 of Sanctuary
He stopped abruptly, his feet planting themselves on the floor in the middle of the hallway. A man in a white coat bumped into him from behind and brushed past him, muttering in irritation as he disappeared into the crowd. Where are they? Because there was at least two of them. And one--one was an omega. Is that good or bad?
Ha. Always bad.
Patton shook himself and sniffed more deeply, parting his lips to draw the scent over the sensitive organ in the roof of his mouth. The personal smells of the two shifters--no, three!--burst over the nerve endings in his mouth. Alpha, alpha, omega. One alpha's scent had a sharp undertone, like he'd been hurt or was sick.
Cautiously, Patton continued down the hall, heading for Ori. They'd have to leave--if he could smell the strangers, they could smell him too.
And he wasn't wearing his tags, legally required identification for a shifter outside walls.
It took everything he had not to run. Ori. He had to think about Ori and keeping Ori safe and not setting off any reactions in anyone about. All it would take would be one of the strange shifters to sound the alarm, to identify him as a shifter illegally outside walls, and they'd be done for. He felt the first trickle of sweat down his side as he pushed through the door into the emergency department and he let his strides lengthen just a little, until he could slip past the curtain around Ori's bed.
Ori wasn't alone.
A young human male in a dress shirt, no tie, corduroy pants and battered sneakers stood up when Patton appears. "Hello," he said and extended a hand. "You must be Patton." He waited patiently while Patton looked to Ori for an explanation.
"He's here to help us," Ori said and crooked his fingers to call Patton closer. "He's from... I forget the name of the group again." That last was directed at the young man.
"We're Hope's Home. The founder named it after her grandmother, because her door was always open to anyone who needed a helping hand. We take in youth who've been denied support by their families and help them get back on their feet again. I was just asking Ori about your situation at home."
Patton's heart jumped up into his throat and he shuffled himself away from the young man to get closer to the head of the bed. "Ori?" he said in a low voice.
"He's going to take us to Colorado," Ori said and reached for Patton's hand. "There's a place we can stay there, until my foot gets better. And he'll help us get our paperwork back. I told him about getting mugged," he finished in satisfaction. "He might be able to help us get to my grandma's too."
Patton's jaw hung open for a moment, then he snapped it shut. "Can we talk about this?"
The human glanced between them, his gaze sharp but not unkind, then stood. "I'll be over by the nurse's desk when you've had a chance to talk. Come find me and we'll get started."
Get started? At what? Getting caught by the humans? Patton nodded at him but didn't look him in the eye and waited with obvious impatience for him to leave. It was rude, he knew that, and he could see in Ori's face that Ori wasn't best pleased with him, but he needed the human gone so he could tell Ori what he'd smelled in the corridor.
"What's wrong with you, Pat?" Ori asked in a voice halfway to a hiss. "He's trying to help, and we could use it."
"He's human," Patton said back, as quiet as he could. He stuck his head around the curtain to make sure there was no one within hearing distance, then came back to Ori. "He's not our friend. His people are the ones that forced us inside the enclaves, remember? And look what happened when Jannalie found out what we are."
Ori went quiet at that and looked down at the blanket covering his legs. For a moment, Patton thought he'd really hurt Ori, that he'd done some permanent damage to their friendship and their love for each other. Until Ori, pinching the blanket up into little folds in random fashion, like he was trying to deal with the fidgets, said in a quiet, sad voice, "I know. And we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me." He sighed and there was a hint of tears in his voice. "He seemed nice."
"I'm sure he is." Patton pulled a rolling stool over by the bed and sat on it, leaning against the bed so he could lay his head on the pillow next to Ori's. "But how long do you think we can hide what we are? How long can we accept his help? There'll be another full moon soon, and we'll have to run."
"Yeah, I know." Ori tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. "I don't want the Lord and Lady to abandon us, not when we made it out of--" His voice broke off before he could say the word 'enclave', and Patton suffered a moment's guilt that Ori now felt he had to watch his language, even with Patton.
"I don't want to lose you." Patton reached out to stroke Ori's hair. "And there's something else."
Ori turned his head to stare at him, probably warned by the worry in Patton's voice. "What?"
"There's shifters here. I smelled them. And if I could smell them..."
"They could smell you," Ori finished softly. He closed his eyes for a moment and Patton could smell the exhaustion on him, even under the smell of the hospital and all the humans in the place. "So, we'd better go," Ori said and opened his eyes again. "Could you find me my other jeans in my bag? They cut these all the way up the front of them, right to the knee."
“I lost the bag in Jannalie’s car, you’ll have to wear a pair of mine.” Patton looked away from the dismay in Ori’s face and dug through his sack until he found the jean. He helped Ori sit up to change out of the ruined ones. He bundled them up into a little ball while Ori pulled the good ones up over his legs, and looked for a garbage can.
"Don't throw them out," Ori said and slipped down from the bed, good foot first, then the sore one. He swayed and hung on Patton's shoulder, his face gone white, then gray-tinged, then back to that sickly white again. "I'll sew them back up again later," he added faintly.
He didn't look good at all, and if Patton wasn't so worried about the other shifters finding them, he'd have picked Ori up and put him right back in the bed, humans around them or no. "I'll carry our bags," he said; it was the only thing he could do to help, other than carry Ori, but he couldn't carry both Ori and their supplies and they didn't dare leave the supplies behind.
Lysoon, he hoped Ori didn't collapse again.
Ori steadied himself against the side of the bed for a moment, tested his foot out, then pulled on the tube sticking out of the side of his wrist. "Ow," he said flatly when he pulled it out and grimaced at the spray of red-tinged fluid that ran out of it. "I'm making a mess."
"Don't worry about it. Let's get out of here before we're found." Patton shrugged on the backpacks and picked up their one remaining sack, tying it to the shoulder straps to leave his arms free in case Ori needed help. Ori watched him with a strange, inward expression and gratefully accepted the support of Patton's hand under his arm. The turned toward the curtain and stopped dead in their tracks.
