Page 8 of Sweethearts and Savages
I flushed. And then realized I was in a metal box with an Alpha. My whole body went taut, like the puppet master had pulled on my strings. Except anxiety was what made me a marionette.
Luckily, the doors opened just then, and I nearly ran out. Bohdie frowned, but didn’t say anything as he followed me out.
“Do you know who I see about this?”
“That would be me.”
I spun around and Stacey was there. She looked at me with her big, dark eyes that made my chest feel full. Quickly on the heels of that feeling, was guilt.
Three years ago, I’d crushed her heart. She never said it, but after she kissed me, and then after what happened in the bathrooms, I’d pulled into myself. If I saw her in the halls, I went the other way, because what did I say to her?
I liked your kiss but I’m an Omega? I liked your kiss, but I don’t want to think about it because it happened on the second worst day of my life and I want to forget that day altogether. I liked your kiss, but I think you’re mistaking kindness for something more?
So I was a chickenshit, and I ghosted her. And for that, the guilt rode me hard.
Stacey looked at me, her eyes doing a quick sweep of my body, my face, and I knew she was cataloguing me. That was just what she did. Goddess, she was so beautiful though. Her hair was loose and sprung up in caramel curls around her head, and her eyelashes were so long and thick she didn’t need mascara. She wasn’t much taller than me, but her body was curvy and strong, in an entirely human way. Shifters didn’t get those truly soft curves. And her lips...
“Hello Enit.”
I snapped my eyes to hers and gave her a soft smile. “Hey Stace. This is Bohdie.”
She nodded. “Lion shifter, from the Black Mountain Pride.” Bohdie raised his eyebrows, then winced as it tugged at the wound on his face. “You are going to need stitches. Come through to the treatment room.”
“Is my doctor supposed to be a human that can’t be more than what, fourteen?” he whispered to me and I shook my head.
“She’s seventeen. By the time she was fourteen, she’d completed her Doctor of Medicine and a PhD in Molecular Biology. She could probably reconstruct you from parts if you needed it.”
“Holy shit,” Bohdie whispered, and when Stacey pointed to a chair, he willingly obeyed.
She pulled on gloves and poked at his wound. “Blunt force trauma. Three stitches should be enough. You are a full-blooded lion shifter; your natural biology will take care of this and the stitches will just be subsumed by your epidermis. Best to stem the bleeding and aid in the healing.”
She quickly prepped what she needed, gripped his skin between her fingers and applied the stitches with ease. “What hit you?” she asked, not conversationally, because Stacey didn’t do small talk. More likely, she was cataloguing his injuries, so that if she ever saw it again, she’d automatically know what it was.
“Baseball bat.”
She frowned. “That wouldn’t have sustained a wound of this magnitude.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “It does when it has an angry Alpha on the other end of it.”
Stacey’s eyes slid to mine, and she lifted her own brow. Yeah, I didn’t need to be a genius to know that the Alpha on the other end of the bat had been Christopher.
I shook my head, dragging my lip between my teeth and gnawing at it. “I’m so sorry.”
“He’s just protective,” Bohdie said soothingly.
Stacey snorted. “Overly so, but I guess he is also dealing with the emotional blowback of the events of three years ago.”
My breath stalled in my lungs. “Stacey…” I warned.
But I should have known that I’d have to be more direct. Stacey didn’t understand tonal cues. “Enit was attacked in the women's bathroom by an Alpha,” she continued as she applied the last bandage.
“Stacey, stop,” I said sharply, and her gaze whipped up to mine. She frowned, as she looked at my face, judging my expression from her mental catalogue.
She tilted her head slightly. “I didn’t realize it was a secret.”
I wanted to run away, but before I could, the deep rumbling snarl emitting from Bohdie’s chest had us both glancing his way. His eyes had gone completely golden, his lion so close to the surface that I knew a change was imminent.
“Stacey, please get behind me,” I said, working hard to keep my voice even. She looked like she was about to protest, so I dragged my gaze from Bohdie. “Stacey, please,” I whined.
