Page 36 of Feral
21
KITTEN
There was a knock at the front door of the Packhouse, but I wasn’t sure if I should open it. No one else was around, so even though it made my heart race, I answered it.
Tanner the vampire was on the other side, a goofy, lopsided grin on his face. “Kitten! Just the person I was looking for. Howya going?”
I shrugged. “Okay?”
His grin widened, showing off his immaculately white fangs. His eyes were friendly, but those fangs scared the hell out of me. No sooner had my heart rate risen than Corvin was there, standing right behind me.
Tanner quirked an eyebrow. “Alpha. How goes it?”
“It?”
“Life, love, you know? All the good shit.”
“Uh, it’s good, thanks.” I looked between the two Apex predators as they sized each other up.
Eventually, Tanner just shrugged. “I’m here to get that family history and a little bit of blood.” He held up his bag, and then frowned. “Ah, bloody hell. Forgot the doppler machine so we can check on your other Omega too. Kill two birds in one visit, you know?” He shoved his doctor bag at Corvin. “Hold this for me, mate? Won’t be a minute.”
He was gone in a flash, and literally forty-five seconds later, he was back with a handheld ultrasound machine tucked under his arm. He took back his bag from Corvin. “Best part of being a vamp, if you ask me. Would’ve loved to have superspeed during my hospital residency, but it might have been difficult with all the blood, you know?” he told me with a grin.
I blinked up at him slowly. So many words, and they somehow managed to run altogether with his accent. “Uh, yes?”
“Don’t worry, Omega. I’ve got better control now. Raine has total faith in me. She said so.”
I looked up at Corvin, who was frowning but I couldn’t tell if it was with worry or because he was as confused as I was. Tanner must have taken his silence as fear.
“I swear, this will only take a few minutes. The Alpha General put me in charge of this, and he’s a scary bastard. Your Pack is completely safe with me. I take my Hippocratic Oath seriously, even as a vampire. Do no harm.”
Shit, now we’d offended him. I elbowed Corvin, and my lover shook his head. “Sure, come in, Doc Tanner.”
He gave us another brilliant surfer boy smile. “Just Tanner will do.” He stepped into the house. “Nice place you’ve got. No wonder you snagged yourself a matching Omega pair.”
I scuttled ahead of them into the living room, sitting on the armchair in the corner. I worked on calming my heart rate. Tanner wasn’t a threat. No one in Maxton was a threat anymore. At least, theoretically.
Everyone else appeared from the other parts of the house, and I didn’t even protest when Cooper came over, picked me up and sat down on my chair, settling me on his lap with a low thrum.
Tanner greeted them all like they were old friends, and I was beginning to think that he was the vampire equivalent of a golden retriever. He pulled out a notebook from his satchel. “I’ll do a quick checkup soon just to make sure everything’s going okay, but first we might get down to the old family tree. Parents?”
I shrugged, my cheeks a little pink. “No idea. I was about three weeks old when Lorso found me on the border of Packlands.”
Tanner frowned as he scribbled. His handwriting was illegible. “No chance this Lorso could be a relation?”
I thought hard about it. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered, because what kind of person takes in a baby and keeps it a secret for years? Especially a Manix who was basically so ancient he’d become a thing of legend? But he’d never said anything, and I’d never asked. Deep in my soul, I didn’t think he was, though I couldn’t be sure.
So I shrugged. “It could be possible, I guess, but he never insinuated that we were related. The only time we ever spoke about it, he said he was hunting and thought I was an injured bobcat because I was wailing so hard. I was basically frozen, and he said I was so dirty and covered in filth that either I’d been out there for days or someone hadn’t taken good care of me.”
Tanner wrote it all out, his face not betraying any thoughts or feelings about my statement. However, despite the fact he knew my history, Cooper’s arms tightened around me, and his thrumming got more intense, like he could comfort that abandoned child retroactively.
It was fine. I didn’t have any residual boohoos about it. I’d had a happy—if unconventional—childhood running wild. It might have seemed like a terrible fate to Corvin and Beckett, but I hadn’t known anything different. I’d been free in a way very few people ever got to be.
“Considering the fact that your Pack is expecting cubs, if it’s permissible, I might draw blood from all of you just to put into my database. I might get some histories from you guys too, though my predecessor was an excellent note taker, so they’re pretty up to date.”
The scent of sadness flooded through the room at the thought of Doc, and I snuggled my nose comfortingly into Cooper’s neck. I watched as Darius rubbed his still flat stomach, lost in his thoughts.
Clearing my throat, I sat up. “Okay.” I held out my arm. “I’ll go first.”
