Old Loyalty, New Love by Calmes Mary

Author:Calmes, Mary [Calmes, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2013-12-12T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

PHYLLIS SEABORNE, who was going to medical school at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix, needed my blood to save her girlfriend. And she knew she needed it not because she was going to be a doctor, but because she was a jackal.

As I sat on the open tailgate of her pickup truck and let her draw a vial of my blood, I listened as she explained about Lara.

“I had to study the night she went out with friends,” she said softly as she withdrew the needle and pressed a cotton ball to the crook of my elbow. She had been so professional—pulling on a pair of latex gloves, swabbing the area with alcohol, being careful, tender, and causing no pain as she found my vein. “And then later on, I got a call from her friends saying they couldn’t find her, that they lost her at a club.”

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. I know you blame yourself.”

She lifted her head, her gaze meeting mine, and I could see tears welling. “But it felt like it. I mean, if I weren’t so busy all the time, I would have been there, and I would have never left her side. She’s my whole life.”

“Yes, but you’re going to be a doctor. She knows that. I bet it’s one of the things she loves most about you.”

She smiled through her tears. “It’s like you know her.”

“Tell me more,” I prodded gently.

She cleared her throat and sat back, breaking off the needle of the syringe in a plastic bucket, then putting the plunger piece in a sealed bag. “So no one knew where she was, and then it comes out that where I thought they were… they weren’t. Lara said they were going to go dancing out in Tempe, but they ended up in Desert Hills instead. They went to Sandstorm.”

“And you knew, because you’re a jackal, that Sandstorm is a place where shifters hang out.”

“Yeah. So I went by to see the owner, Mr. Garrison, and after he checks around with his people, he tells me that Lara’s never been in there.”

“But?”

“But I have a nose, right? And I know my girl’s scent; she’s been with me three years.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to my alpha, and he went to see Mr. Garrison with some of my other pack members, and guess what, lo and behold, Lara suddenly turns up.”

“And when you got her back, that’s when you found out she’d been bitten.”

She nodded quickly, tears running down her cheeks as I put an arm around her—the same one she’d taken blood from—and eased her close.

She snuggled into my shoulder, and I heard her taking deep breaths, trying to calm down.

“How did you know a seer’s blood could heal her?”

“I talked to my alpha.” She cried quietly, contained. “He explained what I already knew: the bite of a jackal can turn you from human to animal, but the bite of a seer—a born alpha—can heal and even reverse the change.

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