He lost at that too.
Fucking loser.
We’ve never been this unified or powerful. We’re supposed to enter into talks with Moonshadow Pack and Goldbriar Pack. They’re both desperate to get in our good graces due to the money coming in from Red River Builds. At least that’s the case with Moonshadow. At the last meeting we had with them we got a clear picture of Moonshadow: they’re broke as hell. Their money was spent long ago living above their means and now they’re ready to do anything for quick cash. Any status they had is smoke and mirrors. They even offered up the Alpha’s daughter to Ronan as a bride. He turned them down flat. They tried to pawn her off on me to forge an alliance but I followed right after Ronan and declined the offer.
I’ve got no time for a mate. The pack comes first. I look at the omega walking beside me. My reasons for why I don’t have time for a mate feel thin all of a sudden and I know why.Cordelia. Ifrown and force myself to look away from her. She’s the bane of my fucking existence and the worst part is that I can’t run from her. Not really. Not with the Soul Tie.
It’s only a matter of time before nature kicks in and I’m fucked. Still, I’m not going to help it along. I pick up my pace and put distance between us. Cordelia doesn’t even seem to notice the distance. She’s quiet while I lead her to her rooms. Head down, eyes on the floor. I last about thirty seconds before I slow back down and walk alongside her while I take a mental inventory of the state of the Healer’s Rooms. Everything shouldbe in order. The rooms are nice, better than nice really with the new remodel Jo oversaw. She made sure we would be prepared to handle a growing pack. Bloodstone has been blessed with more than our fair share of new births and the new members that have joined us from other packs has become a steady stream. We won’t be done building in the valley for a while yet.
“You’ll want to be prepared. Not scrambling to meet the need.”
Jo delivered just about everyone in the past three generations and she’d pushed for us to renovate the Healer’s rooms entirely because she shared Ronan’s vision for the future of the pack. The Healer’s Rooms were the first rooms we completed when we started the renovations in the Keep. “A healthy pack is a happy pack” was Jo’s saying of choice and I half expect to hear her say it when we arrive at the Healer’s Rooms. She’d be happy Cordelia has returned to take her place. If she was here I have no doubt she’d take Cordelia under her wing as her apprentice.
Before long there would be two of them lecturing me about how a healthy pack is a happy pack.
I open the door for Cordelia and step out of the way so she can enter the room ahead of me. She hesitates, eyes scanning the hallway. I clock the movement before she forces it away and flashes me a quick smile. I make sure to give her plenty of room while she steps past me. There’s something not right about her. I might not have known Cordelia for a very long time, days at this point, but I’ve come to recognize when she’s off.
Right now she’s definitely off.
Her movements are jerky, steps quick and short like she’s not sure if someone will come up behind her and she’ll have to switch directions. She darts into the room like she thinks someone is going to swing at her.
What happened to her in Frostclaw?
My gut twists because I can tell it wasn’t good. I knew it wasn’t good before, just from the fact that it was Frostclaw. I know what their brutality looks like. We all do. What would it do to someone to have all of that ugly focused on them?
No one would have gotten out of that okay, but Cordelia seems more than okay. She’s skittish but open and trusting. That’s proof someone had her back in that pack. A healer would have some protection even if they weren’t liked. It’s not like the humans and their doctors bound together by the exchange of money. There’s not a formal school for healers to attend which makes healers hard to come by. Everything she knows was passed down to her carefully. In all those years of study they had to have grown to care for her. Even in the worst of it all Cordelia had one person in her corner. That’s the only thought that grounds me while watching the way Cordelia moves.
“Holy hells. This is seriously cool,” she says, bringing me back to the here and now. She turns in a circle and looks around the room with a bright smile on her beautiful face. The room is big and airy, windows line the far wall and overlook into the courtyard of the keep. The room has a massive curio cabinet fully stocked with herbs, each of them labeled painstakingly by Jo before the sickness took her. Two beds sit in the corner across from the curio cabinet and there’s a cord attached to a curtain there for Cordelia to use if she wants to have a bit more privacy for her patients.
A set of sinks sits in a marble countertop closest to the door for scrubbing up. Beside that there’s a wall of wooden drawers. Each of them holds instruments and equipment specifically designed by Jo. Some of it is for surgeries but there’s other devices created for making tinctures and preserving herbs. At the center of the room there’s a massive wooden table meant for making medicines, or the experiments Jo loved to conduct. Honest to Luna, none of us ever had an idea of what she wastinkering with until she was presenting us with a new salve or cure all tea. There’s a rolling display holding up a set of charts perfect for note taking or for going over the diagrams of plants Jo created during her lifetime as a healer.
To the right side of the room there's a set of doors where five more beds wait for patients along with a bathroom for easy access. Opposite of that there’s another door where a small nursery has been built. It can hold up to ten pups which is more than enough with the rate our pack is growing. I take a step back and lean against the wall to watch Cordelia run around the room in excitement. She rushes into the nursery and back out again before rushing over to the supply drawers with a happy clap.
Cordelia pulls open a drawer and gasps. “Who made this equipment? I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Jo did,” I tell her. She lets out a whistle while looking over the item she’s holding, a long skinny beaker that splits into two with a tub of mercury attached to the side of it. Gods knows what Jo was using that for.
“The pack’s healer,” Cordelia guesses and I nod.
“That’s right. She was our healer for fifty years. Delivered pretty much every shifter above the age of three in this pack.”
Cordelia gently places the contraption she’s holding back in the drawer and shuts it. “That means she delivered me,” she says with a quiet laugh.
“She did.”
“I wish I could have met her.” She looks around the room again and then moves towards the charts and flips through them with a shale of her head. “Her attention to detail…it’s beautiful. She must have been brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“She was brilliant. Definitely moon-touched at times but brilliant all the same.”
“I hope I can do her memory justice.”
I open my mouth to tell her that there’s no possible way she won’t bring honor to Jo’s name as our new healer but a knock at the door interrupts me.
“Why hello there, stranger.”
I don’t even have to look to know who it is that’s talking. There’s only one shifter that would greet me like that.
I cross my arms and lean back against the wall, eyes still on Cordelia. “Cassidy.”
