They always smell good.
Until they don’t.
I brush Pancake’s fur back, breathing deep. “I’ll fix this place,” I tell him. “I’ll do it myself. No bond. No mate. Only you and me.”
He lets out a faint, sleepy meow, as if to agree. And I pretend that’s enough.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Simon
The clinic smellslike antiseptic and too much lavender oil from the diffuser.
It’s not even seven a.m. and I’ve already sutured a chainsaw accident, confirmed a mild concussion in a high school linebacker, and listened to an eighty-year-old Omega complain about her heat suppressant giving her migraines. Normal stuff for a Wednesday in Fox Hollow.
Steady, clinical, predictable.
The way I like it.
I move through the halls—with my third cup of bitter coffee—like a ghost in navy scrubs. No one stops me. No one asks for small talk. This place runs on routine, and my reputation for being emotionally unavailable.
It’s not a secret. If someone wants gentle bedside manner, they see Becca, the nurse practitioner. If they want answers—fast, unflinching, and accurate—they see me.
I check the day’s follow-ups on my tablet, tap through labs, and make a note to remind Carter not to double-book the nine a.m. slot again. And that’s when I see her name.
Wren Aldridge.
Ten a.m. appointment. Follow-up from smoke inhalation.
For a moment, I stare at the name like it’s part of some experiment I forgot I volunteered for. It’s been a week. Just one week. But something in my chest does this strange flicker—like recognition crossed with dread.
I remember her in the exam room last time: barefoot, wide-eyed. Her scent lingered in the room long after she was gone.
I remember the slight rasp in her voice. The way her gaze settled across my chest when she spoke to Levi, not me.
And I remember the way it hit me afterward. Sharp. Disorienting.
Uncontrolled reactions like that are… dangerous. Unprofessional. Hormonal noise. I thought I had compartmentalized it.
Apparently not.
I fish the small silver flask of peppermint oil from my pocket, unscrew the lid, and take a slow inhale. It grounds me—clears my scent receptors, calms the irrational spike of tension in my limbs.
I’m fine. She’s a patient. I’ve seen hundreds like her. Thousands, maybe.
But none of them smelled like she did.
It’s ten a.m. on the dot when Becca pokes her head into my office. “Your follow-up’s here,” she says, with a little twitch of her brow that I don’t like.
I don’t ask who. I already know.
Wren’s presence hits the clinic like a shift in air pressure. Not loud or disruptive, just… altering. The kind of change that makes you aware of your own posture.
I hear her voice floating in from the front desk, low and warm. She’s laughing softly—an actual laugh, not the polite kind people give receptionists.
It scrapes across my nerves in the strangest way.
I push back from my desk and step out to the hallway just in time to see her being directed toward Room 2.
