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Troy sat in the other rocking chair and put the cooler by his feet. His left arm seemed to be functional, but he was moving it carefully.
“Did you eat?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
I got up, went inside, went downstairs to the kitchen, and grabbed a tray. Penderton generously provided barbecue, so I loaded a plate with brisket and smoked chicken, added a beef rib with about a pound of meat on it, a chunk of cheddar, and some fresh, crusty bread, and carried it back up to Troy.
He stared at the tray.
“Pledge of loyalty not required,” I told him.
He looked even more uncomfortable. “Thank you. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you, Consort.”
Ah. It was the fact that an alpha got up and fetched the food that was the problem. “I won’t tell anyone about it if you eat your food.”
“Yes, Consort.”
He set his notebook down and tore into his dinner.
I sat back in my chair.
When shapeshifters ate, they focused on the food completely. They didn’t talk, they didn’t socialize. They ate. Even their formal dinners, like Pack Thanksgiving, went totally silent for the first few minutes.
It took Troy about a quarter of an hour to finish devouring the barbecue. Once his plate was empty, he sat back, a small, contented smile on his face.
“I know all this stuff is weird and exciting, but you have to take care of yourself,” I told him.
He nodded. “Yes, because if I die, nobody in Wilmington would have any idea how to treat a wounded shapeshifter.”
“No, because if you die, you will be dead. And all of us will be very sad.”
He blinked.
“Things just didn’t go your way today,” Owen rumbled from his blanket, his eyes still closed. “First, you got your arm broken. Then the Consort had to bring you food. Now you are getting a lecture. It’s hard to be Troy today.”
“Don’t make me come over there,” Troy growled.
Owen opened his eyes. “And do what?”
Troy showed him his teeth.
“Stay where you are, and you’ll get to keep all of those.” Owen closed his eyes.
Hmm. When Nereda had treated me, she found a tip of the shapeshifter claw in one of my wounds. I reopened it and dislodged the claw through forced bleeding, and it broke her brain. I told her that it was similar to a shapeshifter pushing silver out of their body, and that shocked her even more. In her ten years as a field medic, she’d never treated a shapeshifter. She’d asked a lot of follow-up questions, some of which went beyond me so Curran had to answer.
Shapeshifter regeneration was off the charts. They walked off most wounds that would put a non-shapeshifter human into a hospital for a week. They were mostly impervious to infection, they treated blood loss as a joke, and it was said that if a shapeshifter was breathing by the end of the fight, they would live.
Unfortunately, shapeshifters also often fought enemies that inflicted catastrophic damage. Their lives were much more violent, which was why the Pack Keep in Atlanta had a first-rate hospital within it.
“I take it the guidance to avoid human medmages is still in effect?” I asked.
“Yes, Consort,” Troy said. “It has been a matter of concern to Pack medical staff for a while now.”
The thinking behind it was simple. If human medmages knew how to heal shapeshifters, they would better understand how to hurt them as well. Except that knowing how to injure shapeshifters didn’t require a medical degree. Every merc in the Guild knew that silver was toxic to them, and wolfsbane was widely available at herbal markets and pharmacies.
That policy accomplished nothing except to delay treatment until a shapeshifter could get to a Pack medic.
“Have you discussed your concerns with the Beast Lord?”
“Yes, Consort. We were told that this policy was put in place by the previous Beast Lord and the current Beast Lord sees no reason to change it.”
Shots fired.
My husband had a complicated childhood. His parents had taken him and his sister to live in the woods, trying to avoid shapeshifter politics. Eventually they were attacked by loups. Only Curran survived. He was rescued by Mahon, the Alpha of Clan Heavy, the Bear of Atlanta, who pushed Curran to become the Beast Lord when he was fifteen. A lot of my husband’s early policies were shaped by Mahon, who didn’t trust humans. Curran altered most of them, once he had started thinking for himself, but that particular one apparently didn’t get an overhaul before we retired, and Jim had chosen to leave it in place.
“Would you refuse to treat a non-shapeshifter patient, Troy?”
Green fire rolled over Troy’s irises. “I took an oath to apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required. The oath didn’t specify which sick.”
“I assume Nereda took the same oath?”
“Yes.”
“Good. From this moment, the avoidance guidelines do not apply to Wilmington. You have my permission to share whatever medical knowledge you find necessary with her and other medmages. We need to make sure that if a shapeshifter is hurt, they can access emergency medical care. And if Curran says anything to you about it, tell him that I ordered you to do it.”
