Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(102)

The nurse behind the computer looked up and smiled. Rhodes was one of the few males on the staff, and definitely a favorite at the clinic, the kind of guy who got along with everyone and was quick with the smiles and the hugs and the high fives.

“Hey, girlie, how you…” He frowned as she got closer to him, then pushed his chair back, putting space between them. “Er…hi.”

Frowning, she looked behind her, expecting to see a monster, given the way he shrank from her. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” His eyes were sharp. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Glad to come in and help. Where’s Catya?”

“Waiting for you in Havers’s office, I think she said.”

“I’ll head on back then.”

“Yeah. Cool.”

She noticed his mug was empty. “You want me to bring you a coffee when I’m done?”

“No, no,” he said quickly, holding both hands up. “I’m fine. Thanks. Really.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yup. Totally fine. Thanks.”

Ehlena walked off, feeling like an absolute leper. Usually she and Rhodes were pally-pally, but not tonight—

Oh, my God, she thought. Rehvenge had left his scent on her. That had to be it.

She turned around…but what could she say, really?

Hoping Rhodes was the only one who’d pick up on it, she hit the locker room to ditch her coat and headed off, waving to staff and patients along the way. When she got to Havers’s office, the door was open, the doctor sitting behind his desk, Catya in the chair with her back to the hall.

Ehlena knocked softly on the jamb. “Hi.”

Havers looked up, and Catya glanced over her shoulder. They both seemed positively ill.

“Come in,” the doctor said gruffly. “And shut the door.”

Ehlena’s heart started to beat fast as she did what he asked. There was an empty chair next to Catya, and she sat down because her knees were suddenly loose.

She’d been in this office a number of times, usually to remind the doctor to eat, because once he started in with patient charts he lost track of time. But this was not about him, was it.

There was a long silence, during which Havers’s pale eyes would not meet hers as he fiddled with the earpieces of his tortoiseshell glasses.

Catya was the one who spoke, and her voice was tight. “Last night, before I left, one of the security guards who had been monitoring all the camera feeds brought it to my attention that you were in the pharmacy. Alone. He said he saw you take some pills and leave with them. I looked at the tape and checked the relevant shelves and it was penicillin.”

“Why didn’t you just bring him in?” Havers said. “I would have seen Rehvenge again immediately.”

The moment that followed was like something in a TV soap, where the camera zoomed in on the face of a character: Ehlena felt as though everything pulled away from her, the office retreating into the far distance as she was abruptly spotlit and under microscopic scrutiny.

Questions rolled into her brain. Did she really think she was going to get away with what she’d done? She’d even known about the security cameras…and yet she hadn’t thought about that when she’d gone behind the pharmacist’s counter the night before.

Everything was going to change as the result of this. Her life, once a struggle, was going to become insupportable.

Destiny? No…stupidity.

How the hell could she have done this?

“I’ll resign,” she said roughly. “Effective tonight. I should never have done it…. I was worried about him, overwrought about Stephan, and I made a horrible judgment call. I’m deeply sorry.”

Neither Havers nor Catya said a thing, but they didn’t have to. It was all about trust, and she had violated theirs. As well as a shitload of patient safety regulations.

“I’ll clean out my locker. And leave immediately.”





THIRTY-THREE




Rehvenge didn’t get out to see his mother enough.

That was the thought that occurred to him as he pulled in front of the safe house he’d moved her into nearly a year ago. After the family mansion in Caldwell had been compromised by lessers, he’d gotten everyone out of that house and installed them at this Tudor mansion well south of town.

It had been the only thing good that had come of his sister’s abduction—well, that and the fact that Bella had found herself a male of worth in the Brother who’d rescued her. The thing was, with Rehv having taken his mother from the city when he had, she and her beloved doggen had escaped what the Lessening Society had done to the aristocracy over the summer.

Rehv parked the Bentley in front of the mansion, and before he got out of the car, the door to the house opened and his mother’s doggen stood in the light, huddled against the cold.

Rehv’s wingtips had slick soles, so he was very careful as he came around on the dusting of snow. “Is she okay?”

The doggen stared up at him, her eyes misting with tears. “It’s getting close to the time.”

Rehv came inside, closed the door, and refused to hear that. “Not possible.”

“I’m very sorry, sire.” The doggen took out a white handkerchief from the pocket of her gray uniform. “Very…sorry.”