We might have all continued to stand there in shocked silence if not for Tu who turned to Alisha and said, “Damn! So I guess those Vikings of yours ain’t quite as accepting as you claimed in your book.”
Alisha throws her sister an irritated look, “Yes, Tu, we should discount their comparatively open attitudes about divorce, homosexuality, and acceptance of other cultures because they’ve apparently banished one wolf-bound shifter to another time.”#p#分页标题#e#
Tu shrugs off her sister’s academic admonishment. “Just sayin’ it’s kinda cold, yeah.”
Alisha shakes her head, “For all we know, they didn’t banish him at all but used a gate spell to send him here because he was mortally wounded. Have you even read my account of the Chloe story—?”
“Girls! Girls!” Uncle Tikaani says, cutting them off with the weary resignation of a father who’s had to break up too many of these arguments.
“Maybe you should go in with Dr. Leesma, Alisha,” he says to his middle daughter. “And Tu, you probably don’t want to hang out around here, right?”
That’s when another shadow falls over the conversation. And I remember about the baby Tu lost a few years before she and Grady mated. Probably right here in this same clinic.
“Yeah, I think I’ll get going,” Tu answers, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “I mean, Grady has Rafe in there with him. And he knows how to sign.”
“Yes, he does,” Janelle agrees, smoothly stepping in and putting an arm around Tu’s shoulder. “I’ll go home with you. We should get poor Olafr some clothes. He looks to be about Mag’s size...”
“All over?” Tu asks, rallying with an eyebrow-waggling grin. “Because if that’s the case, you go Janelle!”
They leave, Janelle’s embarrassed laugh tinkling in the night. And everybody here is probably expecting me to follow. Which I really should, given how much work I have waiting for me back at the house, but…
I can’t bring myself to leave. Even after Janelle and Tu have disappeared over the slight rise leading to the kingdom house’s large backyard. For some reason, I feel like I need to go in there and be with him. Even though the only experience I have with arrows is deciding they’d be too much of a coding bitch to program into Viking Shifters.
Which is silly, I know. He’s wolf-bound. Most likely only in human form because of the arrow. But the way he looked at me…
He was confused, I tell myself with a shake of my head. Who knows what circumstances led him to this era? Wolves of old weren’t nearly as enlightened as we are now. Maybe an illness struck his village and they decided to banish him in order to ward off bad luck or something like that. Alisha has a shit ton of stories about her father’s mostly Inuit state pack doing similar things to any wolf who was different back in the day. That had to be it. Because it couldn’t be the other alternative.
That he had come here to seek his fated mate. And she happened to be me. I doubt wolf-bound shifters are even capable of…those kinds of feelings.
“Yeah, you should go in there and be with him,” I say, glancing at Alisha. “He knows you. And he might be scared when he comes to.”
“That’s true,” Alisha answers.
And I’m about to force myself to turn around and head my silly ass on back to the house when it happens.
Another flash in the distance. This one just as brilliant as the first, and coming from the exact same place.
11
Okay, so somehow I end up making my way into the clinic after everyone else scatters. Grady, Mag, and Rafe head back up the mountain to find out what the hell is going on, and Alisha stays outside the clinic with Uncle Tikaani. Totally back in Alaska Princess mode as they try to calm down the new, but much more insistent batch of kingdom wolves who’ve come to inquire about the second flash.
I follow an ominous whirring sound through the tiny lobby and find Dr. Leesma standing behind Olafr, who’s propped up on his right side. The doctor is using what looks like an electric medical bone saw to cut off some of the arrow shaft protruding from his patient’s back.#p#分页标题#e#
“Good, they sent me someone to assist,” Dr. Leesma says, when he sees me in the doorway. “Stand there in front of him. Make sure he doesn’t fall forward.”
I do as he says, watching with wide-eyed horror as he switches over to a small knife and begins cutting away at the skin surrounding the partially embedded arrowhead. I can’t see much from my current position but a small puddle of blood begins to form on the floor beneath one side of the table. Eventually, the doctor grabs what appears to be a pair of needle-nosed pliers, latches them on to what remains of the shaft, and with one slippered foot braced against the side of the table, yanks the arrowhead out in a quick jerk.