The Dragon King's Shaman

Diet Coke Break

Avery

There was a scream, a hollow piercing sound, and I jolted awake. I clutched the sheets, my body covered in sweat, heart pounding as I registered that the sound had emitted from my own throat. Closing off the scream with a gasp, silence descended around me. The dream dissolved fully, but the hint of pain remained. I scrambled to put on the bedroom light. Its brightness burned at my eyes for a second. I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down.

The small room at the hospital looked the same. I inhaled, and it smelled of bleach and the scent of the hospital, which wafted in. It grounded me. I had always felt safe here.

I tested my shaky legs and stood up. My t-shirt and shorts clung damply to my body. It was the fifth night in a row. I was fortunate if I got a single night off of nightmares in the last few weeks. It was as bad as when I’d first arrived here.

The shower water washed away my residual macabre thoughts, and when I emerged, the time read 4 am. I figured I would do some work. I pulled my damp covers off the bed, and a thud drew my eyes to the floor where the book I’d read last night laid splayed open face down.

Shifter Healing 101.

Not the medical text I ever imagined I’d be reading. As a human, I thought supernatural creatures were just fiction designed to entertain the masses. It turned out I wasn’t entirely human either, but if you told me I’d end up as a doctor to a pack of werewolves when I was doing my medical finals, I’d have laughed in your face.

Hurry up, you lazy b***h.

Prompted by my helpful inner voice, I moved through my morning routine like a zombie, my limbs heavy. It only took me half an hour. I never wore makeup, and my clothes were smart but functional, usually hidden below my white coat.

I sidled down to my office. The rest of the hospital was quiet in the early morning. Residual tension lurked in the corner of my awareness, and I peered at every shadow.

I became lost in my world of work as the sun crept up gradually. This morning there was a palpable absence of a dragon at the hospital entrance. Where was he? Why did I care?

Bloody mate bond, that was why. Making me feel things I didn’t want or need. It encouraged me to watch him train. That man had muscles on muscles, more than the human body should hold. And I should know; I dissected every muscle at medical school. Granted, the body we studied was a dead old lady, but still.

I held my breath. The way his muscles moved together, the interplay below his flawless skin, it was fascinating. What would they feel like under my fingers? My mouth watered.

I gripped the windowsill and huffed. Why was I looking at an empty training field?

My eye caught on the spot I’d seen him last. Remembering the beads of perspiration sliding down his back as he commanded the wolves, teaching his effortless fighting style.

“Argh!” I exhaled a breath.

Why was I thinking of him? He was a controlling man who took what he wanted. Shut that s**t down right now.

“Nothing to see here,” I muttered.

“Hey, don’t worry, show starts soon.” Alec startled me as he came sashaying into my office with two cans of diet coke in his hand.

I recovered and raised my eyebrows at him.

“Diet coke break!” He stuffed a can into my hand and peered out the window. “Oh goodie, here they come.”

He opened his can and watched the warriors filing onto the training grounds.

“I’ve barely started work yet, Alec. I can’t justify a break!”

“You’re always working. When do you ever leave the hospital, anyway?”

Hardly ever these days, especially since as I was avoiding a certain hospital-guarding dragon.

“I go to the packhouse… sometimes.”

“Sure.” Alec sounded unconvinced, his eyes on the field.

I’d only known Alec a few months, but at some point during that time, he decided my office offered a perfect vantage point over the training field to ‘maximise ogling’.

This was one of his ‘diet coke breaks’, the excuse he used for invading my office. He said it was like the classic advert, but instead of watching from the window of a skyscraper while construction workers drank cold drinks, we got to drink while the warriors fought.

I knew the real reason he came here. Alec couldn’t help spreading his unique brand of humour and light-heartedness when he recognised someone needed it. In another life, we’d have been best friends, but I now kept everyone at arm’s length, an inbuilt defence mechanism.

He whistled. “Irina’s got the broad swords out!”

Oh, great. Irina the Luna trained the warriors hard with full contact. I’d be stitching warriors back together for the rest of the day. As a pack doctor, the day was never dull. They certainly didn’t teach you half the stuff I’d seen here at human medical school.

“Great.”

“You don’t seem very enthusiastic this morning.” Alec leaned back against the window frame, sipping his drink, studying me with his intelligent eyes. “I think someone might miss a certain giant lizard?” He grinned.

I huffed, “Hardly.” I moved behind my desk, scraping papers together.

“Oh, the lady doth protest too much.” Alec clasped his chest dramatically while grinning. “Listen, I’d keep my brother in the sin-bin too, goddess knows he needs someone to take him down a peg or two, but I detect more than just this alleged dislike you keep telling me about.”

“Then your detective skills need some work.” I reached for the charts stacked on my desk.

I faltered as I spotted Alec starting forward in my peripheral vision. I recoiled back on reflex, and he hesitated. He never called me out on my jumpiness; he just slowed his movements. Reaching over, he snagged a book off my desk. I stiffened, and my stomach lurched.

“The Science of the Mate Bond,” he read aloud.

“That’s just background reading for my patients!” I tried to snatch it from his hand, but he stepped back.

“Mm-hmm.” He flipped the book open. “There're passages highlighted with cute little sticky arrows here. Very dedicated to your patients, Dr. Jones.”

I crossed my arms and levelled him with a severe look. “I am a thorough clinician.”

He grinned at me and threw the book back onto my desk.

“Why don’t you talk to him?” He lounged back against the window frame.

I paused. “I have nothing to say.”

“I sincerely doubt that!” Alec said.

I pursed my lips. “Go back to ogling the warriors.”

“It’s become boring.” He pushed off the wall and plopped down in my visitor’s chair.

“What do you want to do?”

He levelled me with a stare. “To talk about your mate.”

No. I stepped back from the desk as my gut tightened.

I cleared my throat. “Speaking of, where are your mates?”

He winced. “Not sure.” He jumped to his feet, glancing out at the field. “Listen, I better be heading off. It looks like Irina is creating plenty of work for you down there.”

I felt bad for driving him away. I didn’t involve myself in the pack business much, but even I knew Alec and his mates were having trouble. But I’d been unable to bear him prodding me to talk about that damn dragon. I’d been mean.

Whenever I thought about that dragon, my mind was a snarling mess. Anger at him for locking me up, for triggering these goddamn nightmares again, and, most of all, for inciting an entirely different set of unwanted feelings.

I took a deep breath and walked to the window. I observed the warriors and our luna for a few minutes. Irina was pregnant, but that didn’t seem to have slowed her down. I wonder if I’d been as strong as her, would I have fallen for his tricks? Would I have gotten away sooner? I swallowed past a lump and pushed those thoughts away.

The book Alec discarded caught my eye. It was a dry and unhelpful account of the ‘mystical’ mate bond. The only thing I’d gleaned from it was that being supernatural didn’t guarantee the mate bond worked any more than it did for humans.

“The mate bond might exist to bring two souls together, but attached to those souls are humans and, as such, the bond is subject to all the fragilities of the human mind.”

Presumably, if those fragilities were insurmountable, then it didn’t matter how strong the bond was. Like a control-freak dragon hell-bent on locking away his treasure, and a damaged, almost-human who’d vowed never to be imprisoned again.