Grayslake: Furrever Yours (Kindle Worlds Novella)

Grayslake: Furrever Yours

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Nurse’s aide Heather Appleby thought she’d seen it all on her late-night shift at Grayslake Memorial Hospital. Nailgun accidents. Sex romps gone wrong. People inserting things in unspeakable places. Then one night, a battered, unconscious girl is carried into the E.R. – and turns into a wolf right in front of Heather. Next thing she knows, Knox Carlson, the sexy, growly beast of a deputy who’s always ignored her, is sniffing around – and staking his claim on the curvy human.

Knox Carlson is an Alpha werewolf, and the first time he scented Heather, he knew she was his with a capital H,I,S. But she’s human, so their mating can never be – until he’s called in to investigate the disappearance of a wolf shifter female who’s run out on her arranged marriage. Now that Heather has learned the secret of shifters, he’ll have to claim her as his own or let her be put down – and he’ll take on every shifter in Georgia before he lets that happen.

FOR GRAYSLAKE FANS: This book can be read as a standalone. It is set a few weeks after the events that take place in the first book in Celia Kyle’s Grayslake series.

“Oh, my God, that poor cucumber,” R.N. Amelia Soldheim said in horror, looking at the offending vegetable right before she dropped it into the bright-red biohazard bin. She carefully peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the trash. “The places it’s been. The things it’s seen.”

“What about poor me? I can never unsee that.” Heather Appleby, nurse’s aide, grimaced as she glanced over at Vern Underhill, who lay face down on the gurney in Room 12 of the Grayslake Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, pale butt hanging out, pants bunched around his ankles. He was completely unashamed and leafing through a magazine now that the vegetable had been extracted from the place where it was never meant to be.

She’d heard Allen, one of the other nurses, mutter, “Stupid hyena, not
again
,” as Vern was wheeled into the E.R. by the paramedics. That was an interesting way to describe him. He did have a weird laugh.

Heather walked over to the sink and washed her hands for a third time, just on principle. After several years of working first as an E.M.T. and now in the E.R., she shouldn’t be surprised at the things human beings did to themselves. But she was. Especially on the overnight shift – people’s I.Q.s seemed to drop about twenty points when midnight came and went.

“Vern, I seriously do not want to see your flabby butt, or any part of you, in my E.R. ever again,” Amelia snapped at her patient.

“Kin you get me a co-cola?” he drawled, lazily flipping the magazine’s pages.

“Can you bite me?” Amelia scowled at him. “Don’t answer that. You do not want to get on my bad side right now.”

The curtain was yanked aside, and their nurse manager for the evening, Kerry, stuck her head into the room. Kerry was in her fifties, with brown hair shot through with gray, yanked back into a severe bun. She worked a ton of overtime in the understaffed E.R., and was famous for her unflappable nature and the fact that her face only bore one expression: annoyed. “Are you two about finished in here?”

“Hey, Kerry, do you want some salad?” Amelia said wickedly.

“Amelia. You are evil and will burn for your sins.” Heather punched her friend on the arm.

Kerry looked at Amelia with skepticism. “What kind of salad?”

“Biohazard bin salad.” Amelia doubled over in a gale of laughter.

Vern flicked a glance of annoyance at them and went back to his magazine.

“The answer to that question will always be no,” Kerry said, without the slightest flicker of expression, and withdrew from the room.

A call from the direction of the ambulance bay made them both snap to attention.

“Incoming!”

“Someday I will make her crack a smile,” Amelia vowed as she hurried out of the room towards the ambulance bay.

“Twenty bucks says never,” Heather said, following on Amelia’s heels as the E.R.’s automatic doors swooshed open.

“You’re on. Whoever makes her smile first wins.”

After the newest patient, a drug addict who’d overdosed, was taken care of, there was a brief lull in the storm. It was 3 a.m., and apparently the crazies had decided that the E.R. staff could take five minutes to pee and gulp down some vending machine food. Very thoughtful of them, Heather mused as she leaned on the counter and yawned.

Then she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the reflective doors and grimaced. Ugh. Her chestnut hair always started out smooth and shiny at the beginning of her shift, and then exploded into frizzy tendrils that made her look like Medusa. Her nurse’s scrubs were horribly unflattering to the female figure, especially to a full-figured girl like her; she looked like a light-blue apple.

“Are you looking at your reflection? Here? Why would you do that to yourself?” Amelia wondered.

“Apparently I’m a masochist at heart.” Heather hid a yawn behind her hand and leaned on the counter.

“No, that’s Vern.” Amelia giggled wickedly. Then she glanced at the E.R. door as it opened.

“Loverboy is here,” she said, and Heather felt the familiar mix of tension and arousal flood her body even before she laid eyes on him. Her skin went goose-pebbly and her heartbeat sped up.

“Loverboy” – his real name was Sheriff Knox Carlson, from Sandy Creek, a county which bordered Grayslake. Burly and surly was the best way Heather could describe the sheriff.

She’d known him for about a year, technically – she’d met him at the scene of a flipped-over vehicle when she was working as an E.M.T. in north Georgia the previous summer. He’d been on vacation, driving by the scene, and had stopped to help. Fortunately, since all the people in the SUV were wearing their seatbelts, no-one had been seriously injured. Knox had proven to be freakishly strong, when he ripped open the door of the upside-down car and helped the occupants crawl out one by one.

After everyone had climbed out and was standing by the side of the road, he had walked up to the ambulance and his eyes had met Heather’s.

She’d never forget that weird moment. He’d given her the strangest look. And Heather could have sworn that he’d sniffed at the air when he thought she wasn’t looking – and then looked disappointed, which was baffling. She bathed. She used deodorant. She brushed her teeth. What the hell? She’d even asked the other E.M.T.s she’d been working with that day, and they’d sworn up and down that she smelled like a bed of roses.

Her reaction had been the opposite. The second she’d laid eyes on him, she’d thought –
yummy
. Broad shoulders, dark hair, eyes the color of whisky. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. He made her heart pound in her chest and her nether regions tingle in a way she’d never felt before. She’d walked up and introduced herself to him, which had been a bold move for her, but he’d just nodded politely and asked if they needed any more help.

She’d felt a sharp twist of disappointment when he’d left the scene without saying goodbye or making any effort to talk to her. But hey, she was used to it. When it came to social situations, especially involving guys, men’s eyes bounced right over her and lighted on the prettier, bubblier, more confident girls.

A couple of months later, when she’d moved to Grayslake to go to nursing school on a scholarship, she’d been surprised to find that he lived and worked in the next county over, and he frequently stopped by the hospital. But it didn’t help – he always acted weird and distant when he was around her.

“So are you going to go talk to him?” Amelia nudged her.

“You mean am I going to go get the brush-off from him again? I wish I could, but I have urgent business anywhere else in the universe,” Heather said, and power-walked off with one regretful glance back at Knox.

So, so hot.

So, so uninterested.

She hurried to the bathroom, even though she didn’t need to go. Why was the sheriff here? she wondered. He’d walked in alone, not bringing in a prisoner or accident victim who needed treatment.

When she came back out a few minutes later, he was gone.

Amelia handed her a cup of coffee and a pastry. “Courtesy of Sheriff Carlson.”

Heather glanced around; several other nurses, including Amelia, were drinking coffee from the Koffee Klatsch as well. They were also digging enthusiastically into a box of pastries. The Koffee Klatsch was like their second home. It was a twenty-four-hour coffee and donut shop located half a block from the hospital.

“Yeah, yeah, he brought coffee and pastry for everyone, but he specifically said to make sure that you got some. And then he said, and I quote, ‘She doing okay?’” Amelia paused for dramatic effect and looked at Heather. “He didn’t ask that about anyone else.”

“Amelia, I appreciate it, but let’s be real here,” Heather sighed, shaking her head. She took a big swig of coffee. Perfect. On the side of the cup it said “milk, 4 sugars”. How had Knox known how she took her coffee? “Either he’s married or dating, or he’s just not interested. I have tried to talk to him a few times, you know. He always acts like I have the bubonic plague and runs for the door.”

Amelia bit into her cherry Danish. “He’s not married; I Googled it.”

“You what?” Heather said, horrified.

Amelia set her pastry down and stared at Heather. “You mean you didn’t?”

“Good heavens, no. It never occurred to me.” She drained the rest of her coffee and tossed the empty cup in the trash. “Okay, if it had occurred to me, I would have Googled it,” she admitted.

“And I asked around with people who live in Sugar Creek. He’s not dating anyone, and he refuses to let anyone fix him up. He lives on a big property with his whole family, and I hear they’re really starting to pressure him to settle down, but he won’t.”

“Maybe he’s gay?”

Amelia shook her head reprovingly. “Heather. He likes you. Just ask him out and see what happens.”

“I can’t do that!” Heather said, scandalized. “If he said no, I’d have to change my name and enter the Federal Witness Protection Program to escape from my shame. Why was he even here tonight, anyway?”

“You know, he never said. He just came by and dropped the coffee and pastry off, walked to the back of the E.R., used the men’s room, came out again.”

“He left his own county to come by here? I’ve never seen him come here unless it was job-related,” Heather said. He would come by if he was transporting a prisoner who needed medical assistance, or investigating a drunk driver who’d been in his county, or interviewing a crime victim. But he didn’t leave Sugar Creek, especially while on duty, to swing by the hospital for social visits.

“You know, he did that that sniffing the air thing,” Amelia said in a lowered voice. “I was watching, because you told me how he did that when he first met you. It’s subtle, and I pretended I wasn’t watching him while I was sitting at the desk watching the security cameras. But he definitely did sniff at each area of the E.R. while he was here.”

“Very strange.”

A horrifying scream made them both jump.

“Damn Phil,” Amelia cursed under her breath. “He made me spill my coffee.” She began mopping up the counter with a napkin.

Crazy Phil was there again, with the D.T.’s, screaming and thrashing and yelling about werewolves. Poor guy’s brain was pickled. When they’d brought him in that night, he’d kept pulling out his I.V. and trying to punch people, so he’d had to be restrained with soft padded wrist cuffs known as Poseys, which were tied to his hospital bed.

A half hour passed by with no new admissions, and then one of the cleaning staff by the ambulance bay gave a shout. “Heads up!”

The latest arrival, it seemed, had not come by ambulance. One of the hospital nurses was cradling her in his arms as he raced through the door. “Saw her lying in the parking lot on the way back from the Koffee Klatsch,” he called out. “There was a car pulling out of the parking lot real fast.”

She was a skinny girl with long, dark-brown hair that was matted with blood. There was blood everywhere, bruises all over her arms. Handprint bruises where someone had gripped her with brutal force. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. Her lip was split, both her eyes were swollen and blackened.

They quickly laid her down on an empty bed.

Heather felt a wave of red-hot anger washing over her. She wanted to find whoever had done this to the young woman and give them the same treatment. Several times in a row. Until they died.

Then the emergency room radio crackled to life as the fire department called in a rollover with two critical injuries, ETA of five minutes.

The next half hour was a haze of mopping up spilled blood, running to restock supplies for the doctors, and more.

Finally Heather had time to go back and check on the girl. The doctor had already seen her, and ordered X-rays and a CAT scan, but the orderlies hadn’t had time to come get her yet because they were dealing with the car accident victims first.

The girl lay curled up on her side, semi-conscious and mumbling incoherently. Her face was still horribly swollen, but oddly enough, the swelling had gone down noticeably even in the short time she’d been there.

As Heather started to walk up to her, the girl’s body…changed. Her arms and legs rippled and darkened… No, the skin wasn’t getting darker – it was growing fur.

Heather strangled a scream and staggered back a step.

The girl kicked her blanket off and it fell on the floor. Her face appeared to melt and flow into something new – a wolf’s snout. Her ears lengthened and sharpened to points. Her legs bent and crooked and reformed themselves. A tail unfurled from her spine. Her clothing split as she shifted and changed, falling off her body.

Within a minute, the girl had turned into a wolf with blood-matted fur.

At Heather’s gasp, the girl jerked and the process reversed itself. The fur sank back under her skin, her ears shrank and rounded, limbs straightened, tail vanished…

The girl sat up, stark naked, covering herself with her hands.

Heather, her mind still whirling from shock, quickly grabbed a fresh pair of scrubs out of the bottom drawer of the room’s supply cabinet and helped the girl get dressed.