Chapter 14

F or all that he'd felt they'd taken a step forward, it was also starting to feel like Gregori had backslid two steps.

A month in the United States. A month of trying to convince Salem they were meant to be together and their lives would fit together like the teeth of a zipper.

Gregori felt no closer to having his mate.

He knew Salem's stubbornness wasn't really stubbornness—it was a trauma response. Salem had given him enough pieces to put the overall picture together, and Gregori was pissed at all those other men who'd convinced him he wasn't worth the effort.

Even though Gregori knew the root cause, he felt almost helpless at times, unsure how to reach through the pain to Salem's heart. His frustration was mounting, his own heart hurting, because he couldn't claim his mate the way he wanted to.

Not to mention, he was battling his own suffocating wave of homesickness. The first couple of calls back to the clan with Ha Na had helped, but now he felt like it was a struggle just to keep the mask of optimism in place. If he let on for a second that he was having trouble, he was scared Rodrigo would order him back to Brazil.

But he couldn't leave his mate.

If he left and returned to Brazil without Salem, how was he supposed to hold his head up? Had any dragon in all their history failed to win their mate's heart? Putting aside his own battered pride, how was he supposed to go on without Salem? What would be the point of going home? How could he possibly live on another continent without Salem? Just the idea was heart-wrenching. No. No, no matter how bad things got, leaving would be so much worse.

At least he had the kids to distract him.

While he might not have been making any kind of grand headway with Salem, he was bringing lots of smiles to the children's wing of the hospital with his regular visits.

The little ones were easy to win over. They loved story time with him and playing games. Naturally, using the dragon as a jungle gym was everyone's favorite. The harder ones to win over were the teenagers. Too often, they'd spent most of their lives in and out of hospitals, leading them to be more jaded and withdrawn. They'd seen it all and had their hopes dashed time and time again.

But little by little, they'd started coming to see him as well, asking all kinds of questions about dragons and mages. They liked the small magic—snow falling in the playroom and roses made of ice. Jessica had pulled in a reluctant Hillary for the first couple of weeks, but Hillary was coming on her own now that Jessica had been released following her latest round of treatments.

Today had been three new books about dragons and a Candyland tournament that he lost at the very end. It had been a close one. But six-year-old Jason won it and got to wear the paper crown they'd made the day before. Cheers went up and laughter filled the playroom, allowing these very sick kids to forget for a little while exactly how sick they were.

"Well, I think my time is up for today," Gregori announced, and he pushed to his feet and dusted off his jeans. As expected, the cheering turned into cries for just five more minutes. Unfortunately, it was getting close to dinnertime. These kids needed to get back to their rooms for rest and he needed to run to the store to pick up a few things for dinner if he was going to have it done before Salem got off work.

"Come on! Make it snow!" someone called out, and others joined in immediately.

"Haven't you seen enough snow already?" He laughed. The city had been coated in yet another few centimeters last night, a fresh white layer covering the old dirt- and grime-filled snow.

"Nooooo!"

"All right! All right!" Gregori made a show of pulling the soft long sleeves of his sweater up his forearms. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them, smiling at all the little ones gathered around him, cheering and laughing.

With a deep breath, he tapped the power buried inside of him and tossed up his hands, willing the air at the top of the room to chill and snowflakes to fall.

Except nothing happened.

There was no tingle in his chest from the magic. No cold kiss of air as the power swept out of him. Just nothing.

His heart skipped and a knot tightened in his stomach. That had never happened before. For as long as he could remember, he'd never had his magic fail him. It was…odd.

"Come on! Make it snow! We wanna see snow!" The children's cries broke through his mild panic, and he sucked in another deep breath. Maybe he was just a little tired. That had to be it.

He pulled on the magic again and tossed his hand up, but still nothing. This was wrong and very weird. At least this time, there had been an odd twinge in his chest. Something was happening.

Closing his eyes, Gregori mentally poked at his very quiet dragon, reminding it they had kids to entertain. When he pushed his hands toward the ceiling this time, the magic rushed out of him like normal. He opened his eyes to see fat snowflakes lazily floating toward the floor, landing on the tops of heads and on little pink tongues as the kids danced around the room.

Gregori clung to his smile as he watched the kids playing in the snow for another minute while stuffing down the panic churning in his stomach. It was nothing. It had to be nothing. Just stress. The status of him and Salem was constantly on his mind and had to be interfering with his ability to use magic. That was probably all it was.

With one last wave goodbye to the kids, he stepped out of the room. As he left, the snowflakes slowed to a stop while the nurses wrangled the kids back to their rooms.

"You know, doctor, that's an interesting way of approaching the problem," purred a slimy sounding voice, followed by Salem's very warm chuckle.

"I don't know if it's interesting so much as common sense," Salem replied. Only it didn't sound like a brutal takedown of an idiot. No, it sounded just a little too warm and friendly.

Gregori spun on the balls of his feet, searching for the source of the voices, his own problems with magic long forgotten. Someone was flirting with his mate and that shit needed to be shut down immediately.

A quick scan of the main floor revealed Salem standing near the nurses' station in his white doctor's coat over a set of blue scrubs. His hair was a little messy from a long day of running his fingers through it, but there was none of the late-day fatigue in the smirk he directed at the guy leaning on the counter right next to him.

In fact, the weasel was way too close to Salem to begin with. Had he never heard of personal space? The only person allowed to stand so close to Salem was him.

"Medicine can only get a patient so far. Having a positive mindset has its own healing properties. But why do I feel like you already know this, Doctor Kentrup? I've seen you with your own patients, and you get them in a fit of giggles before they're brought into surgery," Salem continued, completely unaware Gregori stalked toward them.

"Well, you might not believe this, but it's not just the kids who find me entertaining," the blond with the tan even in the dead of winter continued. He smiled his perfect pearly white smile, looking like he should be an underwear model rather than a pediatrician. Gregori was more than happy to ruin his smile with a fist. "If you'd let me take you out to dinner, I could show you how amusing I can be."

"You want to try out your latest material on me?" Salem chuckled, and Gregori nearly ground his teeth into dust. Why wasn't Salem telling this jerk to take a hike?

"Well—"

"No," Gregori barked, cutting the man off as he came to stand so close to Salem that his chest bumped against his mate's back. He straightened to his full height, which gave him an enjoyable couple of inches to tower over the interloper.

Blondie blinked at him, rising from his lean to take a step away from him and Salem. "I'm sorry. Who?—"

"I'm Salem's mate. I'm guessing you haven't gotten the memo going around the hospital. He's not available. Shove off."

"Gregori!" Salem hissed, and the point of his elbow landed in the middle of Gregori's stomach, but he didn't notice it because his full attention was on the other man flirting with his mate. "You're being rude."

"It's not rude to apprise this man that he's making an ass of himself in front of you and the nurses," Gregori bit out. He narrowed his eyes. "Move along. He's not for you."

The man's smile returned. "I think that's for Salem to decide."

The comment cut deeper than it should have and Gregori lost a bit of his steam. He was right, Salem should be the one deciding. He should be the one telling this asshole to fuck off, but he wasn't.

"Doctor Kentrup, I think we should continue this discussion another time," Salem interjected briskly, his tone shifting from warm and friendly to pure business.

The other doctor looked at Salem and gave a small nod before disappearing down the hall.

Salem whirled around and poked Gregori in the middle of his chest. "What the hell do you think you were doing? He was a colleague and this is my place of work. There's no room for your caveman nonsense here."

"He's right, Salem," Gregori snapped. Even as he spoke, he knew he should rein his anger in, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. This felt horribly like the straw that broke the camel's back and he couldn't grasp his usual patience no matter how hard he tried. "You need to decide. Whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, I'm your mate. More obviously, I'm the man you're living with. The man you're sleeping with. The decision shouldn't be too hard, but still you stood there flirting with him."

Salem gasped, his mouth hanging open for a full second, while his face turned bright red. "I wasn't flirting. We were just talking. Besides, I didn't ask for any of this. You can go back to Brazil anytime you want."

His mate spun around and marched down the hall.

"You might not have asked for this, but I'm still your mate," Gregori growled at Salem's retreating back.