Chapter Nine

Bronson

I visited the omega every day, watching him and wishing I had the ability to lend him the strength he needed to get well. The doctors, who by now assumed I was either his next of kin or his partner, although for some reason nobody asked, said he should pull through.

Once he woke up, he was very weak but perfectly able to manage his own medical decisions, so there was no need for me to give them any kind of formal paperwork or prove my relationship. Tate was happy to see me and treated me like he’d known me for decades instead of days.

I came in every morning for an hour or so before work, bringing him nourishing and tasty food from the café bakery near my home. Then I returned in the evening with more food and anecdotes from my day to share. Most of what I did was pretty boring for anyone outside the law world, but I managed to make it more colorful, very pleased and excited if I could get a laugh or smile from him.

We were both concerned about the fact that this was a human hospital, and eventually someone was going to figure out that he was not an average person with the anatomy that entailed. He also had a sketchy history in terms of paper trails and no insurance. Few if any shifters paid for such things. Nearly anything that went wrong with us could be healed by one simple thing.

A shift.

Our animals possessed healing powers that could only be used in their forms, so as long as Tate was too weak to make the change, he was no better than the average human recovering from traumatic injuries and neglect.

He was also worried about the circumstances that led to his accident. While in the hospital, he was probably all right, but when he got out, he faced the dangers that he’d barely begun to explain to me.

But every day he was a little better, and we were both watching and waiting for him to be strong enough to make the shift that would complete the healing process. Honestly, even with the worries, the time we spent together was the best hours I could remember. We talked about all sorts of things, from the weather to animals to growing up shifters in a human world. I brought him everything I thought he might like to eat and drink, although he protested.

We were biding our time until we could leave the human world and return to the real one.