Chapter Nineteen

Jack

Today was finally the day. I'd always known I wanted to do something with healing, and I went back and forth on what kind. Did I want to be a full-on healer, to focus on my passion, helping expectant parents? As a small boy, I even had a doctor set, like the human kids did. But then everything in my life turned to shit and I ended up a breeder, leaving all hopes for my future gone.

But now I had a home filled with people I loved and cared for and a purpose bigger than myself. No longer was I captive and alone, and no longer did my dreams need to be on hold. The desire to work with pregnant people had been itching at me for a long time, but I wasn't sure if it was feasible. I also wanted to be sure that whatever I did benefited the residents at both the house and the warehouse and hemmed and hawed over becoming a general practitioner.

My mate, my dear sweet mate, told me I should follow my dreams, to do what I had longed to do. He asked me if there was nothing else to consider, which would I choose and to go that direction. That had me finally giving myself permission to take the first step and reach out to the healer we used at the warehouse. He gave me a number, and that led to multiple phone calls.

Eventually I found what I believed to be a good fit—a local healer who was not only willing to take me on as an apprentice for their pregnant patients but excited to have me. I'd had to wait before starting, though, because I was not the best pregnant person. During the first few months, I lived in the bathroom. Then my stomach felt better, but my back hurt. After what felt like forever, I was feeling better and had energy. It was the perfect time to begin and also time to tell our friends.

I wasn't sure why I was holding back, probably fear. I'd seen so many pregnancies go wrong when I was held prisoner. Sure, the situation was as far from ideal as you could get, but still, it left an impression on me and had me not wanting to share our good news for fear of jinxing us. My mate didn't love the idea, wanting to shout it from the mountain tops, but he understood my worries.

Did they all know a baby was coming? Probably. I was small for my gestation age, but that had more to do with my long torso than the size of the baby. But even at my small size and with me wearing my mate's T-shirts, it was visible. I loved how they all respected my privacy.

Today was my official first day with the healer. We were going to figure out how everything would look going forward, and I couldn't be happier. Originally, the guys didn't want me driving alone, but they had work to do and we hadn't received any other messages or had any breaches in months. I promised to go straight there and back.

Bryant came with me, and we sang silly songs the entire way. He would laugh and laugh, and I inserted silly voices to his favorite ones. It made the trip fly by.

We pulled into the dirt driveway of the healer's little cabin in the woods on the side of the mountain. It looked like something out of a fairy-tale picture book.

"We're here." I helped Bryant out of his car seat, and we walked up to the porch where the healer, Saul, was waiting. He was old enough to be my grandfather and had a way of making me feel both welcome and safe with only a smile.

"Oh, you brought a helper today." The raccoon shifter waved at Bryant, who waved back with a smile.

"Come on in, and we'll have some tea and cookies I made. Would you like that?"

The cabin worked as both his office and his home, which was pretty common. It wasn't like you could get a healer's office in a strip mall. But, as common as this was, Saul was different than the healer I saw while living in the warehouse.

Unlike him, Saul was very old school. He was much less about modern medicine and more about the ways of old. Not that the other one was a full-on doctor, but he had more doctor vibes, and that wasn't what I was going for. I wanted to be in tune with my patients' shifter sides, and unfortunately, human medicine didn't take our beasts into consideration—you know, because they don't know about them.

We sat down at a small table, the walls filled with rows and rows of spices and tinctures, all on narrow built-in shelves. I wasn't sure how he found the one he was looking for, but I was confident I was going to learn his system and so much more.

"Would you like chocolate or strawberry?" Saul held up two cookies, and Bryant looked back and forth between them both.

"Both it is." Saul placed them on the plate, put it in front of my son, along with a travel cup, complete with lid and a straw, filled with milk.

Saul gave me a couple of cookies and tea before breaking out his binder. "This is going to make me look more organized than I am. Trust me."

Ten minutes in, I had to disagree with him. If that binder wasn't organized, I didn't know what was. We spent the next hour going through his plan for me and with each section of the notes we discussed, I got more and more excited. By the time we were ready to call it a day, we had a solid plan in place.

"There's one thing we haven't talked about. Money," I said.

"No, and we're not going to." Saul closed the book.

"That's not how this works." He was giving me so much of his time. Of course, he deserved to be compensated.

"Yes, it is, because you are young, my friend—you are helping those like my great-nephew." His eyes glistened, tears there at the ready. "It's too late to help him, but you're giving others a better future. One day, when there aren't little ears around, I'll tell you about him, okay?"

"Okay." It was the best I could come up with. I didn't want to make what was obviously a painful subject worse for him. We said our goodbyes, and he gave Bryant a wolf sticker for being so well behaved. It was perfect.

"Lesson number one: stickers make everybody happier." He was right. They did.

I got Bryant buckled in and started for home. About halfway there, the car started making a noise like there was a rock caught in the undercarriage. Then came the odor. I rolled down the windows to clear the air, but it only got worse, so I rolled them back up again.

"Okay, Bryant, Papa's gonna figure out what's wrong with the car and then we'll call Daddy, okay?" I loved that he'd taken to calling Aziz Daddy.

"Okay, Papa."

I pulled over, grabbed my phone to call my mate and see if he could come get us or if it was possibly still safe to drive the rest of the way home. Before I could unlock it, there was a knock on the window, and, when I turned to see who it was, my blood ran cold at the sinister smile staring back at me, his gun holster out for all to see.