Page 22 of Primal Mirror

Remi launched another attack.

Finn kicked forest floor debris right up into his face before spraying him with a disgusting smelling spray that he’d pulled from his back jeans pocket. Because with Finn, they often trained as if he’d been attacked while at work in the infirmary. Today, that meant jeans and an old blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

And the foul spray.

Fuck, that was rank.

“What the hell?” Remi choked on the stink, his forearm raised to his face in a vain attempt at blocking it.

Finn backed off, coughing—while somehow grinning at the same time, his leopard a glow in the green of his eyes. “You and Angel both told me to play to my strengths. Lots of toxic stuff to throw and spray in an infirmary. Don’t worry, this one is just stinky.”

Healers. Smart and smartasses with it.

His leopard proud even as it wanted to bring down curses on Finn’s smart head, Remi held up his hands. “I surrender. Let’s get the hell away before that stench sinks into our skin.”

A smug Finn put away his dastardly concoction and did a graceful bow. “I accept your defeat.” His face broke out into another huge grin as he rose up from the bow. “I also plan to tell everyone.”

Remi growled without any real threat in it; it was good to see Finn happy. “I’m going to run up to the cabin again today,” he said after they escaped the biohazard area. “Check she’s doing all right.”

Finn pressed his lips together. “To be honest,” he said, hands on his hips, “I’d feel better if you did. She must have a senior M-Psy on speed dial, but that won’t help if she trips and falls and knocks herself unconscious.”

“Great, thanks for that image.” Which would now haunt him every hour that Auden was in that remote cabin. It didn’t matter that he barely knew her; protectiveness was built into his nature.

She was happy the last time she wore that watch. No pain, just comfort at being with you, at lying by the window in the sun, with the forest just outside.

His chest clenched. Because yeah, there was a little of the personal between them. Whatever had been wrong with Auden that first day, whether she was lying or not about the brain injury, she’d given him a gift beyond price when she’d spoken of his mother’s last days, leaving him with an image of a leopard at peace, happy and warm.

He owed her in a way he’d never forget.

“Welcome to the inside of a healer’s brain.” Finn’s voice brought him back to the now. “I am ever haunted by thoughts of future calamity.”

A clear ping of sound.

Glancing down, Finn grimaced at the message that had popped up on the mobile comm he never took off; the pack had funded that because, quite frankly, he needed it given their limited numbers and the youthful skew of their population.

“Talking of which,” the healer muttered, “possible broken ribs in a group of juveniles who decided they wanted to practice sparring without oversight. They’re about a thirty-minute run away.”

“How serious? You need me?” Remi was tied to Finn by a bond of blood, the act an intense and private one between alpha and healer that made Finn one of Remi’s in a way that had left Finn in tears for the closing of a circle that had been open too long in his life. It also meant Finn could pull the pack’s energy from Remi during a complicated healing.

But Finn shook his head. “At least one of the juveniles has completed the first aid course and thinks it might just be heavy bruising, but he isn’t comfortable making that call.” He changed direction toward the infirmary, no doubt to grab his medical kit, his chest reverberating with his leopard’s grumble. “How our young survive to adulthood, I have no idea.”

Remi grabbed the back of the healer’s neck without aggression, squeezed. “A combination of dumb luck and strong changeling bones.”

Finn’s cat continued to grumble, but he didn’t shake off Remi’s touch. Which Remi had initiated on purpose—because Finn was getting grumpier with each day that passed and contact with his alpha would calm his cat.

Touch was the cornerstone of the relationships in a pack.

Remi knew the reason behind Finn’s behavior. Healers loved family, loved children, and while being the healer of a small and close pack like RainFire helped feed some of that need, what Finn really needed was a long-term lover or mate.

That was simply how healers worked.

They liked to pair bond and often did so earlier than other changelings. Finn’s closest healer friend, Tamsyn, had mated at only nineteen years of age, and while she was an outlier in terms of how early she’d found her mate, all of Finn’s healer friends of a similar age were happily settled.

Unfortunately, Finn had never found anyone with whom he wanted to tangle on a more than friendly basis. A worried Remi had even tried to play matchmaker by sending Finn off to conferences for changeling healers, in the hope that he’d find love among his peers, but all Finn had found were interesting new medical techniques.

While he did have friends in RainFire and other packs with which he exchanged skin privileges, that was getting rare enough to concern Remi. Changelings needed contact, affection, touch, to be at their best. Dominants got aggressive without it, but healers? Healers got sad and…broken.

“You need skin-to-skin contact,” he said now, after another squeeze. “None of the single women in the pack would turn you down.” Finn wasn’t just liked, he was loved. A heart piece, without which the pack would never quite function right.

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