Page 4 of Call Don't Fall

“You woke up,” he shrugged. “The doctor will be in to talk to you soon. If your labs are good, he’ll probably send you home with a follow up appointment with your regular doctor. The call button is here.” He held it up before laying it back down on the bed next to me. “If you need anything let me know.”

He nearly sprinted out of the room.

“Well then,” I said to the empty hospital room.

I poked my wolf again but whatever Doctor Bane Hemlock used to sedate him still had its claws in him.

Chapter Two

Kirk

BREATHE

BREATHE

BREATHE

I twisted the word around my thoughts, but my wolf wasn’t having it. All of nursing school and every technique to keep my cool flushed right down the drain and it was all one-sided. At least for now. My wolf bumped his head against my ribs. In all my time working at Mercy of Frost I’d never had an issue.

“Never found him before either,”my wolf chimed into my thoughts.

I took a deep breath and headed through the big double doors that led away from the corridor of patient rooms and hit the elevator button. Bane Hemlock needed to admit or discharge Chasten. Something needed to happen. I briefly thought of banging my head against the wall like a wolf in a cage but the elevator doors chimes open just in time before my wolf took over enough for that to happen.

Inside the elevator smelled like lemon drops. I pushed the button for the top floor where the doctors had their offices I hadn’t encountered a doctor – permanent or with privileges – here that I wanted to fight. Now, I’d fight them all. I forced my wolf back down before he pressed hard enough to make his way out. It was in the best interest of my career and my mate to keep my shit together. I should’ve told someone up the ranks before now, but I didn’t want to be taken off of Chasten’s care team. I sniffed my armpit right before the elevator doors opened. Fortunately, my pheromone blocker spray was holding up.

“Mine. Go back.”

Ignoring my wolf, I stepped off the elevator. Doctor Bane Hemlock shared his office here with his husband and true-mate, Lee Hemlock-Knight. It was a smaller office at the end of the corridor because the pair didn’t have much occasion to work at Mercy of Frost.

‘We’re requesting time off work not fighting anyone,”I warned my inner beast.

The asshole responded by headbutting my ribs again.

As far as I knew the hospital didn’t have a protocol for when an employee found their true-mate among the patients, but maybe they should’ve. The hospital offered new mate leave, parental leave, and leave for just about everything else. Maybe they needed a code for it.

Doctor Bane Hemlock was locking up his office as I sprinted down the corridor. He quirked an eyebrow and then flashed me a knowing grin. Had I let my innermost thoughts leak all over the pack link?

“He’s awake?” Bane asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t start that. I barely let my students call me sir anymore. Makes me sound too much like Darian.”

Darian Hemlock was one-half of the Hemlock Wolf Pack leadership. I liked the guy well enough but on a personal level he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

“Chasten is awake and there’s something I need to tell you,” I said, choosing not to comment on Bane’s cousin either way.

“And that is?” He glanced at the wolf-shaped clock above his office door as if he had somewhere else to be.

“I need time off sort of,” I said not sure how to tell one of the biggest names in medicine that I might just start removing the innards or anyone who glanced at the gorgeous smartass downstairs the wrong way.

“Sort of?” he asked, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s about Chasten,” I said.

“He can’t be that much of a smartass,” Bane laughed, catching me off guard.

Under different circumstances, I’d have said he had a nice laugh, but he was wasting my time. Time that I desperately wanted to spend with Chasten. Only he didn’t know I was his true-mate. He didn’t know that I’d kept watch over him the whole time he was out. That even after he bit me I argued with the doctor about knocking his wolf out. Sedating an inner beast isn’t pleasant - it’s downright disorienting.

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