Page 17 of Destined Bear
“Millie, leave us.” Mom’s voice is harsh, and even I shrivel as Millie scurries out, eager to be free of my intense stare.
“What in all the gods’ names…” Mom’s green eyes flash, and I sit again, steeling my pounding heart as I try to make sense of what I’d just witnessed.
My gut twitches with warning signals. “They were conspiring?—”
“Conspiring? Really? Millie?” My mom scoffs so hard, she starts to cough again. “That girl couldn’t conspire her way out of a paper bag.”
But my mother has never known me to overreact, and she sinks back to look at me speculatively. “What do you think you heard?”
And there is the problem. I have absolutely no idea. I don’t even know if I heard anything at all. My mother’s sensibilities ease into me, and my pulse slows.
“You see? You’re questioning the interaction yourself.” Mom nods sagely, and I suddenly feel stupid.
“Millie, come back in here,” Mom orders the nurse, and gentle footsteps pad along the hallway until she reappears.
I’m having a hard time looking at Millie the same. Suddenly, she doesn’t seem like the unassuming little mouse-like girl whom I had always taken her for. Something nefarious is lingering beneath the surface, and I don’t like it one bit.
“Who is this healer? How did you hear about her?” My mother’s inquisitive eyes settle on Millie, and she tries to look away.
“Look at her!” My glare raises Millie’s head.
She visibly swallows. “She’s from Stonecrest. She comes highly recommended, Miss Circe.”
“By whom?” My pointed question sets her further into the hallway, and she stares at her feet.
Oh, she better not think about taking off after her “healer” friend.
“A lot of my pack uses her. She’s been around for a long time…”
Her sentences don’t ooze confidence, but Mom seems to buy it all the same.
How much do I really know about Millie? Sure, I’d done a background check on her when I’d first hired her. She had an excellent referral from the agency, and I knew she didn’t belong to Willow Grove. She was competent, and she wouldn’t reportback to Emeric. And those things were all that seemed important to me at the time.
I hadn’t been vigilant about looking into Millie’s references. Mom’s illness had returned with such abruptness that I had been more concerned with getting help to deal with her needs than I had been about being thorough.
The timing doesn’t even make sense. Millie has been with us for months.
Has she been plotting something since then?
“And?” Mom prompts, waiting for Millie to elaborate, but she doesn’t.
“What was the healer’s prognosis? Did she offer any earth-shattering revelations?” I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice, and Mom gives me another warning look.
“She didn’t have enough time to examine you before Miss Vivienne came home,” she tells my mom.
Oh, she’s turning this around on me! The audacity! How had I never seen this side of Millie before?
Alessa magically reappears in the doorway, fully clothed in her human form. “It didn’t look like Seline was doing too much healing from where we were standing. In fact, you weren’t even in the same room.”
Millie whips her head around, her dark eyes widening as she realizes she’s outnumbered by witnesses.
“She had been sitting with Miss Circe just before you arrived!” Millie’s defiance has a ring of truth to it, but I’m not convinced.
I will continue to question everything she does going forward. I don’t really know who she is, and I don’t know if I can trust her.
“Okay, that’s enough. You’re all exhausting me again.” Mom lets out a long exhale. “Millie, fix me some soup.”
Again, Millie is happy to be out of the line of fire, but when Alessa tries to enter, Mom waves her off with a dismissive flick of her hand.
