Page 2 of Cassian
“Did he ever hit you before?”She said no, but so far as she knew, no one had ever challenged him before.“And what made you do it this time?Was there something that you said to him or he said to you that set him off?”
“Today was my last day, and because I was leaving, he said something about not getting a bonus that was being offered if someone could get me to stay.I didn’t know anything about that until my lunch break, where he insisted that my going to college wasn’t as important as him getting the bonus that was there for the taking.”The officer asked her if she wanted to press charges.“Yes.There wasn’t any reason for him to knock me around like he did so that he could go on break for a couple of hours.”
“Does he usually take a two-hour break in the afternoon?”She told them that he did it on her days working, but she didn’t know if he did it on her days off.“Has he ever left you in charge before.Or in this case, wanted you to be in charge before?”
“No.I don’t want to be in charge.I was head cashier, but I didn’t have to do anything but take over the register when someone had a break.”The officers asked her again if he’d left her in charge before.“No.Like I said, I don’t want to be in charge.”
The hospital was going to keep her overnight because of the head injury.By the time she was settled in her room, her manager and the district manager came into her room.She didn’t want to keep going over the same questions all the time, but she knew in order for Daniel to get what he deserved, she was the one with the power to put him there.She never liked him anyway.
All the time she was being questioned, Cassian was right there with her.He even, at one point, said that she’d had enough questions for one day and that they’d have to come back tomorrow.She didn’t understand why her bosses left when they did, but was kind of glad for it.She really had had enough of the same questions over and over.
“What happens now, do you know?”Cassian told her that Daniel would stay in jail until such time as the police charged him with something.“I think they have a lot to choose from.Did you hear that he’s not supposed to leave the building with one of us in charge?I wonder how they didn’t know that.”
“It sounded to me like he was doing a lot of things that they didn’t know about.Hopefully, they fire him.But probably they’ll send him to anger management school and be done with it.Worse things have happened.”She thought he might be right about the anger management classes.She’d read that someplace how people who worked for the place that she had were sending their ‘family members’to classes rather than wasting all the time that they paid for training for them.Yes, she thought, worse things have happened.
“Why are you here?”She still thought that he was somewhat blurry, but didn’t say that to him.The nurses had asked if she wanted anything for pain, and when she got it, she realized that the man had been there with her all day.And now it was nearly nine o’clock, and he was still hanging around.“You have to have better things to do than to just sit around a hospital bed all evening.”
“What do you know about shifters?”She said that she knows that she works with a couple, but other than that, she didn’t know anything.“They mate for life, did you know that much?”
“No.And why would I care?I’m just a plain human who has been hurt.You didn’t answer my question.”He said that he was her mate and that he belonged to her.“Belong to me?What does that even mean?And I don’t want a mate.I have my things and my life just the way I want them to be.”
“I’m afraid that it doesn’t work that way.I’ve found you or you’ve found me, I’m not sure how you want to say that, and you’re stuck with me.”She rolled to her side and didn’t look at him.“We don’t have to talk about this now.I know you must be hurting.”
“As I said, I have things the way that I like them, and I’m not going to be bossed around by you.You can take your mate business someplace else.I don’t want you.”He laughed again, and she was beginning to think there was something wrong with him.“Go away.I’ve had a really shitty day today, and I don’t need you and your laughing ass here with me.”
“That’s very hurtful.And I have no intentions of bossing you around.I know you have a life.While you were out on the floor, one of your coworkers said you were going to college to become a lawyer.I was one of those at one time.I don’t remember how long ago—what’s the matter?”She turned in the bed to look at him.
“I just realized who you are.You’re one of the Savage guys.The cousins or something along those lines.You’re supposed to have more money than Midas, as my grannie says.”He didn’t bother denying it.“I don’t need some rich guy trying to make me into his plaything either.I have a life that I like just fine.”He laughed.This time, it was as if he’d gotten a really good kick out of her woes.“You’re certifiable.Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“My brother, Brenin, said that I do laugh when things around me aren’t that funny.But sometimes I get a kick out of what people are saying, so I laugh.”She rolled back to her side, careful of her ribs this time.“I think you’re beautiful and will fit right in with my family, Raven.”
“We’ll see.”She had to roll to her back; her ribs were hurting her too badly to sleep on her side.“We’re not having sex.I draw the line at being your plaything.”When he laughed again, she willed herself to sleep.The man was insane if he thought that she’d just come along nicely with him.
~*~
Standing up, he stretched when he knew she was asleep.Cassian thought that having a mate was fun so far.Of course, she was going to be tough to make her believe that he wasn’t going to boss her around.Also, she wasn’t going to be a plaything either.He thought that was funny that she was so dead set against having him in her life that he caught himself smiling every once in a while just thinking about her.
Daniel was lucky that there had been people around when he’d realized that Raven was his mate.He might well have shifted and killed him right where he stood.He’d been eating in the little fast-food place when he noticed that everyone was standing by the door to the parking lot.There wasn’t any way that he could have reacted quicker, as he was shocked to see what the man was doing to the woman.The man was beating her and knocking her to the ground like she was nothing more than a stick.
Walking into the hallway where the nurses were, he nodded to one of them when they asked if everything was all right.The only reason he’d been able to stay was because Kings had pulled a few strings for him in order to get himself a free pass to stay in Raven’s room.He couldn’t leave her, not injured the way that she was.
Every time he looked at her face, his dragon wanted to find the man responsible and kill him.Not just wound him like he’d done to Raven, but to rip his throat out and stomp on him as his dragon.The doctors said she’d be all right, but it didn’t lessen the fact that he’d beaten an innocent woman like he had.
Cassian had met men like Daniel before.Given a little bit of power over someone, it went straight to their heads.Daniel was the kind of man that the police were forever screening for with tests to keep them out of their departments.They would abuse their power and people, too.It was worse that they were able to carry a gun.
Walking the floor, he was careful not to make any kind of disruption for the nurses.They were all working hard, and he didn’t want to get in their way.Going back to the room that Raven was in, he sat down on one of the nice loungers and set it up so that it was leaning back for him.Closing his eyes, he thought about what Raven was going to bring to his life.He could already feel a bit more magic around his body and was happy for that.The need to heal her was paramount, but he held off.People would be questioning everything if she were suddenly healed up from her beating.His body tensed up when he thought of the damage that had been done to her.
She had two broken ribs and several that were badly bruised.Her wrist was broken, and she had several cuts on her face that had needed stitches.There was a long jagged cut on her head where she hit the car, they told him, and that had required seventeen stitches on its own.It was also the point where she’d been concussed as well.Her legs and other arm were cut up, and she had both her eyes blackened, and her nose was bruised.She was, in a word, a mess.And all because some jackass had decided that he had power over her and was going to make her do what he wanted.
Every time he thought of Daniel, he wanted to kill him.Which wasn’t helping him sleep.He had a big day tomorrow, and being worked up wasn’t going to make it easier on him.Tomorrow, he was going to have to work hard in convincing his new mate that he’d never do her any harm and that she’d be safe with him.He would even make sure that her grannie was all right.
The elderly woman couldn’t make it to the hospital until tomorrow.Her driver for the day, a next-door neighbor who took her to appointments and such, was in for the night and didn’t drive after dark.He was going to send someone for her first thing in the morning and make sure that she could see her granddaughter before she was released.She’d been ever so grateful that he’d called her.
It was Kaida who had gotten the idea that someone needed to call for her.She’d rummaged through her mind gently and had found that she’d been living with her grannie.Getting the phone number was easy after that.Someone at the police station had known about her grannie and had given him the number to call her.Cassian remembered the conversation well.
“You tell me what time you get up in the morning, and I’ll have a car there waiting to bring you in.Then, when you’ve had enough visiting, I’ll get one to send you home in, too.No point in bothering your neighbor when I can easily do this for you.”She told him she was up at six in the morning.“How about I have the car there at seven, that way you can have plenty of time to get going and have some breakfast too.”
“That sounds about good to me.”He told her his name twice, but he wasn’t worried about her not remembering it.She was stressed, and he knew it.“She’s all I’ve got in the whole world.Well, I suppose that’s not true.I do have my daughter, but she ain’t worth nothing.I don’t think she’s even seen her daughter since I won custody of her all those years ago.Her daddy neither.”She snorted as she spoke to him about Raven.“Sorrier bunch of people you’d ever want to know.Not that you’d want them around.They forever had their hands out all the time until they had to start paying me some money to keep my girl.Not that I would have ever charged them, but the courts said they had to, so I got me a check from the two of them every month like clockwork.”
