Free Keeper of the Alphas - Complete by Morgan Rae Page B

there.
    Cami wasn’t a doctor. Far from. Lynn had been the nurse. Working tireless hours at the hospital. Lynn would know what to do.
    But Lynn wasn’t here. And Marcus was dying.
    Cami swallowed back bile. “Okay,” she said shakily, and took the tweezers from his blood-soaked fingers. He let them go, relief softening his features. She tried to be careful about it and gently prodded the tweezers in, but all she could see was blood and black muscle. She took a breath and grabbed a towel, patting it over the wound to clean it out. When she pulled the towel back, she could see it, a shard of silver underneath living, breathing muscles.
    (You can do this.)
    She pushed the pointy end of the tweezers into his skin and pried back muscle. Marcus lurched on the table, suddenly alive with pain, and he grabbed the table and roared. Sounded inhuman and struck fear into Cami’s heart. So did the claws that suddenly shot from his nails and the sharp teeth that lengthened in his mouth as he bared them. His eyes darkened and, soon, she knew she’d have a full bear on her table to contend with.
    Cami moved her free hand to his forehead and slipped her fingers through his hair. “Shhh,” she murmured, praying she sounded more confident than she felt. “Calm down…it’s going to be okay.”
    The beast in him panted wildly, but his eyes connected with hers. The dark pigment in his irises lightened and, finally, the beast receded, his nails pulled back (leaving holes in the wood) and his teeth shortened again. Now he was just Marcus . With an apologetic look in his eyes.
    “Alright…good,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “Just like that. Stay with me.”
    The look in his eyes said enough. She focused again on the silver in his chest, spreading.
    In, out. Like a Band-Aid.
    Cami dove the tweezers into his chest. She felt him tense, strain, but she worked it until—
    The bullet popped out. Caked in blood, but out of him. No more silver. She picked it up between her fingers and twisted it around. Seemed so small . So incapable of causing so much damage. Seemed far too small, far too insignificant, to take a life, let alone a supernatural life.
    She dropped the bullet and turned her attention back to Marcus. He was slipping in and out of consciousness on the table, moaning. She remembered something her mother said—or did—once, with a patient in the hospital (when “bring your daughter to work day” meant “let your daughter watch some sick people maybe-die”) and she grabbed a towel and pressed it against his chest. Staunched the bleeding. The wound still looked ugly and infected, with the edges around it dirt-black, dark spider veins running through his chest, but the bullet was out now. It wouldn’t reach his heart, whatever that meant. Silver. Guess the lore got some things right.
    Never imagined she’d be here , though. Pressing a clean towel against the bullet wound of a werebear that was bleeding out on the kitchen table of her childhood home.
    “Thank you,” was the last thing he managed to get out before he lost consciousness completely and passed out on the dining room table.

Chapter 3
    Cami bandaged Marcus up and wrapped the gauze tight around his chest to staunch the bleeding. Already, it was looking better. The ink black wasn’t spreading, at least. Still clung to the wound, though, looking diseased. She did all she could, put a towel over him to cover him up, and left him there to heal. She cleaned the bullet and meant to leave it beside him (some “I survived and all I got was this stupid bullet” souvenir), but on second thought, she stuck it in her pocket. Some small, irrefutable proof that this wasn’t a delusion or a nightmare; this was something that happened in the real, physical world.
    Then she stripped off her bloody dress, flicked on the shower, and sank down in it and cradled herself, holding her legs.

Chapter 4
    He could still smell her.
    The Keeper bitch’s scent clung to