Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter Seven

Tanner pacedin the waiting area of the clan's healing center. Oscar, with his shifter DNA, recovered the quickest. Lana Gladwin, a familiar face to the child, had just taken ice cream into his room. In another room across the hall, a revolving door of healers worked on Silantra.

That the witch was in critical condition confused him. In all his years drifting between the clans, Tanner had never heard of a witch getting sick from her own magic. From the whispered chatter as one group of Silantra's healers took a break, it sounded like magic had a battery life.

When that battery was finally sucked dry, the witch died. Bringing up that wall of water to protect the rescue team from gunfire coming from the opposite shore might have been Silantra's undoing.

Pausing as he completed another circuit in his pacing, he looked at the door closest to him.

Realizing the room he had stopped in front of was Michelle's, Tanner bolted.

"Whoa there!" Lana laughed, her arms going up to brace against his oncoming charge.

They collided. His hands shot out to grab Lana by the biceps and steady her.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

He looked around, cheeks growing ruddy as he tried to see if anyone had witnessed the collision. Gazes flicked in his direction from the two healers grabbing coffee from the pot that had just finished brewing. He narrowed his own gaze at them until they looked away.

"How's Michelle doing?" Lana asked.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Tanner shrugged.

Lana's mouth pinched, then flattened. As the first known latent to join the clan, she hadn't immediately accepted the reality that an entire society of shifters hid among the human population. It had taken her mate Seth kidnapping her and Esme's hospitality and gentle persuasion to bring Lana into the fold.

Since then, she had become a damned fine healer and part of the "acclimation" committee for newly rescued latents. Tanner knew she had tacked a big target on his back and it would stay there for as long as he continued avoiding the fact that Michelle was his mate.

Technically his mate because biology be damned, he wouldn't try to saddle the young woman with an old man like himself.

"Whatever self-deprecating bullshit you're thinking, stop it," Lana whispered, grabbing hold of his sleeve and walking him toward Michelle's door. "You're denying her a chance at a connection no one else can provide. Until then, she might always feel like an outsider among us."

Gently extricating his sleeve from her grip, Tanner shook his head. Michelle was a beautiful woman, rich with thick curves, a chocolate brown gaze, and a cascade of pale hair that made him feel like he was warming his old bones beneath a warm summer sun.

"Just because you can read a person's thoughts now and then doesn't mean you know that person," he admonished, careful to keep a soft tone. It wasn't his intent to hurt the woman's feelings.

Deprived of snagging him by his shirt, Lana used one hand to grab his wrist and the other to twist the handle on Michelle's door.

"She technically died at the bottom of that lake," Lana whispered. "The healers have done what they can for now. But they're running into resistance—from Michelle herself."

Unshed tears shimmered in Lana's gaze. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, her grip on him tightening. When she unshuttered her gaze again, he felt like she had just kicked him in the balls.

"She saved Oscar, got him to you so you could get him to the surface. I believe she intended that to be her last act."

Tanner flashed from feeling kicked in the balls to stabbed in the chest, the blade penetrating whatever remained of his shriveled heart.

"Michelle wouldn't do that," he argued. "She was raised believing that was a sin."

"And not believing in things like shifters," Lana parried, shoving her hands in her pockets before heading for the coffee machine.

Tanner looked at the door. He couldn't see Michelle through it, but he could sense everything else about her. Of all the scents around him, hers crowded his nose. He could hear her faint and troubled breathing.

He couldn't really sense "everything" else, he realized. He could feel her energy as his mate, that sixth sense of things that would always exist when they were in close proximity. But he couldn't sense the way her skin warmed when touched or the taste of her flesh.

His wolf beginning to pulse, Tanner released a warm huff, then knocked lightly at the door.

"Come in," Michelle answered, her inherently soft voice reduced to a raspy whisper after all the lake water she had swallowed, then choked up.

Tanner pushed the door open, took one step forward, then waited there, half his ass hanging out in the waiting area. Michelle fisted the warming blanket that covered her, pulling the top edge up to her chin. The brown gaze seemed to grow bigger as her brows lifted with a silent question he wished he could read.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice sounding like he hadn't used it in a month.

Her lips pinched. He knew from secondhand reports that she didn't talk much. But catch her unaware and she would probably be singing softly to herself. He had heard just a snatch of some sweet song from her once, but she had immediately fallen silent when she realized someone was there.

"Oscar is well enough for ice cream," Tanner continued, knowing she had a soft spot for the cub. When she didn't reply, he looked around the room in search of another topic. Not finding one, he shrugged and asked, "Would you like some ice cream?"

He immediately wanted to retract the question. Michelle was about half his age and now he felt like some creep hanging out on a corner with candy—a scarred, anti-social creep who never knew where he was going to park his boots from one month to the next.

His mind got stuck on "scarred," his gaze moving to where her thighs would be under the blanket. He wondered what had happened to her, but knew he would never ask.

She bent her knees, then pulled her feet closer to her bottom beneath the blanket as if she had read the direction of his gaze and realized he must have seen the scars when she was pulled onto the boat.

"Chocolate, please."

His brain skipped, uncertain that the soft rasp had been words. Had she really just acknowledged that she would like him to get the ice cream for her?

"Chocolate, right," he answered, head bobbing as he backed out of the room and closed the door without looking at her again.

Seeing Lana, he rushed over to her. "Where can I get chocolate ice cream?"

With a silly grin on her meddling face, she sank her hooks into his arm and walked him down the nearest hall to an area that looked like a break room. In addition to the two tables and half a dozen chairs, there was an upright freezer, a refrigerator, microwave, and shelves with plates and bowls.

Pulling open a drawer, she grabbed a spoon, put it in an empty bowl and handed it to him with a nod at the freezer. Leaving him to his own devices, she left with a chuckle and her hips swaying with an "I told you so" sass.

"Not helpful," Tanner grumbled, his stomach too tight with nerves to acknowledge that Lana had, indeed, been helpful.

Or not. He still couldn't decide what was best for Michelle. If he subtracted his feelings from the equation, the answer would be simple. Michelle had a better chance of thriving without him than being saddled with a mate some two decades older than her and…

Closing the refrigerator door after putting away the ice cream, he brushed the back of his knuckles against the right side of his face and cheek. The flesh was pitted and slightly shiny. He had been thirty when he picked up the scars. The incident that cause them made him a footnote in a history that every wolf knew.

The Slaughter at Harrow Mill.

Tanner hadn't been at the small settlement of shifters when the Hunters attacked. It wasn't his home, just a group of folks he would check in with on his trips around the country. It was on the road up the mountain to Harrow Mill that he had encountered the Hunters, all bloody and grinning, clothes and faces thick with soot from the fires they had started.

They had shot the shifters, from youngest to oldest, with bullets it was hard to heal from. They'd done the same to Tanner, a round of spelled crystal buckshot to the side of his face, then another round that hit him square in the gut.

They stole his truck, too. It took him three days to crawl out of the ditch they left him in, then on up to the settlement. With the wolves' vehicles destroyed from the fires set, Tanner had another two weeks of crawling and stumbling through the woods, eating what game he could catch along the way, until he reached the lands of the Tennessee clan.

"Your ice cream's melting," a woman said, her shoulder inadvertently brushing his arm as she moved past him to grab a bowl. "Is that for the cub?"

"Miss Ripley," he corrected.

"Well," the woman laughed, "you best get it to her before she needs a straw."

"Right, thanks!" he said, his reply little better than a nervous bark.

Leaving the break room, he took longer, faster strides, his gaze sweeping left to right to avoid the kind of collision he'd had with Lana as others bustled around the healing center. At the threshold to Michelle's room, he finally managed to relax his mouth into something that felt like a smile as he opened the door.

Navarro stood at the foot of Michelle's bed, the younger wolf's presence wiping the smile from Tanner's face.

"About time," he said, turning to Tanner. "I was beginning to think you got lost."

Tanner's gaze moved back and forth between Michelle and his current team leader. He hadn't heard any gossip about them being friendly, but then wolves weren't prone to gossiping, especially in front of the mate of the woman being talked about.

Not that Michelle was his mate, Tanner reminded himself. Regardless of what Lana and Esme had told him in the past, it was just his crazy biology trying to dictate the latent's role among the shifters.

"Something come up?" he asked Navarro after quickly searching for words that wouldn't sound like some kind of accusation.

"We're heading back to Gibley," Navarro answered, his index finger flicking between his chest and Tanner's. "Boss wants the cub brought with him. We'll stay there until he sends us someplace else."

Michelle moved to kick her blanket off, then seemed to remember that she only had on a medical gown.

Her gaze landed first on Tanner, then Navarro.

"You're taking me with you."

Tanner could sense Navarro's wolf probing him, questioning if this was something Tanner wanted.

Sensing the hesitation, Michelle sat up straighter, her brown gaze darkening with intent until they sparkled like chocolate diamonds beneath her furrowed brow.

"I saved Oscar's life," she argued. "Right now, he trusts me more than anyone. So I go, unless you want to stack yet another trauma on top of everything that little boy has been through."

Navarro turned to face Tanner, his body blocking Michelle from viewing their exchange. Agreeing with Michelle, Tanner offered a curt nod.

"Fine," Navarro said, moving around Tanner to step into the hall. "Motor pool in thirty. No excuses."

The door finished closing at the same time Tanner sighed. He had a mate dressed in a hospital gown, a visit of unknown duration in Gibley, and thirty minutes to pack for two people.

Approaching the bed, he handed Michelle a bowl of ice cream reduce to three small lumps sticking up from an otherwise melted moat of cream and sugar.

"I'll pack you a bag and be back in twenty."