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  The next several hours were a lonely blur as technicians came and went, wheeling him to and from that creepy, barren room where they took x-rays of him from several very uncomfortable angles. Often, he lay alone in the ER watching the clock tick down seconds while straining his senses to be able to hear when the next person was coming. The doctor came and went, stitching him up and giving him the results of the x-rays. No injuries to his spine or the rest of his bones or joints, and no concussion.

  “In fact,” the man whose name Ryker hadn’t bothered to catch said, “you were incredibly lucky. Other than needing some stitches and being sore for a few days, all that’s going to bother you for a bit is that whiplash. It must be nice, to be so strong.”

  Ryker snorted, turning his head away despite the fact that it made his eyes water. Lying still for so long was taking more of a toll on him than anything else. “Most of the time, it is. Until you get dumped in a human hospital and have to go through three times the mess because the humans don’t understand what they’re looking at.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said drily. “Those humans are really bothersome, aren’t they? Here.”

  The alpha looked at the gigantic stack of papers that were being held out to him. “I didn’t come here for the free reading material.”

  “You’ll read it anyway, I’m sure. Even a biker like you must have had some sort of education, eh?”

  Having his own scathing sarcasm tossed right back at him was surprising, and he looked up just in time to see the doctor wink at him.

  “I know you haven’t been listening to a thing I’ve said, so all the information about how to take care of yourself is in those papers. Wound care, how to ease soreness, how much aspirin to take, etc. No recreational drugs or alcohol for at least two weeks.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Very seriously. Nothing that will dull your senses, except regular aspirin. A little bit of pain is a good thing. Very important to judge how well you’re healing. And if you’re high off your rocker and can’t feel that you suddenly slipped a disk in your back, then you can’t come to us for help.”

  I’m just going to toss all of this in the trash as soon as he leaves, he thought.

  “And now, I think I’ve done everything for you that I can. We’re going to get one of the nurses to wheel you into a low-risk recovery room, and then in about six more hours, you can leave.”

  Ryker snapped his head up to stare at the man, nostrils flaring at the jolts of pain shooting down through his body. “Six hours? What the hell? I can’t just walk out of here?”

  “It’s a liability thing,” the doctor explained, sounding a little regretful. “A new policy, I’m afraid. I know what you are, Mr. Hill, so I know that you are exactly as okay as you seem to be—for now, at least. However, you were in a crash and some of the nurses who worked on you today have no idea that shapeshifters are anything but fiction. They would find it very strange if I broke policy for someone who would, under normal circumstances, very much need the extra time here.”

  Ryker raised one hand and ran it down his face from forehead to chin, groaning. “Great. Just fantastic.”

  He’d had enough of the reek of this place, clean and overly sterilized and somehow damp. He was tired of all the plastered smiles that never reached the owner’s eyes. He was tired of holding still.

  “Is it rude to ask one of your kind...what you are?”

  He growled. “Stop saying ‘one of your kind’ first of all, okay? You sound like someone in the 1940s asking a black man about the size of his dick. The word is shapeshifter. And I am a wolf.”

  The doctor nodded as if he should have expected that all along. “A wolf. Of course you are. I guess that explains the aggression. You don’t like to be cooped up. Well, Mr. Wolf-Hill, it could be worse. I could keep you overnight... Or I could take a sample of your blood and send it off to the government.”

  “You. Wouldn’t. Dare.”

  “Indeed I wouldn’t. As injured as you are, I know that you could still rip my arms and legs off with two fingers: one to hold me down and the other to pull. However, it does illustrate my point, doesn’t it? There are worse things. You’ll be in a room with a TV. I’ll even make it a single room, just for you. No annoying neighbor. You can have a nice meal, a long nap, and then in several hours, you’re a free man.”

  To anyone else, the arrangement might have almost seemed enjoyable. Television? Ryker hadn’t watched a show in years. Laugh tracks pissed him off. A free meal was nice, and so was the offer of being alone.

  However, it wasn’t any of that which disturbed him. It was the fact that when all this hassle was over with, he no longer had a home to return to. One part of him wanted to immediately rush into trying to figure out what he was going to do, while the other was in full agreement with the idea of putting it all off as long as possible.

  Either way, he really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter because at that moment, one of the nurses reappeared to cart him away to that single room, where they watched carefully as he first went into the bathroom and then climbed into another too-soft bed.

  “Can I get you anything?” the nurse asked, his voice rough and masculine. Ryker had always thought of nursing as being a female’s position but it seemed as though the times were changing more than he had realized.

  “No,” he growled, and reached for the remote even though he really had no idea how to operate one.

  The nurse shrugged. “Okay, Mr. Hill. Just know that you’re being monitored so you don’t try to escape. If you need anything—food, water, aspirin—push the call button and let us know.”

  And with that, he was alone.

  It seemed to him as though it must have taken up the whole entire six hours just to figure out how to work the remote but in actuality, only five minutes went by.

  Another short five minutes later, he had already reaffirmed to himself why he didn’t care about television. All of the shows that he saw were completely and utterly uninteresting. However, when he turned the thing off again, he found that he missed the sound it made and preferred it over the constant random background noises that filtered into his room from the rest of the hospital.

  He tried to sleep and could only manage a fretful doze. Thoughts of his impending homelessness hovered in the background of his mind, preventing him from fully relaxing. Just as well, he supposed, because he quickly discovered that staying in one position for too long left him almost paralyzed with stiffness.

  In the back of Ryker’s mind, where the thoughts of his future also dwelled, he knew that this was only natural. He wasn’t just a dumb biker, even if he hadn’t ever truly focused on his schooling; a person didn’t simply enter into a dangerous profession—if being a biker could be called that—and not learn something along the way. In the event of extreme trauma, such as a bike crash, the body tensed up faster than an eye could blink. It was the powerful tensing of the body itself that was wreaking havoc on him at the moment, having strained every muscle he had all at once.

  That didn’t stop him from being pissed off about it, though.

  He throbbed with a dull, low-grade sort of fury that wavered back and forth through the territories of frustration and agitation for the next six hours. The clock seemed to move in skips and jumps, but never very far along from the last time he glanced at it.

  I am in hell, he thought, more than once. It seemed to be almost his new mantra, dulling his mind into a hypnotic state of misery.

  And then it was all blown away as he sensed a presence just outside the door. He felt their body in an almost intimate manner, knew exactly when they were stretching out their hand. He felt the stretch of their muscles, the gentle pulse of their heated blood tingling in their slender fingertips.

  He closed his eyes. I know who you are. I can feel you.

  Oh yes, he knew that touch. He had felt it only once before but the effect upon him was one he would never forget. And here it was again.

  Opening his eyes, Ryke
r growled, “Omega.”

  The door opened slowly, that gentle hand twisting almost erotically on the disinfected handle, and the omega stepped daintily into the room. His soft, sweet scent cut through the reek of hospital fumes. Ryker breathed the scent in deeply, finding it to be almost floral, like crushed rose petals, yet with a hint of musk to it.

  “Right, it’s me,” the omega said. “Hi again, Ryker. How are you feeling?”

  “How do you think I’m feeling?” Ryker snapped, but his voice was too weak to hold onto his aggression. Besides, he felt for some reason like he couldn’t really be too mad at the kid. There was some sort of wall between them that protected him. “And who do you think you are, coming in here? You’re not a nurse.”

  The omega stepped into full view, and Ryker winced as he caught a full, good look at the other. It had been much too chaotic out at the scene of the crash and in the ambulance for him to really see what the omega looked like, but now there was no avoiding it.

  His blue eyes were the color of sapphires, multifaceted and charming. His face was incredibly youthful and sweet, with curved lips that seemed naturally inclined to smile. Blonde hair cropped short was mussed into stiff little spikes, evidently from him running his hands through it constantly throughout the day. There was only a bit of stubble on his chin; most omegas were pretty sparse hair-wise and the thin little wisps on this kid’s face reminded him of a goat’s beard.

  Somehow, it was the cutest thing he had ever seen.

  There’s a connection here, isn’t there? Ryker’s eyes widened with horror as he realized that just the sight of the kid was warming his heart in a way he had never felt before. It couldn’t be, could it? This omega couldn’t be...

  Suddenly feeling even more trapped than before, he opened his mouth to snarl at the kid and give him a piece of his mind.

  Instead, the words that came out were, “What’s your name again?”

  The kid’s lips quirked upwards in a smile that made Ryker’s heart twist in his chest now. “It’s Bo.”

  “Bow? Like a Christmas present bow?”

  “Ha,” Bo grunted, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  I didn’t invite you to pop a squat there, kid. I don’t want you to stay.

  “I haven’t ever heard that joke before,” Bo said in a tone that obviously belied what he said. “It actually stands for Boniface.”

  “Good god, what kind of old-fashioned pack do you come from?”

  The smile deepened on Bo’s face, but now it gained a sort of mysterious edge to it. “We’re actually pretty modern, you big puppy. And you can see now why I prefer a nickname.”

  Ryker growled, his dry throat rasping. “Don’t call me a puppy. I could rip you to shreds if I wanted to.”

  “But you won’t,” Bo said calmly, and he stood up. Ryker wondered if the omega was going to leave despite his confident air, but all the kid did was head into the bathroom and return a second later with a glass of water in hand. “Here.”

  He didn’t say thank you, but he did drink the entire glass. His throat feeling better now. “What are you even doing here?” he said.

  “My shift is over and I was just about to go home when I heard that you were still here. I know you’d rather not be. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Well if I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go,” he said sarcastically, and then cursed at himself as he realized just how much he had revealed without really wanting to.

  “What do you mean you don’t have anywhere to go?” Bo looked around as if wondering for the first time why there was no one else in the room. “I know your bike was destroyed but surely someone is coming to get you? Or you could...get a bus?”

  “I don’t exactly have money.” Nor, he realized, did he have insurance. Things worked differently in the shifter world, where the currency was favors and loyalty. Damn. Things just kept getting worse and worse. If he didn’t get put in jail because of evading his debts, he was going to end up there anyway because some heartless cop would arrest him for being homeless and sleeping on public property.

  “Well, I can pay for your ticket,” Bo said cheerfully. “Where do you live? Actually, since my shift is over, I could even escort you back to your home and make sure you’ll be taken care of.”

  Taken care of...

  No home to go to. No pack to greet him. No one. They had all abandoned him.

  Closing his eyes tightly, Ryker let the misery swamp over him. Almost in the same instance, a soft hand settled on his shoulder.

  “Ryker? Are you okay?”

  “Truth is, I really don’t have anywhere to go at the moment,” he managed eventually, finding suddenly that his throat had gone dry again. He couldn’t imagine why he was losing control of himself in the presence of this omega. Except, he actually did know of a reason that a shapeshifter would suddenly change his whole personality around in the course of a day. And he really, really didn’t want that to be happening to him.

  Bo’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. “I see. You know, I kind of thought that was the case. Your wounds...”

  He didn’t continue—there was no reason to. Even though he didn’t know the whole story of it, he was obviously smart enough to figure it out for himself.

  Brain and brawn together. They would make quite the pair, perfectly matched. Alpha and omega, as things were meant to be.

  After a moment, Bo spoke up again. “You know, you could come home with me if you want. My roommate moved out a few weeks ago so I have a spare bedroom. Um, you’re welcome to it for the night...until you can get things figured out.”

  Ryker had his mouth open and was just about to agree when he suddenly came back to himself and clamped his jaw shut again. What was he doing? Taking an offer from an omega? Ryker was an alpha! He didn’t need handouts! He didn’t need charity, and especially not from someone who was supposed to be submissive to him. The rules of nature hadn’t changed just because he had been overturned from his position as the head of his pack.

  “No thanks. I don’t need help from the likes of you, okay? Scram. Get out.”

  Frustration finally getting the better of him, Ryker bared his teeth. Like all wolf teeth, they were slightly pointed and very threatening.

  Bo leapt up back off the hospital bed, raising his hands in the air. “Okay. Okay, fine. Have it your way.”

  Ryker snarled, wriggling around in the bed to try and shove his feet down to the floor to follow through with his threat. However, the omega didn’t even look really alarmed. Instead, his blue eyes showed only sadness.

  “Have it your way, then. Really. I was just trying to help.”

  “Out!” Ryker snapped, fangs clicking together.

  Bo turned his back on Ryker, exposing all his weaknesses. If Ryker had been stronger, he would have cleared the distance between them and bowled the omega over to bite at his throat and make him submit. However, in this weakened state, he could do nothing of the sort. And Bo knew it.

  And then the door was shutting behind the slender blonde man, not with a slam but with a soft click.

  Groaning, he slumped back in bed and raised both hands to place them over his face. “I’m an idiot,” he whispered to the sudden lonely silence.

  A voice responded and for a moment he was hopeful, but then he realized it was only the TV chattering on as though nothing happened.

  “I really am an idiot.”

  Chapter 3

  There was no way in hell that Bo was going to just leave the big lug of an alpha all alone to figure this out by himself. No way. That went completely against what all his training said, and what he constantly repeated to younger EMTs who went through the same struggles that he had when he first got on the job, but this was different. This wasn’t like poking his nose into business where it didn’t belong.

  All his life, like many other shapeshifters, he grew up hearing stories of how shifters found their mates. It was an instantaneous connection between souls.

  Everything
he felt so far towards Ryker, from that initial lightning bolt of touch, to the way his body had tugged him towards the injured man’s hospital room without needing any guidance at all... There was no doubt in his mind that he had found his mate in Ryker. No doubt the biker probably felt it too and was rebelling at the idea of being taken care of by anyone, but that didn’t matter to Bo.

  His wolf rejoiced inside his chest, and he knew now that in order to make them both happy, he was going to have to follow through on this. Work had become personal in a very abrupt sort of way.

  On his way back through the hospital, he grabbed a nurse just outside the recovery rooms. “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?” the man said, his broad, dark face splitting into an attractive smile. “Hi, Bo.”

  “Hi...” Bo glanced at the nurse’s name tag. “Clancy. Um. I don’t suppose you could help me out with something?”

  “Sure,” Clancy purred, stepping in a little closer to the omega wolf. He shuddered a little inwardly but kept silent, knowing how rude it would be to leap backwards away from the nurse. “Anything for you.”

  As inexperienced as he was, Bo recognized that as flirting. He shuddered again because it felt incredibly wrong to think that he had the attention of someone who wasn’t his mate.

  “I was wondering about that biker in 3C. When is he due to be released?”

  Clancy frowned a little, but he answered anyway. “According to the chart I got when I wheeled him down here, he should only have fifteen minutes or so left. But, you know doctors.”

  Bo did. Doctors took their sweet time with everything, which meant it could be anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour before Ryker was allowed to get dressed and leave.

  “Okay. Well, thanks. I need to start heading home, myself.”

  He turned and strode away towards the elevator, unnerved to sense that Clancy was following him. Their twin footsteps rang out against the gleaming-white tile floor, echoing faintly.