In Flames - Elise Faber Page 0,30

Firefly.”

That one word had sealed her fate.

He was keeping her.

Eleven

Suz

Bones.

They were such a pain in the ass.

Especially the little ones. The tiny groupings forming the ankle. The small bones of the metatarsals. They were so freaking finicky and frustrating to fix—shifting and floating out of place, the most infinitesimal fracture missed causing inordinate pain.

She hated it.

Give her blood and gore, sutures and stitches any day of the week.

Her magic slid over the bone, searching for any of those pesky cracks. The brown strands were microscopic in nature or would be to the naked eye, but she could “see” everything, or at least sense it.

Wrapping around, slipping in between cartilage and bone, looking and searching and—

She blinked, coming back into herself, her vision clearing as she met the eyes of her charge.

Bets was two hundred if she was a day, but she didn’t look it. None of the Rengalla showed their age once they hit their mid-twenties. Well, Suz supposed that wasn’t entirely true. The Rengalla aged, just incredibly slowly, those twenties turning to thirties over many decades.

But of all the ages to make her way slowly through, Suz couldn’t complain.

“What’s the verdict, Doc?”

“The verdict is that you’d done a number on your ankle,” she said, shifting away and moving to the computer to log the injury, thankful that she’d made the switch to digital records as soon as technology had allowed. Several centuries of broken ankles, glued chins, vaccinations, allergies, and flu were more than her brain could categorize for one patient, let alone an entire Colony’s worth. “But the verdict is,” she added before Bets could get too worried. “I’ve fixed the breaks and the torn cartilage—”

Paper crinkled before she could finish the rest of her statement.

Bets wasn’t much for hospitals, and even though the infirmary was only a tiny one, she still never made an appearance unless she absolutely had to.

The inverse was also true.

She’d make a break for it at the soonest possible moment.

“Freeze,” she ordered before Bets’s foot could hit the floor. “I need to get you crutches,” she said. “And you’ll use them. Otherwise, I’ll move to a wheelchair. And”—she spoke over Bets’s protests—“if you don’t abide the wheelchair, that’ll be bed rest.”

“Suz,” she whined.

“I mean it,” Suz said, not falling for the whine.

“But you fixed the break.” Still whining.

And still not falling for that whine. “Yes, but it’ll be fragile for the next few weeks,” she pointed out. “So, that means no weight bearing for the first week and then light use only for the next two.”

“But—”

She tapped a few final keys and stood, moved to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a wheelchair.”

“You wouldn’t—”

Suz glanced back, lifted a brow.

Silence. For a long moment. Before Bets’s brightly painted fire-engine red lips pressed together. Then a heavy sigh, paired with a begrudging, “I’ll take the crutches.”

“Wise choice,” Suz said, smothering a smile as she went to the cabinet and retrieved a pair. It only took a few moments to get them adjusted and before long, Bets was high tailing it down the hallway and out the front door, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t think that just because I didn’t mention that fancy magic covering you that I didn’t notice!”

Suz groaned. “Fucking hell.” Why had the bond decided to coat her in the combined magic? Why had it decided to make her a walking announcement that she belonged to Graham?

The only positive was that he was marked, too, so it wasn’t some super macho this is my woman, hands off bullshit.

Or at least if it were, it went both ways.

But double the magical coating meant double the people in the Colony would find out about the bond, and then those people would tell other people, and pretty soon everyone on the planet would know and—

Would that really be such a bad thing?

Her stomach still churned at the thought of having a man—or any person—inside her brain, hearing everything that went through her mind.

He would find her lacking. It was inevitable.

God knew that wouldn’t be anything new.

Plenty of people had found her deficient, incapable of being what they needed, left wanting after she’d given all she could give.

Except, she’d gone to see him this morning, and he hadn’t seemed disappointed or left wanting or otherwise. In fact, he’d been thrilled that she was there, his happiness at seeing her outside his door a warm burst of sunshine in her mind.

And for the woman who’d warred with herself the entire way to his room—chickening out fighting the need