hell away from the whole thing. I’d done my duty, told the pack, and I was content to let them handle it because I knew I couldn’t.
I shook my head, unable to believe what I was about to say.
“OK, well I need to get my stuff and sort out my patients. That’s non-negotiable. I want to stay safe too, so how do we do this?”
It was odd, seeing the tension leach out of Jai’s body. That my decisions, my words could have that big of an impact was startling.
“I’ll come with you.”
“You can’t be hovering over me at work all day. I’ve got clients until at least two-thirty. A guy just sitting in the waiting room would be weird.”
“Yeah? All right, I’ll take the dogs.”
My protest was on my lips before I’d even thought about it, but he was too quick.
“C’mon, little brothers!”
I didn’t know how he did it, but the dogs came scrambling from wherever they were in the yard, bounding up to him, then sitting like the goodest of dogs at his feet.
“Dammit, Jai…” I grumbled. “I can’t have them hanging out there as well. That doesn’t help at all.”
“Gives me a reason to be there, doesn’t it? Are they up to date on their shots and everything?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No aches and pains? No diarrhea?”
“You’re not inventing some bullshit reason why you need to be there. Jai? Jai!”
“Hello, Shannon, Jai,” Stuart said with a small frown. “You’ve brought in the pups. Everything OK?”
“Oh, it's fine,” I said, stomping in the door. The dogs would usually burst in beside me, but they stayed at Jai’s heels. He didn’t even need a lead for them. “Where’s Janey? I need to check in with her about who I have scheduled today.”
“Janey? I thought she was with you. I haven’t seen her since you both left the institute. Nick and I have been manning the phones and the counter between consults.”
I felt a pang of guilt at that, struggling to meet Stuart’s eyes, but then I remembered Gaden’s unconscious form. Yeah, fuck that.
I shook my head. “I saw her that night. She was talking about going to live in the city, but I didn’t think she meant that quickly and especially without telling me. She didn’t drop keys off or anything. I’ll give her a call.”
I pulled out my phone and found her contact, then rang her number. A recorded message instantly told me that her phone had been switched off. I frowned at that. Janey never turned it off. There was a running joke about the number of chargers she kept in her desk, bedroom, car… But I didn’t have time to think further about it, as Mrs Dylan was walking through the door with Charlie, the schnauzer, in her arms. The minute the dog saw mine, his little body stiffened and he started yapping madly.
“Charlie!” his owner said, trying to keep a hold of the now fiercely wriggling dog. He might have been half the size of Buster, but he had twice the attitude. When I touched his mind, he bristled with fear and anger, like the dogs’ presence was a severe threat to his beloved owner, something he needed to protect her from at all costs.
Calm…calm… I pushed. She is safe. You are safe.
He was pretty resistant to that idea, pushing back hard against me, his mind as tenacious as he was, but I was able to get closer and run my hand over his head.
“Come on through, Mrs Dylan,” I said. “Let’s see what can be done for Charlie.”
I didn’t get to think about Janey or Jai for some time. The word seemed to have gotten around that the vets was closing up, and while I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a service like ours to have a closing down sale, in some ways, it was.
“So, you’ll be setting up on your own, love?” Mr Bonson asked as I walked him out.
“Um…I haven’t really thought things through,” I replied.
“We’d like to set her up with her own clinic,” Jai said helpfully. So, so helpfully. I glared at him as he sat there smugly.
“Well, that’d be a grand idea! Make sure to give me a call when you set it up. I’ll be bringing Molly cat along with bells on.”
Molly sulked inside her carrier. I worked hard to make her slightly more amenable, but she was a lion trapped in a cat’s body, wondering where the hell her plains of Serengeti were and why this man-thing kept wanting