to.
But she would need help to monitor Bennett as he healed. Dakota immediately knew what she had to do.
There was no way she was calling emergency services. There was no way of knowing how Ben would react to the serum. She couldn’t, in good conscience, put others in danger.
She also knew that she couldn’t deal with this herself. She would need help to deal with the medical side of things. She was a college dropout who had spent most of her high school years daydreaming about being an adult.
This was so not what she had in mind.
“Hang in there, Ben.” She grabbed his cell phone from the counter and searched the contacts for Vance’s number.
Ben had been adamant that the serum remained a secret, but now that his life was in danger, Dakota was sure he would appreciate her making the hard choice of getting more people involved.
“Ben? Why are you calling? Did I stumble into the nineties?” Vance’s mocking voice was almost comforting.
Dakota would have snickered at the joke if it hadn’t been such a dire situation.
“It’s Dakota. We met when we played Wars of Sorcerers? I need your help. No. Ben needs your help. You need to come right now. He’s been injured badly.” She gave him the briefest of explanations, managing to only sound cryptic and crazy. She rattled off the address after Vance promised he would be there as soon as he possibly could. “Also, get the others. Just in case we need more big brains on this.”
Dakota looked around, looking for a good place to hide the serum. If the bad guys came back, she wanted to make sure it would be a hiding place they never figured out.
She spotted the jar of peanut butter Bennett kept in the lab for his intermittent snacking. With a quick hand, she untwisted the cap and quickly slid the serum into the nearly empty container of peanut butter.
There.
She was convinced it was one of her rare moments of brilliant ideas. No one would ever think to look for shifter serum in a tub of peanut butter. It was way too ludicrous.
With all of the gentleness she had in her, Dakota took Bennett in her arms and brought him up the stairs and laid him out on the bed in his bedroom. She ran to the lab and placed the peanut butter container on the counter, near the toaster. It was inconspicuous.
Vance and the others were a good drive away, so Dakota had to monitor Bennett as best as she could with her shifter hearing. His breathing was much too shallow. It was too close to a death rattle for her liking. His heartbeat was still slow and pained. Dakota had no idea how to make it better.
She did the only thing she could think of. She cut Bennett out of his bloodied clothes and ran a warm cloth on his skin to remove every speck of blood. She had to change the water of her bucket a few times to make sure Bennett’s wounds were as clean as can be. She bandaged them up using all of the medical-grade gauze and bandages she could find.
When she was done, Ben was a pale ghost of a man, lying there. Dakota held his hand in hers, and she willed the shifter serum to work. She imagined herself talking to the particles of the animals in the serum, pleading with them to let her mate live.
“Bennett,” she whispered to him even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. “You’re my mate. Do you know what that means? It means we belong together. Sort of like soulmates, only cooler. Way cooler.” She ran her hand through his beautiful black curls. There were wet and matted with sweat. “You have to pull through, okay? We need to get to know each other. Go out a few times. Get to know each other some more. Fall in love. All that good stuff. We both missed a lot in life before. Because of how we are, but we don’t have to miss out on love, marriage, and babies. We can have that together. All you need to do is listen to the sound of my voice and get better. Let the serum latch onto you and make you all better.”
Dakota climbed onto the sizeable California-king bed and nestled as close to Bennett as she could. She kissed his lips softly.
“Come back to me, Bennett. I need you.”
She didn’t move, keeping her eyes on his chest