Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 7 - TESCO

The brilliant thing about the mind-link was that you could eat and talk at the same time ... in theory, at least. Unfortunately, it was so second-nature to swallow your food before speaking that Bryn had to keep stopping and starting and stopping and starting.

"You're allowed to go and get food, you know," I told him. "And to piss."

"I didn't want her to wake up alone," Bryn mumbled. "It was a rough night."

I didn't doubt it. Eira was shaking a little bit now, and I reached forwards to tug the blanket over her shoulders properly. By the time I sat back, the marmite sandwich was gone. We had a minute of silence — a rare luxury when my cousin was around — and it was brought to an abrupt end when the drip started that horrible monotone beeping which made you want to claw your own ears off.

Boop-beep-boop.

And then, after an uncomfortable pause...

Boop-beep-boop, again and again, until I was grinding my teeth together. Air in line, the little screen declared, and while Bryn and I both knew how to fix that, we weren't allowed to touch the drip, so I summoned Auntie Fion with a flick of the mind-link.

"I reckon I'll train as a nurse," Bryn told me. "You know, like Ellie."

Ellie had trained as a nurse because she was human, and there weren't many ways for a human to make themselves useful in a war between shifters. But Bryn? True, he was one of the happiest, bubbliest people I knew, but ... he'd get bored in five seconds flat.

I didn't say that outright, of course. "Thought you wanted to be a raider?"

"Well, yeah, but I can do both."

"It's a lot of work, pup. A lot of things to learn..."

"I know," he said, and that was a brave thing to say, because my cousin had always struggled with our lessons. Like Rhodri and like his father, he was sharp as anything in a conversation, but things got messy when pens and paper came into the equation.

"Then go for it," I told him.

Fion bustled into the ward with her arms full of dressing packs. She dumped them all in my lap, jerked a finger at the drawers, then went to fiddle with the drip. I pried myself out of the chair, slowly, excruciatingly. Bryn decided to help me by prodding me with his cold toes. In my absence, he grinned and stretched out in the chair like a cat.

By the time I'd finished putting away the dressings, the beeping had stopped. Fion was washing her hands with alcohol gel. It made the whole room stink, of course, and my wolf hated that smell. It was associated with the burning sensation of antiseptic on an open wound.

"While I've got you both here, can I have some blood?" Fion asked us in an undertone.

Bryn and I looked at each other. It was not an unusual request now that she had started experimenting with shifter biology.

"Sure."

"Alright."

So she stuck both of us with butterfly needles and took several syringes of blood.

"Is this for the healing thing?" Bryn asked, already peeling the cotton wool and tape away from his elbow. He had the nerve to look confused that it was still bleeding.

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Fion said. I made a face, and it didn't get past her. "Here, I can show you, Eva."

I made another face. Normally, Fion's experiments involved a bunch of scarily long words and fast-paced explanations.

"No, it's cool," Bryn assured me. "Go look, honest."

His standards for 'cool' were very high, so I followed my aunt to the far side of the room, where the microscope and the centrifuge and other pieces of equipment we'd nicked from flockie doctors were set up. She set our blood samples on the counter and held up another two tubes of blood. One was crimson, and one was dark maroon.