Chapter Ten

“I’m sure this scratch will heal with a simple shift,” Doc said for the tenth time that morning. Bent over Chuck Branston’s arm, he dabbed at the jagged scratch with some alcohol. It didn’t even need a band-aid. “What is it you really wanted to see me about?”

Chuck was one of the many rabbit shifters in town. He was a nice enough boy of about twenty, with blond hair and bright blue eyes and a fair skin that showed every one of his blushes. “I was worried about my arm but seeing as you asked. Lander over at the diner said you’d been claimed by Deputy Joe. He’s pretty upset about it. He’s been trying to work up the courage to ask the deputy out for months. A bit like me.”

“You wanted to ask Joe out too?” Doc wasn’t surprised Joe had his own fan club. Just because he didn’t partake in gossip didn’t mean he didn’t hear it and he’d spent two years frustrated every time he had to listen to someone else drool over the way his mate looked in his uniform.

But maybe Chuck wasn’t part of that group as he shook his head. “Ew, no, that would be too weird, with Lander lusting and sighing over him all the time.” He tilted his head shyly. “I’m kinda into daddy figures myself. So, I was wondering….”

Doc straightened his spine and glared. “Whatever you were going to say, don’t. I might be ancient compared to you, but I’m not anyone’s daddy. Joe is my true mate and that is the only reason I allowed him to claim me.”

“Nah.” Chuck grinned. “There’s no need to pull my leg, Doc. I can take a hint. Silver fox like you, I bet you’ve got a dozen men stashed in your apartment lusting after you. If you knew Joe was your true mate, you guys would have done the humpty dumpty years ago. Fuck, he must be close to thirty or something so you both had to know. Come on, you can tell me, I won’t tell anyone.”

Only a dozen of his friends and then countless others on social media, Doc thought drily. “The truth of the matter is, I’m a right asshole. I made Joe wait because that’s the kind of bastard I am. I was damn lucky he forgave me, don’t you think?”

Chuck wriggled his nose as he sniffed. “Shit, you’re not lying. I mean, yeah. If my mate ignored me for years, I wouldn’t let him bite me if he begged me.”

“And that just goes to show what a saint Joe is. So, you can tell your friend Lander and anyone else who thinks they have a chance at my hunky deputy, to keep their hands off. Understood?”

“Yes, Doc, although Lander’s going to be devastated.” Chuck jumped off the bed with the exuberance of youth and headed for the door.

“And Chuck, next time you want to deliberately scratch yourself, make sure you use a new nail. Rusty wounds can go septic really quickly and that’s without the peril of lockjaw.”

“You’re full of jokes today, Doc. Mating must agree with you.” Chuck skipped out the door leaving Doc shaking his head. Thankfully, the dangers of tetanus weren’t common in shifters as they generally shifted to heal any minor wounds. “He could have just talked to me in the first place,” Doc muttered as he disposed of the dirty swabs and then went out to the waiting room. A man and two women looked up at him expectantly.

Sighing heavily, Doc said, “Do any of you have any major injuries, or were you just here to quiz me on my mating with Deputy Joe? Because if it is information you’re looking for it would be a lot quicker if I just answered your questions now as a group, and then we can all get on with our day.”

The people in the waiting room all looked at each other.

“Just as I thought.” Doc crossed his arms. “Deputy Joe is my fated mate. We’ve both known about it for years, but I was being an asshole and refused to accept his claim for a variety of reasons which are personal. When I knew Deputy Joe had been severely hurt in his altercation with Robert Quincy, I realized, like an old fool, that being with Joe was all I wanted, and I begged his forgiveness. Like the patient man he is, Joe forgave me, he claimed me and that is the end of the matter. Anything else?”

“Is Deputy Joe all right now, Doc?” Mrs. Hannah from the clothes shop asked. “My Errol said he looked peaky this morning at the diner. A growing man like that needs his food.”

Her friend, Betty who ran the hair salon nodded. “Joe’s always been a good boy. You’re going to have to take care of him, Doc. Lord knows, his own family spit on him every chance they got, and that boy needs some loving.”

“I’ll be sure to meet all his needs, ladies. He is very special to me. Now is that all?”

“Well, I think I got an ingrown toenail.” Dan, the beta wolf who ran the hardware store pointed at his boot. “I didn’t know you was mated, so congratulations. But what about my foot?”

“Come on in, Dan, and I’ll take a look at it. Ladies, you have a nice day and feel free to pass on what I said about my mate.” Doc nodded at the two women who were gathering their things and indicated for Dan to go into his treatment room. As he closed the door, he looked up at the clock. Joe had been gone over an hour. Rubbing away the pang in his chest and forcing down his animal’s anxiety, Doc pulled up his rolling stool as Dan sat on the edge of the bed. “Get your boot off, and let’s take a look.”

Poking around what was indeed an ingrown toenail, Doc was surprised when Dan suddenly spoke up. From memory, he’d only spoken a dozen words with the man in years. “What’s it like, finding your true mate?”

Doc looked up, but Dan was staring at an eye chart on the wall. “It’s like a punch in the stomach,” Doc said focusing his eyes on the inflamed toe. “You catch a person’s scent, and all of a sudden you can feel it all over your body. Your animal wants to break free, your cock goes nuts and you know your life is about to change forever.”

“I’ve never had that,” Dan said so softly Doc strained to hear. “It’s my nose. Something happened when I was a pup. I’ve never been able to smell anything. There’s this lady, she’s a rabbit. Jenny is her name. She makes me feel all of the things you said, but I can’t smell her and it’s not as though I can ask her if she can scent me. Then she’ll know, you know, that there’s something wrong with me and I don’t want her to find out.”

“You’ve had this problem as a kid and you’ve never said anything to me?”

“Well, a man doesn’t like to talk about these things.” Dan winced as Doc probed a particularly sore part of his toe but hid his discomfort just as quick. “It’s not something I’ve really worried about. Sometimes, not being able to scent anything’s been a blessing in disguise, you know, when I’ve been in the pub some nights. I don’t hunt in my fur, and I never imagined I’d meet my mate. But then I saw Jenny and now…you know what I mean, being mated yourself.”

“It consumes the brain, that’s for sure.” Doc snipped and yanked out the offending piece of toenail. Dan barely flinched, but then beta wolves were built tough. Dabbing at the spot of blood that welled up on the side of Dan’s toe, Doc could see it was clotting already. “Your toe’s fine now, but if you lay back, I’ll take a look at your nose for you.”

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” But despite his worry, Dan lay down quick enough. “It’s just, I lost my pack already because I can’t smell anything, and I like my life here.”

“You know me better than that,” Doc snapped back. “Think how much better your life would be if you had Jenny in it.”

“She is so pretty,” Dan stared at the ceiling while Doc ran his fingers along the top of Dan’s cheek bones. “She’s got a real softness about her and every time I see her, it’s like the sun comes out even on a rainy day.”

Doc tried to hide his smile, but it wasn’t easy. He could empathize with the way Dan felt. He used to think Joe walked around with his personal spotlight, the way he seemed to glow every time Doc saw him. He was all focus though when he felt a small lump that shouldn’t be in Dan’s sinus cavity, very close to the nose. Pressing gently on the other side of the nose, he noticed it was there too. It couldn’t be a complete blockage, or Dan wouldn’t be able to breathe, but there was definitely something there.

“When you fell, when you were young, did you see a pack doctor or anything like that?” He asked, grabbing hold of a small pair of forceps and his pencil torch.

“My mom said my nose bled for ages, but when it stopped she figured it was just like a normal bang, you know. I was only about four at the time. I didn’t even realize I couldn’t smell anything until puberty hit me and I shifted for the first time.”

“I think the fall dislodged a tiny splinter of bone from your skull, or cartilage or something, and in those years between when the fall happened, and you shifted for the first time, calcified deposits grew around the initial impact and slowly reduced your ability to smell. I imagine food doesn’t taste that interesting either.”

“Never knew what the fuss was about it,” Dan chuckled. “My stomach tells me I’m hungry and I eat, but yeah, I don’t really enjoy it the way I see other people do.”

Examining all he could without being too invasive, Doc sat back. “The good news is I could do surgery to remove the blockage. The problem is, because the damage happened when you were really young, it could take months before your olfactory sensory neurons, the things inside your nose that connect to the brain and tell your brain what something smells like, start to work again. There is also a chance they’re permanently damaged and the surgery might not work at all.”

Dan’s face fell. “How will I be able to find out if Jenny is my true mate? If I keep putting her off, she’s going to think I don’t want her and I do.”

Doc was useless as a counselor, that was why he studied as a general practitioner, and then later as a surgeon. He didn’t have the time or patience to help people with their emotional problems unless they could be solved with physical treatment. But he felt a rush of compassion for Dan. Damn mating hormones. “Dan, this is strictly between you and me, all right? You tell anyone I am dishing out advice and I’ll deny it.”

He waited until Dan nodded before continuing. “What I think you should do is take Jenny out on a date. A private date. No relatives or friends and make sure it’s somewhere nice – maybe in Jackson so you can have some privacy. Buy her a lovely dinner, remember rabbits aren’t big meat eaters so make sure they have salad on the menu. Then, explain what happened to you.”

“Now wait,” Doc said quickly as Dan’s eyes widened. “If she is your mate then she deserves the truth. She’s also a shifter. She will know if you two are mates or not, because she will be able to scent you. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that if she accepts your dinner invitation then you can pretty much guarantee she is your mate. Contrary to popular belief, most shifter rabbits don’t engage in casual sex. They wait for their mate, so if she says yes to dinner, then there is a good chance the rest of the signs your body was telling you were right.”

“No one else in town knows except you,” Dan protested. “What if the other wolves start giving me shit if it becomes public knowledge?”

“Do you really think Jenny would do that to you? Spread gossip all over town like that?”

After a long minute, Dan shook his head. “No. Jenny’s not like that. She’s quiet and spends more time in the library than going out with friends.”

“Then you need to take a chance. I mean, I could do this operation and it could work and then your sense of smell would be restored. But that could take a while and, in the meantime, if Jenny has scented you, then how’s she going to feel, thinking you know you two are mates and so clearly don’t want her?”

“She’ll think I’m being the same sort of bastard you’d been with Deputy Joe,” Dan chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right. I can’t sleep for thinking about her. I don’t know how you held out for years.”

“I spent a hell of a lot of frustrating time with my right hand,” Doc grinned to show he was teasing. “Talk to Jenny, ask her out on a date and then, if it all works out, you can both come and see me, and I’ll explain about the operation, what’s going to happen and how it might help with your sense of smell. You don’t want to miss the scent of her being pregnant with your pups, do you?”

“Aw, fuck, Doc. Now, I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it.” Dan sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “You’re a persuasive old coot, you know that?”

“Whatever works. Good luck with your dinner.”

Dan had barely been gone a minute and there was a tap at the door. “Yes?” Doc was jotting down some notes on what he’d found and treatment options for Dan. He looked up to see Joe poke his head around the door. His mouth stretched into a genuine smile and his cock firmed underneath his white coat. “Joe, I’ve been worried about you. Come in, come in.”

“I wasn’t sure if you had someone here with you,” Joe opened the door to reveal a large covered tray he was holding in one hand. “I brought you lunch seeing as our breakfast was ruined by my work.”

Doc’s heart melted. He knew it wasn’t physically possible without external application of heat, but that was exactly what it felt like – his solid heart muscle oozing like a melting ice cream. Standing up, he met Joe halfway, taking the tray from his hand and putting on the nearest stainless steel trolley. “My work is bound to interfere with our lives more often than not, too, babe. I’m not upset by what happened this morning. I’m just so freaking glad to see you.” Cupping Joe’s jaw with both hands, he pulled his young mate closer for a much needed kiss. His ass clenched as he felt Joe’s arms wrap around him, his lips yielding to his. I need to get a more comfortable treatment bed.