The Wolf Princess

“True. But then, I went to school with a bunch of American kids.”

“School? You went to an international high school?”

This time her laugh sounded a bit forced. “Not high school. College.”

“You went to college?” He didn’t know why he was so surprised. “Where?”

“California,” she shot back. “And you don’t have to sound so surprised. Many royal families send their children abroad to universities.”

“True, but I thought most of them went to Cambridge or Princeton or Yale.”

“Harvard, MIT, Stanford and John Hopkins were all good schools, but University of California at Berkeley was fifth ranked.”

“In what?”

“Initially, I went for molecular biology.”

“What?” He dropped the microphone. Facing her, he realized his mouth hung open and closed it. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No.” The smile in her voice spoke volumes. “I’m not kidding. And yes, I graduated. I received both my bachelor’s and my master’s degrees. I have to decide whether to go back in the fall to finish working on my doctorate.”

“In molecular biology?”

She sighed. Loudly. “Yes. Now you see why I wanted explanations about the tests.”

Dumbfounded, he tried to process this information. Obviously, the brief bit of research he’d been given was inadequate. Seriously lacking. He made a mental note to fire that particular research assistant when he got back in the States.

“No offense, Dr. Streib,” she continued, “but time is wasting. We need to move things along here. I do have other duties besides working with you.”

“Call me Braden,” he said without thinking, still feeling a bit foolish.

“Then you can call me Alisa,” she graciously granted. “Now, let’s get started.”

“All right.” He forced himself to focus as she took a seat in his chair. Readying the needle to prick her finger, he considered. Doing such things was difficult while blind, but not completely impossible, as long as he wore gloves and took care not to contaminate the sample. Still, this was too important to take the risk.

“One moment,” he told Alisa, then pressed the button on his console that would summon his assistant.

A moment later, Katya arrived. “Yes, Doctor?”

Explaining what he wanted, he waited while she took the blood samples. When she’d finished, he directed her to place the slides under the multi-faceted microscope for his machine to view and analyze. Though Katya didn’t know, along with Alisa’s were the samples he’d taken of his own blood earlier, for comparison purposes.

Katya did as he directed and pushed the button for the machine to begin to analyze. This process would take several minutes.

“Will there be anything else?” Katya asked.

“That will be it for now,” he told her.

Murmuring something about calling her if he needed her again, Katya left the room, leaving him alone again with Alisa.

As he turned to face her, he braced himself for more questions. He wasn’t wrong.

“Tell me about your work. I’m very curious how you are a neurosurgeon when you cannot see,” she mused. “Or, was that something you only did before the explosion?”

No tiptoeing around for her. This time, her bluntness didn’t surprise him. In fact, after months of colleagues avoiding the issue, he actually welcomed talking about it. And of course, he’d lost the capacity to be wounded shortly after he woke up in a Denver burn unit with his head wrapped in bandages, unable to see.

“I was a surgeon,” he said, careful to keep all traces of bitterness from his voice. “Past tense. Before the explosion, I was an excellent neurosurgeon, working in Denver. One of the top ones, at least among the Pack. Three days a week, I’d operate on someone’s brain, or spine, or peripheral nerves. I also taught medical students and gave some lectures to residents. In my spare time, I did research for the Pack.”

“Spare time? That sounds like you didn’t have much.”

He shrugged. “I did what I could when I could. I was happy. I made good money, so my wife was happy as well.”

“Wife?” A certain watchful stillness came over her voice. “I didn’t know you were married.”

Chapter 5

He forced a smile, trying to swallow. Again he had that awful taste in his mouth, like copper. This happened more and more frequently whenever he tried to relive the past. “Again, past tense. I was married. I’m not now. She left me immediately after the accident, and filed for divorce before the week was over.”

If she had comments on what kind of woman would do such a thing, she didn’t voice them. He supposed he shouldn’t be disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead, the warmth in her voice making his wolf nudge him playfully.

A simple, heartfelt response. He welcomed it, glad she didn’t ask him a thousand follow-up questions that he had no desire to answer.

Yet. He waited, and still she said nothing else.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, he found himself continuing. “I met Camille—my ex-wife—when I was in residency. She was a nurse, a newly minted RN. Looking back, I think she loved the idea of being married to a doctor. I’m not sure she ever entirely loved me for who I am rather than what I was.”

And when he’d been unable to be her status symbol, when his hope of resuming his career as a top neurosurgeon had disappeared, so had Camille. In reflection, he hadn’t even really been surprised.

When Alisa squeezed his shoulder, he realized how tense he’d gotten and tried to force himself to relax.

“Was your ex Pack, too? Or human?”

“Oh, she was Pack. She was a full-blooded shifter, not a Halfling like me.” And later, when the divorce was under way and he’d dared disagree with something she’d wanted, she’d thrown that up against him, as if his bloodline was something to be ashamed of.

For all he knew, most full-blooded shifters secretly looked down on Halflings. He had no way of knowing.

Raising his head, he debated asking. But Alisa was not only a full-blood, but a princess. Definitely not the right person to answer. And really, what did it matter now? He was what he was. That part of himself he couldn’t change. He had much more pressing issues to worry about.

While lost in his thoughts, to his shock, Alisa got out of her chair and hugged him, letting him know without words that her spirit was nothing like Camille’s. Either that, he thought wryly, or he really was a sap.