My laptop died! But I'm back again with a HP Pavilion, so I'm not going anywhere. You can't get rid of me that easy ;) 

Enjoy this. It's gonna be a cringy one with lots of dialogue, but at least we have our superman.. Colt Myers --
*lofty sigh

Writing too much dialogue is awkward sometimes lol

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"Alrighty, so here is where we keep the bandages and scissors, this drawer is where we keep the splints..." Ana goes on and on and I make a mental note of everything, but I was more focused on the new guy who just walked in with a funny looking limp. 

Today was my first day at the clinic, and I was rootin', tootin' ready for shootin;. If shootin' meant like... healing people; obviously. 

"Hey, you okay?" She asks closing a drawer.

"Hmm? Oh yeah! I'm just excited," I say and rub my hands together, forgetting until they make contact that my hands were still bandaged up and sore.

She smiles and nudges me, "go dig in. Come find me if you get stuck," she winks and clicks her pen, bringing it to her clipboard as she walks away, presumably to go tend to someone else, work her Ana magic.

I take the chart of the patient I am to see next and draw back the curtain to find a grumpy looking woman slightly older than me with a black eye, a split lip and a swollen looking set of knuckles. 

"Yikes.. how's the other guy?" I chuckle as I close the curtain behind me and set the chart down. 

She returns my chuckle and smiles a bit, offering me her knuckles to look at.

"What happened?" I choose to make some conversation, maybe a friend.

She rolls her eyes and grumbles, "some bitch was flirting with my mate.."

I wince, "that's rough. Did he flirt back?" I ask as I sneak some salve onto her knuckles. 

"No," she laughs. "He knows I'd tear him apart. Especially after getting with a slut like Thalia." I drop the cotton pad I was holding to her lip. 

Aaaaand that's where I go berserk.

I totally freeze up for a minute, probably going pale and starting to shake like in the movies.

"Hey.. you okay?" Her tone softens. 

I tear my bandages off and show her my hands, my lower back and the amount of leg I can show her without taking my pants off. 

She looks surprised and concerned. 

"Thalia did this to me," I say getting more and more angry by the minute. She could mess with me, but when others get involved, that's where her reign of terror ends.

She scoffs, "sounds like something she would do. What the hell did you do?" 

I re-bandage myself and say in a lower tone, "I'm with the guy she's convinced is her mate even though he wants nothing to do with her."

She stops me, "you need to get away from him, and from her. She'll end you!" She whisper screams and makes a throat cutting motion. 

"I'm not afraid of a psycho," I shake my head. 

She laughs in disbelief, "why don't you say that louder for her to hear?" Geez.. it's as if Thalia was inside her head or something. 

"What was your name?" She asks.

"Oh.. Uhm Collins.. Nova Collins."

She laughs, clapping her hands like an amused seal, "you're fucked! You took her man, and her spotlight. Run while you still can, girlfriend." 

Now I was getting frustrated. It's just a psycho with separation anxiety. Why was she treated like some monarch? 

Before I could ask any questions, one of the other nurses pulls the curtain back, telling me that a patient has requested me. 

"Tell the patient I'm preoccupied and I'll be with them later," I say as I give this stranger a cold compress for her eye. She was done anyway, I just wanted more answers.

"Miss Collins.. he is high profile. He won't wait," the nurse says impatiently. 

I groan and tell this girl that she was free to go miss... Scarlet?

"That's me. Come find me if you ever reconsider," she winks and gets up.

I take the chart from the other nurse and draw back the curtain for the next patient.. the one who requested me.

I was new here! Nobody knows me! Who the hell- shit.

"Nova!" A disgustingly familiar voice says and comes to hug me. I don't hug back. 

Samael Van Doren. 

I slap his hand away when it gets too close to crispy territory.

"What seems to be the problem that no other nurse here could handle?" I ask, not afraid to show some level of my annoyance.

He chuckles, "I heard it was your first day! Thought I'd come in for moral support." He shows me his hand that bore a long, slightly too intentional cut across the palm. I shudder at the thought.

Wait, how did he know? Nobody would have told him.

"Clumsy old me got a little overzealous while I was chopping vegetables earlier. Could I get some privacy? I'd hate for the whole pack to know how clumsy I am," he says referring to the curtain I kept open for a very good reason.

"We are rather slow today, and everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes make you seem human," I say simply. 

His face turns dark, "close the curtain," he growls. 

Ok, but not without some attitude. I roll my eyes and close it, intentionally leaving a smidge open. He could ruin me with but one word to the Alpha. 

His hands immediately start to travel. Over my arms, down my wrists, down my sides. He even has the audacity to squeeze. I wince and jerk away as he pinched at a particularly nasty area of my burns.

He laughs, "come on now, I can go harder than that," he tries to tease and almost gets his hand back on me before I back away right in the nick of time. 

"You will maintain your distance, Mr. Van Doren," I say in a lower tone than usual, not feeling up to playing nice, or even playing at all.

"You didn't say please," he smiles and pulls me to him. Suddenly I'm in his chest.

I dig a finger into his injured palm, forcing him to let me go.

"If you won't let me do my job, I will have no choice but to send you somewhere else. Hendrix can't blame me for that," I yank his hand toward me and decide to clean it with alcohol instead of something more painless. 

He winces and curses at me a few times. 

I put some iodine on a bandage and wrap it around his hand, going to open the curtain again as I mumble the suggested procedure for taking care of it simply because I had to. I wished it would fester and putrefy and give him a long slow death, but that's not awfully nurse-y of me. 

"Allow me to properly thank you," he growls thinking he is so suave and reaches in for a kiss. The fucker tries to kiss me.

Instinct kicks in, instinct being a move that Taylor taught me for a situation exactly like this. His arm goes to my shoulder. I step back to straighten it and use his momentum to hit him under the chin. Hard. This shocks him so that I can get his legs out from under him and pin him with a foot on his fresh bandage. 

"Touch me again, or come to harass me at my work place again and I will personally see to it that you will never be a threat to another woman ever again," my tone is scathing, livid. So much so that the threat did not come out as a yell but as a gritted teeth, fists clenched, narrow eyed, legitimately scary warning. I didn't even know I had it in me to be scary.

"Ohhhh you're gonna pay for that, you stupid whore," he yells and gets up, lunging for me. The equivalent of security comes to grab him just before he reaches me and escort him out.. more like drag him.

"This isn't over yet, bitch!" He yells from the door. 

Ana comes to put her arm around me and lead me away from him, averting my gaze to focus on her, on another direction, anything but him.

I was shaking. 

"Are you okay?" She asks softly.

"N-no. He's gonna go talk to Hendrix and I'm gonna lose everything! I smell like him! Colt is never gonna-" 

"Hey, hey calm down. He's on his way. I called him when I saw Samael come in. I shouldn't have let him be alone with you, I'm sorry," she rubs my back soothingly.

"Why would you do that?! He's gonna be so mad at me for even getting into that!" I sob and put my face in my hands. 

"Getting into what?" His husky voice comes from behind. "What's going on here?" He asks toward Ana. 

She shakes her head and urges us both into the equivalent of a break room away from the prying eyes.

She sits me down and hands me a tissue, Colt rushes to me and holds me to him. His grip on me loosens when he gets a whiff of me, "what the hell happened?"

"I knew something was off when he came in. I wouldn't have allowed her to be near him had I known he asked," she leans up against the counter with her arms crossed.

I push away from him, but he grabs me tighter again. I sob again and bury my face in the crook of his arm.

"Nova, can you tell us what happened? I only saw the last part," she says almost bashfully, as if this was her fault.

I sniff and try to collect words. "One of the nurses came to disrupt me while I was finishing with another patient. She said it was urgent and that someone asked for me. He presented with a cut on his hand but insisted that the curtain be closed anyway. I shouldn't have even gone in!" I sob. "He was touching my arms and my hands and my back," I shiver when I feel his hands on me again. 

"It's all my fault," I curl up in the chair, only to be lifted by Colt who holds me as if it's nothing.

"Where did he go? I'll kill the bastard," he only sounds so threatening while he holds me. 

"That isn't the solution here, Myers," Ana sighs. "He'll be taken care of. When Hendrix asks for the actual story, I'll give him my testimony and hopefully he'll choose to side with us."

"Hopefully?!" I spring up. "I could lose everything and all you've got is hopefully?" I talk with my hands, still in Colt's arms. He strokes my arm and holds me closer to calm me down.. or try to.

"Hendrix trusts me, and he likes you, Nova. When Colt confirms it, we basically have it hook, line and sinker," Ana reasons.

"Not if I kill him first," Colt grumbles, shaking his head. 

"Take her home and don't take your eyes off her. If history is any indication, he will come back to exact his revenge," she sighs.

He growls and holds me tighter to him, letting me comfort myself with his smell, fading into his chest. The only chest I ever wanted to be in. My only comfort was Samael's fleeting smell leaving and being replaced by Colt's.

"She needs you right now," Ana says softly looking at him. 

He sighs and looks down at me, kissing my head, carrying me out.

~~

He tries to set me down on the passenger side of his truck, but I wasn't ready for him to let me go.

He chuckles, "clingy little thing, aren't you?" He rubs my back as he goes around to his side and sits as best as he can in the driver's seat. 

His voice, combined with his warmth and the sound of the car moving was enough to blissfully numb me for a while. I don't even notice that we are driving more than what would be necessary to get to my house.

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