Word travels fast in a small town.
Word travels faster in a small town full of werewolves with enhanced hearing and a gossip network rivaling the internet.
By the end of the week, half the Ridge knew I’d agreed to “consider staying.”
I knew because they all showed up with animals.
“I’m not open,” I told the line of people outside the old laundromat building on Main that Theo had indicated as “potential clinic space.”
They ignored me.
“This is Lulu,” a woman in her forties said, shoving a corgi into my arms. “She’s limping. Fix her or I’ll tell on you to Patty.”
“I don’t have an exam table,” I protested, juggling corgi and clipboard. “Or meds. Or staff. Or a functioning *door* yet.”
“We have sawhorses,” Elias said cheerfully from behind me, carrying in a sheet of plywood. “And folding tables. You’ve got hands. You’re good.”
“Don’t encourage them,” I hissed at him.
He grinned, wicked and unrepentant.
“It’s either this or they show up at your cabin at two in the morning with bleeding goats,” he said. “Trust me. This is…better.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The laundromat had been closed for years. The windows were grimy. The floor was concrete. The plumbing was iffy. But it was central. It had three big floor drains. And it was, as Theo had said, “cheap as sin” because no one wanted it.
He’d shown it to me the day after Hayes’s visit, his face carefully neutral.
“You could make it work,” he’d said, leaning against the doorway. “Bathroom in the back. We can rip out the old hookups, put in kennels. I’ll build you exam tables. The Pack’ll help.”
“I haven’t said yes,” I’d reminded him.
“You’re here,” he’d said simply. “Might as well have somewhere to put your stethoscope.”
Now, a week later, the somewhere was full of bodies and barking.
“Okay,” I said, setting Lulu gently on the makeshift exam table. “One at a time. If you don’t have an emergency, you go home and make an appointment. I am *not* running a walk-in emergency clinic out of a building with no proper lighting and one working outlet.”
“Yet,” Jordan murmured, perched on the old change machine, laptop balanced on his knees. “You’re not doing that *yet.*”
I glared at him.
He opened a spreadsheet.
“I’m making you a schedule,” he said. “And a client database. You’re welcome.”
“You’re all enablers,” I muttered.
Theo, behind the half-demolished wall where the old folding tables had been, laughed.
It was a low, warm sound that curled in my belly.
“Focus, Rory,” he called. “Dog first. Then hate us.”
Lulu had a torn pad. Infection starting. I cleaned it, bandaged it, talked her very anxious owner through aftercare. Next up: a cat with a suspicious bald patch. Then a border collie who apparently thought swallowing rocks was a fun hobby.
By noon, my shirt was stained, my hair was a mess, and I felt more like myself than I had in weeks.
“Lunch,” Patty announced around one, sweeping in with a basket of sandwiches. “You stop and eat or I start shoving food in your mouth between patients.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, accepting the sandwich like a lifeline.
She kissed my cheek.
“Doc,” she said fondly. “Look at you. Maggie would be…something. Proud. Annoyed. Giving unsolicited advice. All of the above.”
Emotion pricked my eyes.
“Yeah,” I said roughly. “All of the above.”
Theo appeared at my elbow with a water bottle.
“Drink,” he said.
“Bossy,” I grumbled, but I took it.
His fingers brushed mine.
The tiny contact sent a little jolt up my arm.
We’d been…careful this week.
No more kisses.
Not for lack of wanting.
We were…testing our terms. Seeing if we could exist in the same space without falling into each other like magnets every time.
It was…hard.
His scent followed me around the half-finished clinic, all sawdust and sweat and that metallic tang of wolf. When he bent to measure something, the hem of his shirt rode up. When he laughed with Elias over some crooked beam, my stomach flipped.
I caught him looking at me more than once.
Not just at my body.
At my hands, moving over a patient. At my face, focused. At my mouth, when I chewed my lip thinking.
Heat curled low in my belly each time.
“Stop staring,” I muttered once, without looking up from a rabbit’s infected ear.
“I’m making sure you’re using sterile technique,” he said blandly.
“This is not your domain,” I said. “You’re not OSHA here.”
“I’m always OSHA,” he said.
The clinic slowly took shape over the week.
Walls patched. New wiring run. Exam lights installed. A receptionist desk appeared one morning, donated by the bank. Doc Hargrove dropped by and left his old X-ray machine with a terse, “Don’t break it, I’m not paying to fix it.”
I hung my diplomas crookedly on the back wall, more to shut Patty up than because I cared.
“You *earned* those,” she said, hands on hips. “You don’t hide them in a drawer.”
“I don’t want people to think I’m…pretentious,” I muttered.
“Honey,” she said. “You live on a mountain with werewolves. The ship on weird impressions has sailed.”
She had a point.
Jordan set up a basic website.
CUTTER’S RIDGE ANIMAL CARE – DR. AURORA LANE.
The name looked…right.
One evening, as the last client—Jim with his eternally sick goats—left, Theo flicked off the work light and leaned against the new front desk.
“You realize this is a yes,” he said casually. “Building this.”
“No,” I said, flipping through a stack of intake forms. “This is a…maybe. A trial. A…pop-up vet.”
He snorted.
“Pop-up vets don’t order surgical lights,” he said. “Or ask me about best flooring for blood cleanup.”
“Practicality doesn’t equal commitment,” I said. “I’m…hedging.”
He stepped closer.
“Rory,” he said. “You’ve seen my world. You’ve watched us shift. You’ve listened to Hayes drone. Now this is you…making your mark in mine. That matters. To me. To the Ridge.”
“To me,” I corrected. “I’m doing this for *me.*”
His eyes warmed.
“Good,” he said. “That’s how it should be.”
We were inches apart.
My pulse tripped.
He didn’t lean in.
He braced his hands on the desk instead, caging me in without touching.
“This is going to be messy,” he said quietly. “This…us. This…Pack. This…compromise. Hayes is entertaining the idea of alternative deals today. Tomorrow he might wake up cranky and decide rituals are heresy. The land might throw a fit when we start…offering effort instead of blood. You’re going to be in the middle of that storm whether you keep me at arm’s length or not.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” he asked. “Really?”
I thought of the full moon. Of the hum under my feet. Of the old stone in the clearing. Of my mother’s voice on the phone, telling me not to disappear into someone else’s myth.
“Yes,” I said, surprising myself with the steadiness in it. “I do.”
He held my gaze.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
“Okay then,” he said. “Doc. Welcome to the Pack.”
The word hit me in a new way.
Not as an obligation.
As…belonging.
Something in me unclenched.
“Don’t make it a big deal,” I muttered, fighting a ridiculous urge to cry. “I just signed a lease on a building with terrible insulation.”
He chuckled.
“That insulation will be perfect,” he said. “In two days.”
“Why two days?” I asked suspiciously.
“Because that’s how long it’ll take me to fix it,” he said, smug.
“You’re impossible,” I said.
“And yet,” he said, “here you are.”
He wasn’t wrong.
***