Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“Are you the nurse here?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Another member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood was striding into the chamber. With a goatee and tattoos at his temple, and those telltale black daggers strapped, handles down, under his leather jacket, he was intense, and that was before she met his icy eyes.
“Yes,” she said to him. Then she cleared her throat, the sense that her life had been leading up to just this moment hitting her with a rush of purpose. “I am the nurse here. I’ve come because… well, it’s a long story.”
“You don’t have to explain, but we got patients for you.”
Okay, Nadya, she told herself as she took a deep breath. It’s time.
“If we’re dealing with the prison populace,” she said with authority, “it’ll be wiser to take the drugs and supplies from my clinic up to the sleeping quarters. We’ll be looking at skin, bladder, and respiratory infections, but also tooth abscesses and malnutrition. I have a stock of antibiotics and painkillers, and there are enough opiates down the hall to treat half the continental United States. No, there are no records of identities that I’ve ever found, verbal accounts are going to have to suffice to establish a census and start to create files. It goes without saying that I am happy to take orders from anybody. I just want to finally be able to treat my patients the way they deserve.”
The male with the goatee stared at her. Then he inclined his head with a sly smile. “I think you’re going to be giving the orders, ma’am. Let me introduce you to our docs.”
“Thank you,” she murmured as she bowed. “I’m eager to meet them.”
The rest of the night passed in a blur. She and the other medical professionals, who were great, worked together in the sleeping quarters, triaging the prisoners, providing food, starting to develop a list of names and conditions. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood continued to secure the premises, changing locks, confiscating keys to the vehicles out back, establishing a safe zone.
Mayhem and the Jackal were a great help, hauling supplies up from the clinic and helping to establish the triage and treatment area, and Lucan and Rio arrived to aid the effort just as dawn was arising.
When the sun came up, everything was locked tight and the work continued.
Except Kane was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Aweek later, Nadya had things running smoothly in her new clinic location. The Black Dagger Brotherhood had proven to be invaluable, bringing food and more medical supplies, but never asking for anything in return, a regular rotation of fighters showing up and pulling shifts at the former prison. And the same was true for the medical staff that came with them.
They weren’t the only ones who helped. The Jackal, as well as his son, his female, and his female’s sister moved in, as did Rio and Lucan. There was just so much to do, like food to make, clothes to hand out—and oral histories to record.
If there were any prisoners who had committed petty crimes, their sentences were hundreds of years too long for the property infractions or social insults they’d committed. And the violent prisoners had already been weeded out, as the Executioner had killed any of the ones prone to physical attacks. And what was left after those two groups were those who had been thrown into the camp for nefarious reasons such as personal or familial slights, or other things that were unconscionable.
So they were making progress righting wrongs, for the most part.
But not in all areas. Apex was still just sitting beside his wolven, who remained mostly unresponsive. Because of the trauma Callum had endured, the two of them continued to stay in those private quarters, and Nadya was the one who brought them meals and kept assessing the comatose male’s condition.
Apex only left the male for twenty minutes a night, allowing Nadya to sit with Callum as he disappeared to wherever he went. The only thing she knew was that every time he came back, it was with another white flower. The bed in the room was now surrounded by white blooms in various kinds of vases. She had a feeling the vampire was breaking into a florist’s somewhere, the fragrance of his floral thieving the kind of perfume she looked forward to smelling and which he clearly hoped would rouse the male.
So far, he was still waiting.
And in her own way so was Nadya. For someone else.
Kane… remained nowhere to be found.
By the fourth night when he hadn’t appeared or been discovered wounded, she had resigned herself to the conclusion she had been fighting.
He must have been killed during the infiltration.
The knowledge was horrifying enough, but when she thought about the way they’d left things, her heart ached to the point where she couldn’t catch her breath. She’d had her reasons for what she’d done, though.