Rykhan (Book 1 of Mate Search Series) (15 page)

*.*.*.*.*

‘Pam, this is Wyst. Rykhan cannot reach Leah
and is worried. Do you know where she might be?’

The curly blonde sat in the urgent care cubby
waiting for Leah to return from being x-rayed. With nothing to do
but guard Leah’s purse, she was almost thankful for the
interruption of her cellphone. Maybe it was because no metal had
grown out of her arm in the middle of the night, but Pam didn’t
think it was anything to worry over. Much less, get medicos
involved!

Actually, in Pam’s mind, it was beautiful and
suited Leah’s coloring to a ‘T’.

In addition, if it brought Wyst’s attention
back to her, so much the better!

‘We are at the doctor. Leah has something she
wanted the doctor to look at. I will have her call Rykhan when
she’s finished.’ Pam wasn’t sure if Leah wanted to withhold the
info about her new addition from her new boyfriend but Pam didn’t
think it was her place to spill the beans. Especially to said
boyfriend’s friend that Pam had been crushing on.

‘Is she okay?’ the next text read. ‘Rykhan is
very worried.’

‘Yes. Not in pain but very scared.’ Which Pam
thought was putting it mildly. Her friend had been in full meltdown
mode when Pam arrived—wailing and crying so much that Pam hadn’t
understood a word the other woman had been saying. When she’d
finally pieced it altogether, Pam had spent more than a few minutes
of trying to find an opening in order to take the armband off.
There wasn’t even a gap around the edge and it appeared that Leah’s
skin had somehow grown over the edges of the metal
itself.

But if a girl was going to get stuck, in the
literal sense, with a piece of jewelry she couldn’t remove, the
bronze bicep bracelet was cool as shit, in Pam’s
opinion.

Her cellphone vibrated and she opened the
screen again. ‘We have your location and will be there
momentarily’. Pam stared at the words, reading them again and
again. What did that mean? How had they know where the women were
and why did they feel the need to join them? In Pam’s experience,
guys didn’t run to a girl’s side when she was at the doctor,
especially not those they met just a couple of weeks before! ‘I
don’t know if that’s a good idea. Leah is pretty wigged
out.’

‘We are on the road. Estimated arrival in 7.5
minutes.’

Seriously? Pam looked up from her cellphone not
really noticing the activity that was going on in the hallway of
the facility but wondered who would race to get to her if she felt
the need to hit the urgent care for something or another. Outside
of Leah, there really wasn’t anyone she could think of, no one who
would drop everything and come rushing to her side.

The pair were so much more than friends, albeit
ones of the long-term variety. Pam had been raised by her
grandmother, who had passed on just two months before Leah’s
parents died in an automobile accident when they were both only
twenty. Since that time, the two women had become closer, more like
family than just simply friends.

“Excuse me, miss?” A nurse stood near the
curtain of the cubby and Pam raised her eyes. “There are two men in
the waiting room that are demanding information about your
friend.”

Pam wondered how many traffic laws Wyst and
Rykhan had broken to get to the clinic as she grabbed both purses
and followed the nurse to the door that led to the waiting room.
She saw Rykhan arguing with the receptionist behind the glass as
Wyst paced with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Hey,
Wyst.”

Wyst raised his head before rushing up to her.
“Is she okay? Rykhan is practically out of his mind with worry and
no one here will give him any data concerning her
condition.”

She patted Wyst’s shoulder before making her
way to where Leah’s large boyfriend stood as he loudly instructed
the receptionist to tell him where ‘his Leah’ was even as the other
woman argued back only using sentences that included ‘the police’.
Pam grabbed onto Rykhan’s forearm and pulled. He glanced down at
her hand with a frown before lifting his eyes to her face. As he
opened his mouth, Pam started talking. “You’ve gotta shut up now,
Ryk. Just sit down and be quiet, okay?”

“But I need to know what has happened to my
female!” His demanding voice echoed throughout the small, almost
empty waiting room.

“And I’ll tell you but you’ve gotta chill,
dude!” She cast her eyes to Wyst silently asking for help. As Wyst
moved to stand next to Ryk, Pam continued patting his arm as she
steered him to a bank of seats. “That’s right, big guy. Just cop a
squat here and settle for a minute, okay?”

As Rykhan sat down, Pam straightened and shot
Wyst a look. There must’ve been something in her demeanor that told
him she wasn’t willing to put up with much more because he slowly
and quietly sat down next to his friend.

“Okay, here’s what’s going down.” Due to
Rykhan’s obvious distress, Pam felt she had no choice but to tell
him what was happening. Besides, it was just some kind of weird
metal band on Leah’s arm, not a girlie issue by any stretch of the
imagination. “Leah woke up this morning with a bronze bracelet on
her upper arm. It scared her and even though we tried to get it
off, we couldn’t. So we came here to find out what it is and see if
the doctors could help.”

Rykhan and Wyst had gone still as stone, their
eyes wide and unblinking as she’d explained. “So as you can see,
there’s no reason for you two to be here or anything. It just
suddenly appeared and she got scared, maybe even more so when we
couldn’t get it off…” Pam let her voice trail away because she
didn’t think the men were paying her or her explanation a damn bit
of attention. Not from the way they were staring at one another. A
look that they shared for more than a few heartbeats.

Turning his face back to her, Rykhan
swallowed. “She did not like her
wahrom
?”

“Her what?” Pam wasn’t sure that even Rykhan
knew what he’d said. Not when his eyes still held more than a
measure of wildness. “I don’t even know what that
means.”

Without saying anything and without taking his
eyes from her face, Rykhan slowly lifted the sleeve of his
t-shirt.

At the sight, Pam’s knees crumbled as the world
swirled to black.

*.*.*.*.*

Wyst caught the much smaller female before her
body slid to the floor and gathered her onto his lap. “What did you
do to her Rykhan?” he demanded with a glare as he shifted her
closer, tucking her head under his chin.

“I didn’t do anything except show her my
warrior’s mark. Is she okay?”

Wyst twisted to look down at the female’s face
only he could not see anything because her blonde curls covered her
features. Using a hand, he pushed them aside and as soon as his
fingers touched her skin, she moaned. “Pam?” Wyst’s voice gentled
as he called to her softly and relief spread through him when he
saw her eyelids flutter. “Are you alright, pixie?”

“Mmm,” she mumbled in reply but it appeared she
was trying to open her eyes.

“That’s it, little one,” the large
warrior encouraged as he began to rub the skin that covered her
spine. He did not know if his touch would help her come back to
herself but it sure, as
Tsiran’s
beard helped him!

Soon her frosted blue eyes were blinking up
into his hazel ones and Wyst felt his face split into a grin at her
befuddled look. “What happened to me? And why are you cuddling me
on your lap, Wyst?”

“I do not know,” he confessed. “One
minute you were looking at Rykhan’s
wahrom
and the next it appeared you
went unconscious.”

She tried to sit up a little straighter but he
stopped her movement by placing his cheek against the top of her
head. “Shhh, little Pam. Be still and allow your body to come back
to itself.”

He could feel her breath against the opened
collar of his shirt and decided he liked the feeling, just as much
as he liked having her on his lap and within the circle of his
arms. Even though he had met her the same night and at the same
venue where Rykhan and Leah had met, he and Pam were only friends
who sometimes accompanied their friends on their dates.

“Okay, so I fainted. Guess there’s a first time
for everything,” she whispered and Wyst found he liked her
summation and how it seemed as if she was speaking for his ears
alone. “But you gotta admit that for both Leah and Ryk to have the
same damn bracelet is hella weird, right?”

“It is normal for our males to have the warrior
symbol.” Wyst was uncertain if his reluctance in going into any
greater detail was a good thing or a bad thing. He waited to see if
she demanded more information.

It took a couple of seconds but she pushed back
to again look him in the eye. It appeared she did wish to talk
about it but not in the direction he had anticipated. “Do you have
one?”

“Certainly,” he agreed, having no knowledge
that he had nodded his head as he gave his one word
answer.

Her fingers glided over his biceps through his
long sleeved shirt as her eyes remained on his. “I can’t feel
it.”

“That is because I do not carry mine on my
arm.” His voice stayed hushed as hers wondering why they were
speaking so low. Speaking quietly softly caused Wyst to consider
the two of them in a cocoon, as if they were the only two people in
the room. “Feel the back of my neck, little pixie and you will find
it.”

Her hands had moved to his chest but at his
words, her fingers shifted to his shoulders before gliding
underneath his hair until she touched the side of his neck. “Higher
and more to the back,” he instructed, continuing to hold her gaze
as her fingers explored. He knew that she had found his own symbol
by the jolt of electricity that ran through his body. When her eyes
flared, she jerked her fingers away.

“What was that?” she demanded on a harsh
whisper, holding herself very still as she frowned up at
him.

Wyst felt another jolt move through him but
considered it only a shock at her reaction. “Wait. You felt
that?”

Pulling her fingers away, she twisted in his
lap. “You betcha I did. Now what the freak was that?”

He did not know and tried to
logically think through why some wisp of a human female felt the
involuntary reaction of a warrior’s
wahrom
. Had she caused it with her
touch?

As his mind raced to make sense of it, Pam
twisted even further on him until she was half-hanging over his
shoulder gathering and holding his long hair away from his neck.
With her other hand, she yanked his collar down and
gasped.

He knew what she saw since he had also spent
hours in his ‘tweens staring at his gift. Of course, it had been
hard to do because of its positioning. However, by learning to use
two mirrors and determining the best angle to view it in, he had
studied it closely.

It was a circle of blue steel, cut and polished
so the piece of circular metal held leaf-patterned cutouts amid
etched vines that gamboled over the shiny surface.

To his mind, both then and now, he found it
very, very striking. He wondered if Pam would think so as
well.

Rykhan leaned closer but had his eyes on the
receptionist. “What is your female doing? By the looks that
horrible one is giving us from her behind her glass, I do not think
she finds Pam’s position acceptable.”

Wyst gave a one-shoulder shrug since
Pam was over the one on the right. “She wanted to see where
my
wahrom
was
located, since I do not carry it on my arm as you do.”

Either the petite woman had completed her
research or because she had heard her name, she turned back around
and settled herself. Wyst wondered why she remained on his lap, but
he was enjoying the contact. So much so, he did not want to
question her and have her move away.

After straightening her clothes, she glanced at
Rykhan and then up at him. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, little one,” Wyst was quick to assure her.
“Did you see it?”

Her eyes widened and she glanced away from him
before nodding.

“And did you like it, pixie?”

She nodded again and Wyst wondered at her
silence. In all the time he spent in her company, the short but
curvaceous woman always had something to say and had not been shy
in sharing it. “It’s amazingly beautiful,” she murmured after a
lengthy pause. Her gaze came back to his. “But what I don’t get is
how come your thingy is exactly like Granny’s necklace.”

Wyst was not sure what she meant. That was
until she reached to the neckline of her t-shirt and started
pulling on a fine silver chain until a heavier piece caught on the
edge of the fabric. He watched Pam’s small fingers disengage the
piece carefully before she held it up to his face. “Why does it
look just like this only in metal the color of my eyes?”

Wyst dragged his eyes from hers to what she
held in her fingers and stiffened in his chair before glancing at
Rykhan.

Why, indeed?