Filed To Story: Chasing the Rejected Luna's Heart (Clara & Liam) Book PDF Free
The clinic had undergone some remodeling since the last time I had been there. The walls were now painted a fresh, clean shade of white as opposed to their former dingy gray, and from what I could see through the few open rooms on my way, they had upgraded the equipment, too.
The first room that was empty was the same one I had been to for my last physical, except that Dad was standing with the doctor, which just made things even more awkward. At least there was no sign of the creepy tech.”Lavinia,” the doctor said, smiling as she walked over to give me a hug. She was a pleasant woman in her late forties, and her kind smile had always made shots a little less off-putting when I was younger. “Good to see you again.””Wish it was under different circumstances,” I replied, nodding awkwardly.
The doctor gave me a sympathetic look, but Dad scowled. He really wasn’t a fan of any smalltalk, regardless of how innocuous it was. It was kind of hard to get over my social awkwardness when at every turn, he reinforced my fears that I was completely unfit for shifter society. Being locked away in a tower with only my tutors for regular companions certainly hadn’t helped.”So, what exactly am I here for?” I asked once I realized neither of them was going to volunteer the information.”Just a standard exam,” the doctor said, but this time, her comforting tone really wasn’t enough. “We just need to take some samples and see if there’s anything out of the ordinary. Anything hormonal that might be affecting the shift.””Is there something wrong with me?” I asked warily.”There damn well better be,” Dad muttered.
The doctor blinked at him but chose to ignore the remark, to my relief. “It might be nothing. Believe it or not, this kind of thing is not unheard of, although it’s unfortunate that it occurred the first time you tried to shift. There are times when extreme stress or physical illness can impact a shifters’ ability to change forms.”
Well, that got my attention. This whole time, I had been freaked out about all this for social reasons, but it hadn’t occurred to me that something could actually be medically wrong with me. “Oh. But you’ll be able to tell?””That’s the idea,” she said pleasantly. She turned to Dad, waiting expectantly. “If you don’t mind, sir.””Of course,” he said gruffly, walking out the door and stopping to look at me. “Behave.”
I waited until the door shut behind him to roll my eyes. What the hell did he think I was going to do, bite her?”Hop up here,” the doctor said, patting the crinkly paper stretched across the exam table before she walked over to the sink to wash her hands. “It’s about time for your physical anyway, so we’ll start with the usual and go from there.””Level with me, Doc, how many needles am I looking at?” I asked as she came over, donning a fresh pair of gloves.
She chuckled. “Just a few. But the new tech is excellent. You’ll hardly notice.”
Somehow I doubted that, but my fear of needles was nothing compared to the anxiety of not knowing if I had some rare disorder that kept wolves from shifting or something. I was already a bit of a hypochondriac after Mom’s illness, even though the doctors had assured me it wasn’t hereditary. She was one of the few unfortunate shifters whose regenerative abilities couldn’t outpace the progression of her disease, and once her symptoms had started to appear, it’d been a matter of moments before things went downhill. In that time, I had lost my best friend, and often my only confidant, even though there were still things about all this I would’ve been afraid to tell even her. Feelings that were practically betrayal for the future Luna of the pack to have.
A she-wolf’s life was not her own. From the lowest ranking member of the pack who lived on the outskirts and worked among humans to the alpha and his family, we all belonged to each other. We belonged to a system. In a way, a shifter pack was like a complex organism made up of living parts rather than a family or community or even a cult, although it certainly had some elements in common with all three of those.
The truth was, it didn’t matter whether I was happy or not. All that mattered was that it was my duty to unite the triad and continue the family line, which meant continuing the future of the pack in turn. It was an honor, even if it didn’t always feel like it. I just had to keep telling myself that.
I did love the pack. I wanted to be a part of it, even if I had grown pessimistic about my ability to do so. My whole life, I had felt different from the others in a way I couldn’t quite define. It made my peers think I saw myself as above them somehow, the alpha’s daughter, too stuck up to be around the others. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The truth that I had always known, deep down, long before the ceremony, that I wasn’t like the others. I was in perpetual fear that if I got too close to anyone, they would end up learning the truth that there was something wrong with me.
I had confessed as much to Mom in the past, but while she was usually a fount of encouragement and reassurance, she’d always gotten quiet during those moments. Especially the day I had come home from the playground crying because the other kids wouldn’t let me play with them.”What’s wrong with me, Mama?” I had asked as she held me on her lap in her rocking chair.”There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart,” she had insisted, as usual.”I don’t fit in,” I told her, my voice punctuated with gasps and whimpers as I cried into her shoulder. “I’m different. Why am I different?”
To this day, I don’t even know what I meant by that. I would’ve just brushed it off as the irrational fears of a small child, and God only knew I had plenty of those, if not for the way she reacted. The way her gaze had darkened and grown troubled, and she had fallen into a long silence that felt heavy. “It’s nothing, baby.”
Three little words, and yet they had left a big impression on my young mind. What did she mean, it’s nothing? Not, “There’s nothing wrong with you,” or, “You’re just imagining it.”
I went back and forth between telling myself I was paranoid and reading into things and thinking maybe there really was something to it after all. Maybe she had known the truth all along, the truth everyone else somehow inherently suspected, even if their sharp instincts couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. That I was different, and it wasn’t in a good way. That I was inferior. Broken.
Present circumstances lent credence to that theory.
The exam wasn’t exactly like a physical. For one thing, there were a lot more needles than the doctor let on, and there was even an ultrasound. Why that would be something she needed to do when I wasn’t pregnant and there was no chance I was–unless shifters had our own miraculous conception story I didn’t know about–I was too afraid to ask. I just wanted this to be over, and I wanted the answers, even if I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them once I had them.”Alright,” the doctor said once she had finished the seemingly endless exam and the phlebotomist had left the room. “We will get these back to the lab and go from there.”
I started to get up off the table but she said, “You can wait here. It won’t take long. I’ll send your father in once you’re dressed.”
I blinked. “Doesn’t it take a while for the kind of thing?”
She smiled. “You’re a special patient. The lab is all yours for the afternoon.””Right,” I mumbled. “Lucky me.”
They left me alone to get dressed, and I knew the knock at the door a few moments later was Dad. He walked in still shielding his eyes like he might see something he hadn’t already seen the night before and scowled. “Well?”