Reflected (Silver Series) Read Online Free Page A

blankness of his expression was a louder comment than a snicker would have been. How had he figured it out? As soon as Felicia got her nose close to the backpack, she realized. It reeked of sex, transferred from her hands where she’d touched the zipper and pulled it open.
    No time to worry about that now. The moment the tinted canopy door closed, Felicia shifted back and started pulling on her jeans before the soreness in her muscles from all the back and forth faded. She was lucky it was near the full, not the new, or she’d have collapsed by now. She dispensed with underwear and knocked on the window for John to let her out so she could sit on the tailgate and jam on her shoes.
    She jumped down and would have sprinted right back to the clinic, but John caught her shoulder in a tight grip. Not so tight she couldn’t have escaped, but tight enough to remind her who outranked whom. “You look like you squeezed through the middle of a blackberry mound,” he said, and smoothed down her hair with rough efficiency. “Now.” He released her shoulder. “Go.”
    Felicia let herself into the exam room now that she had hands. The vet looked up suspiciously from where she was stripping off her gloves, apparently done with Tom. John entered a moment later with smooth explanations about how this was his friend’s dog, and Felicia his friend’s daughter. Felicia left him to it and hurried to the metal table that held Tom, still unconscious. His side looked strange, shaved in a wide patch, with lines of stitches here and there where the road rash had been especially bad.
    She petted his ears. Intellectually, she knew that if werewolves didn’t die of their injuries immediately, they wouldn’t die at all, given food and rest. But that didn’t convince her emotions as she stood here, smelling the blood and sheer wrongness hanging around him as a miasma.
    John nodded as the vet told him how lucky they were that the internal damage had been so minimal, and he made the right noises of embarrassment as she chided him about the lack of collar and license. Then the vet disappeared back into the clinic and the tech took John up to the front counter to talk payment. Given the illusion of being alone with Tom, even though she knew the humans could hear from the other rooms, Felicia leaned in to rest her cheek against the soft fur on top of his head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She hadn’t meant any of this to happen.
    John returned and tossed Felicia a brightly colored zippered foil bag. She barely caught it after hesitating too long figuring out what it could possibly be. She turned it over to stare at the foolishly grinning German shepherd puppy on the front. Dog treats? Was John trying to insult her, or Tom, or both? She sniffed and brought the bag closer to her nose. Well. It didn’t smell bad. Smelled pretty good, actually.
    “He should get his calories as soon as possible.” John made a show of grunting and settling the weight carefully when he picked up Tom to hide how easy it was for him.
    Felicia assumed John’s emphasis meant before he shifts back. She nodded. He did have a point about that. She jogged a few steps ahead to open the doors for John, but when she started to follow him across the parking lot to the truck, he jerked his chin in a clear order. “Get Silver,” he said.
    Felicia turned back to eye the woman huddled on the couch. What if she didn’t want to be the crazy-person guide? She went to grab Silver’s wrist to pull her up, but Silver reversed the grip at the last minute, catching Felicia’s wrist tightly instead.
    “You were on the other side. He was chasing you,” she said as they stepped outside, voice steady. Felicia avoided her eyes, not just to be polite and avoid the measuring of dominance but because that slightly scary intensity her father’s mate usually displayed had returned.
    “I know it was my fault,” Felicia hissed under her breath. “I’m sorry.” She’d make her apologies