I woke up in a Pennsylvania mansion. My memories were completely wiped, and all I remembered was that I had come here after the heat to take care of my plants and fix them up; I remembered the market, the old ugly vendors, and my crazy idea of neighborhoods with ugly vendors.
I showered and had breakfast, looked at my phone, and realized it had now been over 3 weeks since my heat. I had been nothing like pelvis upwards, but yes, Bran had come inside me some days, particularly many times when I had insisted. Fine, it was an unusual heat, but as Samuel said, I was conceiving well.
I would like a check-up. Because I wasn't sure that I hadn't gotten pregnant, i.e., I had ovulated on those days I tried to get pregnant, so it was biology; the whole damn heat had been so weird I couldn't trust my body. I then saw if anyone could check me out.
I called Adam and told him about it. " Adam, I finished the heat just over three weeks ago, and since it was such a strange time, I thought someone should check me out because I remembered that I always had one day a week when Bran had to come very many times directly into my uterus when Samuel said I would be easily conceived..."
Adam said, "Sounds like a check is in order, but as Samuel himself is in Australia, Colin is in Ireland. Damon, I wonder where he is; I don't know."
I then said, "I wonder how Damon would feel if I tracked him down and just asked him to go through, I mean, what his gigs usually are and then, of course, if he's with other women."
Adam said, " Damon is the best choice; he's on the job. I know that mostly assassinations and interrogations. He's been doing it for a couple of months now. So if you have a way, then find him."
I said. " We've got white witches in the fleas they can track down. I'll take a bag of Damon's blood with me. I don't know if my blood will help, and then I'll let you know what the situation is in the meantime."
Adam hung up.
Fine, I called one of the white witches in the fleas and asked her to find Damon. I was to drive to the base and bring Damon's blood and my own. It took me six hours to drive to the base, and when I got there, I had to help with a few jobs or planning while she did the tracking and gave me the address.
It took about four hours. I had eaten what I had found. I wasn't actually hungry and didn't give it a second thought. I put the address in the GPS, and the drive was at least 15 hours, and the destination seemed to be in the middle of the forest. Fine.
I set off. I had a long drive ahead of me, and the sat nav was really leading me into the middle of the forest. I had been driving on a narrow forest path for the last three hours. My eyes were already bleary with fatigue, and this was snowy, tricky terrain to drive. I just wasn't hungry, not at all.
I had great car control when I had one sturdy SUV; the Audi SUV was enormous, but I used to do gigs with it sometimes, and it was the best for this terrain, but the car control required concentration on the slippery, winding road.
Eventually, the road curved into a clearing or a plot of land in the middle of the woods. There was quite a big house and Damon's car in the yard. He literally had his own house hidden away. I didn't start wondering what he was doing there and would not question him.
The house had lights upstairs and after a while I saw the lights come on downstairs as well. There was no one else's car there. He probably wouldn't have company. I saw some movement downstairs, and the curtain waved. The outside lights came on.
I was sitting in the car when the door opened, and Damon came out. He was wearing only a print tee shirt and cotton pants. He stopped at the door when he recognized my car. He put on his shoes and pulled on his jacket. I could see he was mildly irritated and surprised. I had deliberately driven so he could see me coming. He didn't have a phone so that I couldn't have left a message. I didn't want to ambush him.
He walked over to my car. His expression was quite stern.
I opened my window as he came closer and said, "Baby, what on earth? How did you find this place, and why are you here?"
I said, "One flea, a white witch, did when I asked for a tracking spell, and I'm here for a medical examination. Samuel is in Australia, and Colin is in Ireland. I asked Adam, and he thought I needed a checkup."
I felt cold suddenly. Chills went through my body. I had time to finish the sentence when the first excruciating cramp hit. It scorched its way through my entire stomach, and it felt like my uterus was going to burst. Nausea loomed over my head, my fever rose, and I tried to hold myself together, feeling my pants getting soaked as the flood erupted. Pain was even worse this time.
I groaned and said, "No need to check. I'm going back to Pennsylvania. This is a sure thing."
The smell spread inside the car, and I had to fight to keep from throwing up. Damon, watching for a moment, sniffed the air and saw the beads of sweat on my forehead, my pale face, and my hands that were now shaking from the cold as the fever rose. I tried to pull myself together, but this cramp was not easing up just yet.
He acted, opened my car door, and said, "What the hell is wrong with you, baby? You're not going anywhere if you are hurting so bad, you can't drive, and that road is rough; I don't want you driving into a tree. I've got supplies inside, and my teeth work. Come on in, and I'll see if I can help you."
I wailed in my mind for a moment, composed myself, and tried to take my rage if it would help, and snarled, "I had that crazy heat just over three weeks ago went off. This is another abortion. It seems I had some breeding days."
Damon said, "All the more reason, from what Dresden and Colin told me about your symptoms, you're not fit to drive, and I'm actually off duty." His voice was firm enough to make me think twice.
Damon furrowed his brows. He unbuckled my seatbelt, saw my already-soaked jeans, lifted me into his arms, and carried me inside.
I spoke as I felt another flood come out of my cunt, accompanied by a huge convulsion that made me stiffen in pain.
" Give me some stuff you don't need under me or take me to the shower because..."
The rage wasn't helping this pain at all, and I felt my grip on it slipping away. I was somehow too much in pain. I gasped, as the agony didn't abate at all. He laid me down on the bed. It was clear he had slept in it himself.
Damon stroked me and said, "Baby, it's okay. Come on, it's an old bed. I'm going to see what I can do. I'll see what I have for this problem."
I nodded, curled up in the fetal position, shivering and wrapping the covers over me as much as I could. Pain tore through me, fever made my skin so damn sensitive too. And felt a massive gush of fluid burst into my jeans. Soon, Damon came back.
I felt the sting in my arm. Injection.
He said soothingly, "It's pain and fever medicine. Let's see if it helps at all. Come on baby, let me undress you; I know you're cold,"
But he dug me out of the blankets and stripped my upper body, too. Took all the clothes and shoes off my feet. The drug was making me exhausted, so he cut my jeans off my legs and always wiped the biggest ones that came on. The stench was just horrendous. The pain wasn't as severe when the drug helped, and I felt hot, but the fever didn't get any worse now.
"Baby, I'm going to take you to the shower. You can rinse yourself off a bit while I get some more things in order."
I nodded. He helped me into the shower and went off again to look for more supplies. I heard him call Samuel and tell him what the job was, swearing some, too. I sat on the floor of the shower and rinsed what came out.
The pain was massive; it was coming through the drug again now, and I had to fight to stay conscious. The cramping and searing wrenching torment seemed to be all over my abdomen, and I could feel how rock-hard every muscle in my abdomen was. I leaned back, panted in pain.
Damon came and turned off the shower, wrapped me in a towel, and carried me back to bed. He had lined it with more towels and sheets. He put a warm blanket over me for a while, feeling through my body and shaking his head.
He said, " No, no, listen, missy, you're going to need a bit more treatment than just the painkillers and rest I had originally thought. We or I need to do a bit more about it to avoid infection or any other complications."
I nodded and said, "That heat lasted for five weeks, and every week, there were a couple of days when Bran had to fill my uterus properly several times a day. "
Damon shook his head and said, " Good girl, that you told me. Now I know it's going to take a bit more than that because you're so damn full of this mass, and it's teeming with germs, and it's only going to expose you to infection, so we need to get it out of you as quickly as possible."
He continued as he stroked me and looked at me gently. "Now we're going to go to another house for a bit, where I can actually do something for you. I will carry you to the car and velvet you up. You understand. Then we'll see what happens next. I'll get you out of pain and try to keep you asleep as best I can."
He dried me off, extracted the stuff that had already drained out of me again, and wrapped me in a blanket, carried me to my car. He velveted me long and hard. My mind went black pretty fast, and the pain stopped.
Damon was surprised to see Mimi pull up in the driveway. This was his place where he always ended up between gigs if he didn't feel like going to the herd. He'd just had a few interrogation jobs for the FBI and CIA, he did freelance work for them if he was off duty, and he was also one of the few government hitmen, but he'd always insisted on proper evidence for each of his victims.
And then, he was surprised when Mimi came to him and had a miscarriage. And from what Dresden had told her, it wouldn't be painless or clean. He took Mimi's car; it was a fantastic car, and he could take it for himself. Mimi had money.
Mimi was in a fever and in pain, and Damon was cursing because he hadn't realized in the first place to check on Mimi when she had come to America. Samuel had ordered, or at least recommended, a good flush, if not surgery, and was sternly cussing on the phone as the epidemic in Australia had kept him busy, and he wouldn't be able to come right away.
Damon had originally thought he would keep Mimi asleep and let it all come out. Still, when Mimi had told him how many times she'd insisted on Bran breed, he knew it would not be that easy, so he went to the pack house, the nearest one with a proper medbay and operating theatre.
Damon set out to drive to Alabama's house. It wouldn't be far. He had thought about returning to the pack but hadn't known Mimi's schedule. Mimi had said she had come from Pennsylvania, and in this weather, it was over a 15-hour drive from there.
Damon wondered casually when Mimi had eaten properly, as she felt so damn light. Well, now Mimi was on his ride asleep, thankfully. He could see that she was eating and maybe boost her for a couple of days with some intestinal puree.
Damon wondered how Mimi had an abortion, what went wrong with it, but as Mimi was so damn special. He hadn't had time to examine her before; he really didn't know, for three weeks, whatever had been growing inside her, whether it had just been in the womb and when this abortion came. The womb liquefied, whether it was sterile or whether there was already some pathogen going around.
Damon drove with the car window open because the smell was unbelievable. Now he understood what Mimi was going through. It must have been really awful, uncomfortable, and very painful, not to mention emotional. He arrived at the house in 45 minutes and drove the car quite close to the door.
This was Adam's house, an older house, but here was a medbay well equipped by Samuel. He got out of the car and walked in, went in first to get the medbay ready. He turned on the lights, made sure the hospital bed was in order, and made a good, potent cocktail. Samuel had also supplied the place with a bump stock and a centrifuged bump. No one had been in the house for a long time.
Damon called Adam, "Hauptmann, I'm at the house in Alabama. Mimi was looking for me. You told her to look for me when she had that heat in Africa, and now she's having a miscarriage. She started flooding and cramping when I came out of the house to ask what was wrong."
Adam growled. "Oh fuck, do you want me to come there too? I've got nothing to worry about. I've got Charles and Magnum looking after the fleas now. I've also organized things slightly differently, as Mimi can't always see everything. But that's not the main thing, but Mimi doesn't have to hang on to them all the time. This new guy, Jake, he's a good guy, and he told me about a couple of jobs with Mimi. He's a real human being, and he's not afraid of Mimi even though she was in a full-blown rage, so if I was thinking of making a new werewolf, this guy has such potential."
Damon said, " Come on, pack life is good for Mimi, too. Just make sure I don't come and turn him into a vampire because anyone who isn't afraid of Mimi when she's on a rampage is a rare breed. I'm trying to flush that stuff out of my Mimi's insides. It stinks just horribly. I just have to hope there's no infection. "
Adam said, "I'm going to go for a drive; the lady probably needs a bit of care and attention; we've been lax with her again. So I reacted badly to the whole Colin thing and didn't pay any attention when we were with Mimi. "
Damon sighed and said, "Well, you probably didn't when I stabbed her with a silver dagger dipped in platinum every night for a week and taught her what to think if she jumped up on strangers; I compelled her to keep quiet; I just healed her skin and gave her an hourly bash every day. She was furious about it. But I have no regrets. Mimi is immortal, that was my reaction and if Mimi ever did the same to me I would understand, but she is so kind and doesn't want to hurt."
Adam said, "Well, I'm glad you confessed. I may not agree with your method, but I'm glad you reacted; you showed Mimi that it hurt you when she was with someone else."
Damon said, " Yeah, maybe, well now I'll try to be nicer and help her, not hurt her. I have to act now."
Damon hung up the phone and got all the supplies ready. Soon, he had gathered up the medications and flushing supplies. He wouldn't operate if he didn't have to because of the infection. The cocktail was in the syringe ready, and he strode out to get her.
I woke up in the car. I was still wrapped in a blanket, but I recognized the big, red-brick, massive house we were in front of. Alabama. This was the house Adam had bought. I had my mansion in Alabama and hadn't even had time to fix it up properly. The house in Alabama was five stories high and had big open rooms. It had once been a real gone-with-the-wind house but had undergone a facade renovation in the 1990s when it had become a red brick cube.
I had once studied the history of our houses for fun and this one had stuck in my mind. There were wooden floors and a lift, the stairs were real gone with wind stairs where in the middle went first the stairs and then from the platform went stairs in both directions.
Damon came out of the house and was surprised that I was already awake. I remembered while I was in my car that I had my very first abortion at the medical facility where Damon sold me. My metabolism was always in overdrive during this time. I remember the researchers at the medical facility wondering about it, so I must have consumed the velvet when I didn't even feel like velvet.
Mimosa was curled up, and I could see her ribs heaving rapidly in my mind, and I could feel the pain from Mimosa, too. I always have to be so damn special, well I can't do anything normally. Nope, not this girl.
Damon asked, speaking softly and almost a little scolding, "Baby, what are you doing up? It was all black velvet, and it's been a little over an hour."
I said, "I remembered I had my first abortion back in the medical facility, and they had a problem with my metabolism spiking sixfold. "
Damon scowled and said, " Fine, or are you one of those ladies? Well, now, I'm taking you to Medbay. Adam is on his way; I don't know where he is. I told him what I did to you in the French castle, and baby, I don't regret, I don't apologize because I teach. It's painful for you, but you learn. When you do your tricks, you know the consequences. But now it's different. Now I'm going to get you well and try to help you and keep you pain-free."
Damon picked me up in his arms and carried me to the medbay.
He said, "I will not operate yet because you're at risk of infection. If you're not already on, I'll flush. I've reserved some more powerful drugs for you, so don't worry. You're going to be my lady, asleep and pain-free; let's see if I can just prevent the infection. Then, when I get you well, we'll see if we can have some time alone. "
Damon put me down on the bed, and I felt a really huge flood coming from inside me again. The smell was awful.
He took a syringe from the table and asked, " Now, missy, are you going to suffer me to give this directly into your vein, or do you want a cannula in your neck? "
I said, "Go ahead, I don't care now,"
I complained out loud as the cramp ripped my lower abdomen to shreds. Damon took out my arm, turned it slightly, slipped the needle into my vein, and pressed the plunger. The pain stopped, and I fell asleep in mid-thought.
When Damon got Mimi unconscious, and that heartbreaking moan that had erupted from Mimi's lips stopped, he sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and worked. He changed out of his scrubs, made an even more potent cocktail now that he knew Mimi's metabolism was so damn revved up, and took the supplies close by.
He put on a plastic apron, a protective mask, and strong gloves as he rinsed, the pulp coming out in unbelievable quantities. Blood clots the size of the palm of his hand were pouring from inside Mimi and the suction catheter was always blocked, a quick ultrasound showed there was an awful lot of mass. She would have to open up.
He called Samuel and said, "I'm at the Alabama house. I have to operate on Mimi, palm-sized clots, and the ultrasound that's on the machine now is after two hours of flushing."
Samuel looked at the result and cursed, " Oh fuck, we've got to prevent this. Well, see what you can find and hope it's sterile and there's no weird germ in there."
Samuel hung up. He cursed when he couldn't help a member of the pack but was stuck helping a village full of humans in Australia now with cholera.
Damon operated on Mimi and flushed everything inside. Mimi's intestines looked irritated, the walls of her abdominal cavity, the bladder, were bright crimson, and he was already wondering whether to replace the whole bladder. As he flushed and sucked up the mass that had spread to the diaphragm and irritated it too, he tried to get the reaction to subside.
Mimi's whole body was a little inflamed already. Damon was pouring his own blood everywhere, hoping it would help. He opened his wrist and poured his blood directly, as much as he could, hoping it would help and heal.
Now Mimi could sleep as long as she had a fever. Damon wasn't about to let the lady wake up now and start wandering the floor on all fours again or tie her tubing. This one's metabolism was still sped up, but not as hard as it was.
Damon sighed, sitting next to her. He wanted so badly to keep her close and safe, and he realized he hadn't even made a new alpha mark on her when she was bitten off. He watched carefully to make sure that Mimi's anesthetic was deep enough.
He always kept a syringe ready with a potent cocktail, and his teeth hadn't reacted to her blood otherwise, but his need to protect and hide her from the world and all the shit had only increased. Adam came the next day.
He was looking tired and said, "I've driven 32 hours in a row."
Damon said, "Oh, you were so far away you couldn't have flown? You should probably get some rest."
Adam grunted, looking at the pale Mimi, who looked somewhat exhausted again.
He asked, " What's the situation? Any infection?"
Damon sighed and said, "Fever 45.6 Celsius. CRP hasn't been right on Mimi to date, so I can't say. My teeth aren't responding, but I just want to carry Mimi to bed and wrap myself around her so nothing bad happens. Keep him safe, warm, and protected. "
Adam nodded. He had the same feeling. He had never thought he would get this instinct. He had never had this instinct during Mercy's life, and as such, Mercy had been very much weaker than Mimi, more fragile, and had also been badly wounded twice. He wanted to make a nest for Mimi. To protect her. To nurture.
Adam said to Damon, "I have one instinct that I never thought I had; this is normal, well, normal and normal for werewolves. This is a bit of a crazy question, but do you want to make a nest for Mimi? Build a nest and take Mimi there? I have a wild nesting instinct. I've never had it before, but somehow, something about Mimi now triggers it."
Damon looked sharply at his friend and said, " Actually, yes, the nesting instinct, this feeling that I want to take Mimi somewhere safe and keep her to myself to protect her, is normal and belongs to werewolves???"
Adam nodded. He said, "As a doctor, can you tell me if it's going to harm Mimi? It would just help her feel safe. Wouldn't it?"
Damon nodded and said. "No harm. She needs her rest, and I feel that being around us will help. I'll stock up on our nutritional fluid that was taken out of Mimi's system. I'll mix it up with Bump, and then we can drink it for Mimi now and then. Let's make a nest. "
The men went out to look for bedding and had chosen one room to make a nest in. The room smelled of twinflowers as the nesting pheromone secreted by the men filled the air. They almost had a collective mind as they chose different bedding, blankets, and pillows from each room and then carried the sleeping Mimi in.
Damon stored the drugs nearby so that Mimi would get enough rest. They stripped naked. The room was very dim and cool, but the nest would be warm; both men's eyes glowed yellow in the darkroom as they wrapped themselves around Mimi and tended to her.