Ellie frowned. "Why aren't you sick?" she demanded again.
Grant looked around to the others. "Do I apologize for this?"
"No, but this does make for an interesting morning in the lab," Kendrick mused.
"Grant as you have just admitted, you have already been exposed. You stay with Ellie and continue to help on Level Six. The other shifter warriors should be moved to patrols in the city. I do not want to take any chances with their health," Magnus ordered. He turned to Ellie. "When did you say your friend was arriving?"
Ellie smiled. "I bet you she is packing as we speak."
CHAPTER TWO
Vivian Mercy stared down at her cell phone and chewed on her lower lip. Eleanor Kimball had to be one of the best pediatricians in the world, so there was no doubt in her mind that when the doctor used the term 'Shifter Virus', that's what it was. The only problem was, they didn't exist.
Her seminar about updated lab procedures at the Center for Disease Control had just wrapped up, so she was between projects. There was a fae portal located outside of Atlanta, so she could head to Noctem Falls from there. She just had to convince her squire to tag along.
Why did it have to be Noctem Falls? Why in the hell was Ellie there? Why couldn't it have been Lycaonia?
"Motherfucker," she muttered.
"Vivian, language." A low voice rumbled.
Vivi smiled. If she had a dollar for every time her squire admonished her for cussing she could afford to send him on the vacation he obviously needed.
"You'll be cussing too when you hear what's going on." Vivi stood and walked out of her office, down the hallway to the small family room where her extremely large squire sat folding her underwear.
Not for the first time in her life she was struck by the contradiction that was her squire. For as long as she could remember Halbjorn Bergson had been at her side. As a child, she had always assumed they were related because they both had red hair, everyone in the human world assumed they were father and daughter. It never even dawned on her how unlikely that was since he was a shifter and she a vampire. Growing up she never questioned why a bear shifter squire was raising a vampire child, but once she was old enough to venture out into other paranormal communities, she began to notice exactly how different they were from others, and realized that their small family was an oddity.
For one, not everyone had a squire, and if they did they usually chose one of their own race. Secondly, most children had at least one parent. She had neither, just Hal. He was everything to her. Mother, father, brother, best friend, but most importantly squire. He took care of her and made sure her world kept spinning. She knew she would have been lost without him.
He was also huge, like blot out the sun huge. But that had never scared her, if anything he always made her feel safe, after all who would tangle with a six foot eight, barrel chested bear shifter descended from Vikings?
"That was Ellie," she began.
"Oh?" he commented without looking up.
"She has discovered a shifter virus."
This had him looking up. He smiled. "Sounds right up your alley, when do we leave?"
She grimaced. "She's in Noctem Falls."
"No," he said immediately.
"But Hal..."
"No. I won't have you waltzing back into the lion's den. I told you a long time ago, we could go anywhere on this earth but Noctem Falls, and I meant it." He put the clothes in the basket and turned to face her. "Anywhere but there."
She sat next to him and wrapped both arms around one of his. "They have already lost a child Hal. She was only five years old."
He inhaled quickly. Her shaggy squire was a push over for children. She continued. "It hit t
he children first, over a dozen are sick now. You know I can't say no."
He rested his head on top of hers. "I didn't realize Noctem Falls started to have children again."
She smiled. "They haven't. Prince Magnus took in a local wolf pack to protect them from the unexplained murders going on around the country. It's their children that are ill."
She felt it when his breath caught. "Wolves are at Noctem Falls? Are you sure?"