The Skin She's In by Margo Collins (online e book reader .txt) 📕

short hair dyed coal-black told me as she bustled into the room. “Dr. Nevala says you’re to leave it alone.” She grinned at me. “In fact, his exact words were that he would feed me to a lamia if I let you pick at it.”

A shifter, then.

My huffed laugh hurt. “I’m the only lamia he knows. Well, the only one big enough to feed a nurse to,” I amended.

She winked at me. “I’m Daria, and I’ll be around until tonight. You can take a look when we change the bandage later.”

“Do you know what happened last night? After I...” my voice trailed off and I waved my hand in the general direction of my midsection. “Is the baby okay?”

Daria nodded as she checked the numbers on the machines attached to me and made a few notes on a Post-It notepad that she slipped into her pocket when she was done. “She’s fine. Word is, you took out two wolves and a bear and saved everyone in the room.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Except myself.”

“You’re still here, honey. That counts as saving yourself, as far as I’m concerned.”

I smelled Kade on his way in before I actually saw him—that hot, spicy scent that always blew around him preceded him into the room. He spoke quietly to Daria for a moment, and then she left the room.

He hadn’t found time to shave yet, and the slightly scruffy scratch of his beard as bent down to kiss me still sent a shiver down my back, even through the haze of pain and medication. I didn’t waste time on pleasantries, though.

“The baby needs a name,” I said, zeroing in immediately on the one thought that had been running through my mind ever since I awoke. I couldn’t have explained why, but somehow, naming the baby seemed akin to protecting her.

Maybe even claiming her?

Kade didn’t even stop to ask why. He simply nodded and said, “Do you have any ideas yet?”

“Can I use your phone? I want to check something.”

“Sure.” He pulled it out of his pocket, and I ran a quick internet search.

“I was thinking that as the first new lamia baby, she should have a name that means peace,” I said, showing him the list I had found. “Maybe Serena?”

He nodded. “I like it. I’ll let the NICU staff know.”

As he left, Daria returned. “Okay, sweetie. Let’s get you up and walking.”

I winced. “Already?”

With a nod, she folded the covers down to the bottom of the bed. “And when the physical therapist comes in later, she’ll walk you through a couple of shifts.”

“Shifts?” My voice sounded almost as stunned as I felt.

Daria laughed. “This is a shifter hospital, honey. We put you through all your paces before we send you home.” She paused, then said, “Try to keep it in the normal size range, though?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Only if you promise to keep the wolves and bears at bay.”

“You got it, hon.”

APPARENTLY SHIFTING from one form to another did speed up the healing process a little. Though I didn’t say so aloud, I was fairly certain that my daily visits to Serena helped, as well. At any rate, the more I stumbled around the hospital, the happier all the doctors and nurses were with what they called my “progress.”

I went to see Marta only once, the day she was due to be released from the hospital. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in a soft, black, jersey cotton dress, and gingerly holding a small bag in her lap. She flinched when she caught sight of me coming in the door. I didn’t really blame her. I might have saved her from her rapist, but in the end, I was a reminder of a horrible time in her life. That she had been willing to have Serena rather than abort her was amazing. I had planned to thank her, to tell her the baby’s name, but in the end, I decided not to.

She needed to be released from anything having to do with lamias and other shifters more than she might possibly need to know about the child she had borne.

“What will you do next?” I asked.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “Not just the hospital. Texas. I’ve been approved for a transfer, and I’m going...” she paused as if she had been about to tell me where she was headed, but then continued with, “...as far away from shapeshifters as I possibly can.”

That there were shapeshifters everywhere was just one more thing she didn’t need to know.

“Take care of yourself. You can always reach out if you need me,” I said. I didn’t hug her goodbye, but I waved at the door.

Someday Serena would want to know about her birth-mother. I would need to spend a lot of time considering what to tell her because I was certain that Marta would never want to know her child.

The thought saddened me more than I had anticipated.

The next day, my own surgeon—not Kade, since apparently he had tagged someone else to do the actual operation to put my innards back inside my stomach—pronounced me almost ready to be released. Kade agreed, but only if I promised to go to his house rather than back to my apartment since the Shields hadn’t finished tracking down all the conspirators who had participated in planning the attacks on Marta and Serena.

As the only survivor, the Kodiak—a shifter named Bartholomew Jenkins—wasn’t talking. He wasn’t walking, either, something I would feel worse about if he hadn’t tried so hard to kill a premature infant, not to mention her nurse, my boyfriend, and me.

“The other mothers could still be in danger, too,” I said to Kade, as part of my argument for staying in my own place. “More danger than I’m in.” We were back in my hospital room, but this time I was sitting on the reclining chair by the window, and he was leaning against the wall next to me.

“No.” His tone was unyielding.