The Skunk, the Tibetan Fox and Their Wolf Omega by Lorelei M. Hart

 

Chapter Two

Dakota

 

It was a funny dream. Voices all around me. A feeling like my leg was on fire. And a mouthful of dirt.

I coughed then choked. Hands gripped my shoulders.

“You’ll be okay, son,” said a male voice.

I tried to open my eyes, but all I could see was a sort of gray light. My eyelids would not raise all the way.

I opened my mouth to speak. “Is this Alaska?”

I heard my words come out strangely garbled and remembered I had followed a semi-famous vlogger who took a road trip to Alaska. I’d become obsessed with having an adventure myself and had decided to follow in his footsteps. After saying goodbye to my parents, I took my bike and headed north. Had I arrived already? Why couldn’t I remember anything?

“Don’t try to talk,” said the voice. “We’ve got you.”

I realized I wasn’t dreaming when I felt my body lifted onto a soft surface. Then I was in a van, the wheels screeching, a siren blaring as we moved.

I entered a blurry state where reality came at me through a fog and voices echoed. I heard someone ask me my name.

“Dakota.” But my tongue felt too thick to make the word sound right.

Things flashed all around me from what little I could see. The first time I saw color, it was neon green. I realized my head was turned to the side and I was looking at a monitor with readouts with green zigzags and slashes. I smelled disinfectant and nearly panicked when I got it through my dazed brain that I was in a hospital.

Was I going to die?

I blinked harder and moved my head. “Dakota?” said a voice. Female this time. “You’re awake. Good for you. You’re in George Cane Medical Center. You took a fall on your bike. Do you remember?”

I tried to shake my head, but it hurt.

“We’re shifter friendly here, very discreet, so no worries, okay?” she said. “You are a fox, right?”

“Tibetan fox,” I corrected. This time, my tongue worked better.

“Okay. That’s good. You have some injuries we want to treat in your human form, but we’ll also want you to shift so we can help you heal your animal, too. Does that sound good?”

“Am I going to be okay?”

“Of course, sweetie. You just need time to heal now.”

A hand touched mine. She finally came into view. She was a small woman wearing pink scrubs and had her dark hair pulled back tight into a ponytail. I immediately pegged her as a pony shifter, though I’d never met one in person.

“You had some contacts on your phone,” she said. “We got hold of your parents and told them you were okay and where you were, so you don’t have to be concerned about that.”

I winced. I didn’t want my parents to come. My alpha dad had been against my road trip from the beginning. “Going to Alaska is foolish,” he had said. “You need to settle down, get a regular job.”

I’d been working odd jobs to save up for the trip. I wasn’t going to let him spoil my fun, and we’d parted on less than positive terms.

Tears warmed my eyes. Now I wasn’t going to have this trip at all.

Slowly, over the next few hours, I learned what all my injuries were. When I’d been run off the road by a reckless driver, I had taken the brunt of my fall on my right side. I’d badly scraped my back and right leg. My right ankle and foot were broken in five different places. I’d also scraped and bruised my face, which was why I couldn’t open my eyes all the way. I had a sprained wrist, and my entire right side was black and blue.

Although I responded to human medical treatments just like anyone, shifters had certain abilities doctors needed to utilize. I was glad whoever found me recognized that and brought me to a hospital with special shifter facilities.

While they were setting up my treatment room, I dozed as various medications and liquid ran into my veins. When I was ready to be moved, everything was disconnected. I was put in a wheelchair and taken down a long hall.

When the door to my new room opened, I saw a small area had been made up to resemble, as much as possible, a fox den. There was a cozy hollow at the base of a little fake rock wall. Inside was a nice soft bed, not dirt, and I was grateful. We might be animals when shifted, but we could still appreciate a cushy pillow and pad.

The walls of the den rose close and secure to a short ceiling, just as I liked, and there were clean water and food bowls right at the edge of the bed. I itched to shift as soon as I saw the setup.

“We’ll have you stay in fox form for at least a week,” the doctor told me. “I’ll splint your wrist and ankle in that form. Is that agreeable to you?”

I nodded.

He left the room as the nurse helped me undress. I couldn’t stand, so she helped me slide out of the chair and sit on the floor. As she took the wheelchair away, I shifted.

It seemed to take me longer than normal to feel my fox fur around me. When I finally felt whole, I tried to stand and heard myself let out a whimper. My right foot gave out and sharp shooting pains ran up my leg.

The nurse was back immediately, assisting me until I was on the bed and comfortable in the fake fox den. Tibetan foxes are on the small side, so it was nothing for her to support my weight as she got me settled.

I yawned from the exertion it had taken me to shift and fell fast asleep.

 

***

 

My memories of being in the hospital in my fox form were intermittent. My fathers visited several times, talking to me, reassuring me, even though I couldn’t talk to them. I couldn’t shift back to human until my doctors okayed it.

I had a cast on my foot, which ached fiercely despite the pain meds given to me. My front paw was splinted. And I had small IVs running into me for five days.

Mostly, I slept.

When the week was up, most of my injuries had healed due to my shifter metabolism. But my ankle and foot would not hold weight, even with the cast.

The doctor took the cast off and examined me in my fox form. I let out a little bark at the pain.

“This should be healed by now.” He manipulated my foot, and I squirmed out of his grasp, panting.

“Well.” He stood, hands on his hips. “We’ll have to treat this final problem in your human form. It will take longer to heal. This means you’ll have crutches for a while. So, whenever you’re ready.”

I immediately shifted, coming into my human self in a crouch. Everything felt fine except for my foot. I couldn’t put any weight on it without severe pain. After the nurse helped me into a robe and I was settled into my wheelchair, the doctor sat facing me.

“We want to keep you one more night for observation, just to see that all is well in this form now. We’ll fit your ankle and foot with a boot. You’ll have to keep off it for six weeks.”

The next day, my fathers came to take me home. It was the last place I’d wanted to go. My dream of Alaska with its forested mountains and frosted blue lakes and lots of open space for shifting and running had faded for now. Plus, my bike was destroyed. Insurance paid only half of what it would cost me to replace it. I could have gotten a lawyer, but I had no energy left in me to fight, so I took the settlement and decided that when I got better, I’d use it to help me relocate.

Six weeks passed in relative peace. My fathers took turns caring for me. They housed me, fed me, and watched TV with me while I healed.

The pain started to get better but never went completely away. When it came time for the boot to come off for good, I still had trouble walking. My doctor prescribed rehab, which helped, but after ten more weeks, I was told I would never get full function from my foot again. I would always limp. The bones had healed, but spurs developed on the ankle joint. Spurs hurt! There were surgical options given to me with no guarantees they’d correct the problem.

I had to face facts. I would have a limp for the rest of my life in both human and fox form.

As any alpha, I had prided myself perhaps a little too much on my strength. A disability like this took some getting used to. It brought back insecurities I hadn’t faced since childhood.

After four and a half months back home and tired of feeling like a burden, I made a plan. I went to my fathers and told them I would be moving out.

“What? But we love having you here.” My omega father came and put his arm around my shoulders.

“What will you do for work?” My alpha father, always practical, stared at my foot as if it was some great barrier to me having any semblance of a normal life.

“I already got a job. I applied online, and they accepted me. It’s in San Diego. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“What kind of job can you do?” he asked.

“I’ll be running a kiosk on the beach where they rent things like tandem bikes and surfboards to tourists. And the boss has a tiny studio cottage I can stay in for cheap. He needs me to come right away.”

“Your boss? Have you even met? Do you even know this person?”

I sighed. My fathers meant well. As fox shifters, they were very protective of their kits. Their kids. My brother and sister litter mates, who’d left the den way before me, were required to email every day, even if they had nothing to say.

“He’s a shifter,” I explained. “It’s part of the reason why he’s being so nice. I promise to email every day.”

Two days later, I found myself standing on a boardwalk in San Diego, watching the sky turn pink as the sun set over the blue waves of the Pacific.

“Welcome to your new life,” I said aloud to the air. I was more than ready.