Read Online Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) by Dawn Steele - Free Book Online

doctors
working there – four names altogether. Dr. Kirk Fitzpatrick is
listed outside one of the rooms. Although he is the departmental
chief, his embossed sign does not appear to be bigger than the
others.
    A girl in her early teens with gnarled
fingers and bent legs is seated at a corner, and Shannon takes the
empty seat beside hers.
    “You all alone?” she asks the girl.
    “My Mom had to go to school. She’s a teacher
there. She will come and fetch me during her lunch hour.”
    Shannon observes the girl’s finger joints.
They are extremely deformed and her knuckle joints are very
swollen.
    “That hurt?”
    The girl grimaces. “Yes.”
    “I’m Shannon.”
    “Martha.” The girl waves her index finger.
“Sorry if I can’t shake your hand.”
    “How long have you had it? It’s JRA,
right?”
    JRA is juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
    “Since I was eight. I started early. Guess
I’m one of the unlucky ones. It’s pretty bad today. I’m on so many
painkillers I’m practically a junkie.”
    “Let me have a look at that. I’m a
physiotherapist. I came here to apply for a job.”
    Martha slowly stretches out her left arm, her
face wincing. Her fingers remain curled and painfully immobile.
    “They’ve tried everything,” she says.
“Anti-rheumatics. Penicillamine. Steroids. But the joint
destruction goes on. I can’t write anymore. The principal is trying
to let me sit for my SATs with a tester.”
    “SATs? I didn’t think you were that old.”
    “I’m eighteen.” When Shannon reacts with
surprise, Martha nods. “Steroids since I was nine. It retards my
growth. I don’t even have my periods like normal kids.”
    With newfound sympathy, Shannon takes the
girl’s left hand.
    “Maybe this will make it better,” she
says.
    “I doubt it. I’ve been coming here for years,
and I’ve even gone to hospitals upstate, but nothing ever makes it
better.”
    Shannon strokes the girl’s fingers and
knuckles gently, noting how knobby they are. Then she channels what
has always been within her – the healing power which has been the
crux and bane of her entire life. It’s subtle, and she sends a
spool of it into the girl’s curled hand.
    Martha almost withdraws her hand in
shock.
    “It tingles,” she says in wonder. “What did
you do?”
    “It’s just my special massage. I have more
static electricity in my body than most people. Don’t worry, you’ll
feel better after a while.”
    Static electricity is one way of calling it,
she supposes, though most people would have viewed her natural
gifts as anything but science.
    Martha stills her hand, her eyes growing
rounder and wider as Shannon continues to massage her fingers and
send healing impulses into them.
    “I can’t believe, but the pain is gone,” she
says.
    More than that will be gone by tomorrow,
Shannon thinks. The joints and bones will need some time to remodel
and knit, but she has started the process and it is irreversible.
She dare not send too much power into Martha for fear of being
flagged. But she sends just enough so that Martha’s recovery can be
attributed to pharmaceutical science.
    “Let me have your other hand,” she
instructs.
    She is so focused on what she is doing that
she fails to register the presence beside them.
    A throat clears and a deep voice says: “Peggy
out there tells me you’re looking for me?”
    Shannon looks up.
    Standing next to them is a gorgeous young man
of about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. His long dark hair has been
swept back and tied in a ponytail, and he wears the green scrubs of
a surgeon. His eyes are a startling sea-green, and his features are
so exquisite as to be almost pretty. But he carries himself in a
very masculine way, with his hands tucked into his pants pockets
and with his feet apart.
    His beauty is so stunning that it immediately
hits her like a blow.
    “You’re Dr. Fitzpatrick?” she says.
    “Last time I checked.” His sharp eyes observe
Martha’s hands. “Making friends?