I dare you to say that to his face. Sid will never allow you back into the surgery again, not even if you're missing an arm and are spurting blood from a severed artery.
Not needing to get any more riled up than he already was—which talking with his dragon would most assuredly do—Zain focused back on the doctors, who were having that strange mated-pair conversation with their expressions.
Maybe most wouldn't notice it, but Zain was trained to watch body language. And given how he hated secrets, mated-pair conversations were fucking annoying.
Sid finally looked at Zain again. "Okay, one question a day. That's it. So think carefully about what you're going to ask her beforehand. Because even something like asking, 'What's your favorite color?' will count, Zain Kinsella. Those are my terms."
He grunted, knowing he wouldn't get more from Sid, not even if he pushed for days. "Fine, I agree. And since I haven't asked her any questions today, let me know when she's conscious again."
Sid looked about ready to say something, so Zain turned and exited the room.
As he walked down the familiar corridor that led to the rear exit of the building, he clenched and unclenched his fingers. Kai had refused to give him any other important duties until his current task—finding out everything he could from the human female—was accomplished. Which meant he could either test Dacian's skills to determine if he met the Protectors' standards or wait around for Ivy to wake up.
Needing to shift and spread his wings, he decided on the former.
Although he hoped the young male was well-rested, Zain was a tough trainer and evaluator. And given his shitty day so far, his surliness would only make it that much more challenging for the male.
Chapter Two
Ivy lost count of how many times she drifted in and out of consciousness. The only good thing was that she hadn't fallen back into a permanent coma.
Each time she awoke, bits and pieces of her memory returned. She'd finally remembered why she was with a bunch of dragon-shifters, too—she'd sought them out.
Of course, she had also remembered that her brother had been murdered because of her running away from the Dragon Knights' operation. At first, she'd tried to hide from the Knights with Richard and David, at their house on the outskirts of Brighton. But one day when she'd gone out to buy groceries, someone had gotten to them. She'd found the pair with their throats slit and the symbol of the Knights—a shield with a lance behind it—drawn on the wall in the living room.
She'd never forget that sight for the rest of her life, either. Her brother and brother-in-law had died simply because they'd tried to help her.
Even thinking about it now, tears threatened to fall. She'd loved them both so much. They had been her only family in the world. And in retrospect, she'd been young and foolish to join the Dragon Knights straight out of university. At twenty-one, Ivy hadn't seen how her actions would one day affect those she loved best in the world.
But they had. And it was something she'd have to struggle with for the remainder of life.
If losing Richard and David hadn't been bad enough, she'd only been able to report the murders to the police without giving out specifics of her ties to the Knights to catch the killers—which they would never do, anyway. The Dragon Knights were exceedingly careful and even had moles in the various police departments. One whisper of what she'd been, and she'd be as good as dead.
So at the first opportunity, she'd resorted to her last option: to run to the dragon-shifters and give them the information she'd stolen from the Knights' database. True, she'd hated and feared dragons for most of her life, but if there was anyone who could—and would—take revenge on the Knights, it was the dragon-shifters.
Enemy of an enemy was a friend, and all that.
What she hadn't counted on was passing out on Stonefire's land and then falling into a coma for a year. The doctors still hadn't told her why it'd happened, or if it could happen again.
Which meant her time could be short, and she needed to convince them to listen to her. Without her knowledge, they'd never crack all the information on the thumb drive and truly be able to take down the Knights.
However, no one smiled at her or even tried to initiate a conversation that didn't revolve around her health. To get them to listen to anything she said, and believe it, was going to take some work.
One of the doctors—Dr. Lewis, a dragonman with dark hair and glasses who spoke with a Welsh accent—walked into the room. Out of the three doctors she'd encountered so far, Ivy preferred him the most. He rarely spoke unless necessary, and he never lingered after completing his routine checks on her health. He oddly didn't view her with malice, or any emotion, really, beyond curiosity.
Maybe he was the one who would believe she had information the dragons still needed.
After checking her vital signs on the machines, he asked, "Any noticeable changes?"
"No. I'm still always tired and weak."
Half-truth. She'd recovered all of her memory, but she wasn't going to share that just yet.
He scribbled down something on his clipboard. "Then tomorrow you'll start some light physical therapy. However, if anything hurts before then or during the process, make sure to say something."
She'd barely nodded before he left the room.
So much for swaying Dr. Lewis to her side. Maybe he was too aloof for her purposes.