The Chosen by Celia Thomson Page A

days later, he was covered in sores and unable to breathe properly—but still alive. Barely. A few more hours—maybe minutes—and he wouldn’t have been. She had never followed up on what happened to him. Now was definitely the time to open up that line of inquiry again.
    When the bus stopped, Chloe was the only one to get off. The sky was overcast, the clouds high in the atmosphere. Chloe drew as far into her hoodie as she could as a cold wind cut through tree branches and telephone poles. She let her feet slap the ground, willing herself to make ugly, human noises, to challenge the sky and the wind and the graceful lion woman within her. She kicked rocks and pebbles and wished she was thirteen again. Or at least fifteen, before everything had changed.
    She reached the gate and realized how tiny she must look against it: a wastrel teenager in a faded sweatshirt and jeans, under a guardhouse that protected one of the largest real estate firms in San Francisco—as well as a dying race of ancient feline warriors.
    “Oh, Miss King—would you like me to send a car down to you?”
    “No thanks, I’ll walk,” she said, slipping through the tiny invisible pedestrian “door” that cracked open out of the imposing double gates and led up the long gravel driveway. Chloe couldn’t help notice the trees and the topiaries and the bushes and all sorts of beautiful gardenthings she had never explored while she lived there. She had stayed inside, except for when she escaped to see her friends.
    Chloe chose to go around the back, avoiding the lobby and the receptionist and the crowd of people who would be there. Staring at her. Bowing to her. Directing her to Sergei.
    Though she didn’t remember exactly where the hospital room was, she pieced it together through memory and smell. Chloe tentatively knocked on the door before opening it and going in, as quietly as she had through the gate.
    “Hey.” Dr. Lovsky was there, checking off something on Brian’s chart. She gave a little bow.
    Brian was in a slightly different position from when she saw him last and had all sorts of tubes and wires on him. A drip in his arm. Something in his nose. He looked fragile and was the pale color of chicken fat.
Small
.
    “How’s he doing?” Chloe whispered.
    “Talk as loud as you want. He’s on so many painkillers, it would take an earthquake to wake him,” Dr. Lovsky said, hanging the chart back on the end of his bed. “Stabilized—I’m going to take a closer look at his head today. He’s pretty resilient for a human.”
    “Speaking of human …” Chloe closed her eyes and ground her teeth. A leader isn’t afraid to tell the truth. Think of Washington and the cherry tree. Or Honest Abe. “… I probably should have told you this before,but when he thought he was going to die, he, um … he kissed me.”
    Lovsky’s clipboard slipped perilously until it was hanging from just one of her claws.
    “H-how hard?” she managed to stutter.
    “Uh, pretty hard, I guess.” Chloe fidgeted. “A teensy bit of tongue,” she added, flushing furiously.
    “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” the doctor shrieked, running a clawed hand over her head. “Honored One.”
    “Because I thought you would just give up on him—assume he was going to die.”
    Strangely, Dr. Lovsky didn’t argue with that. She seemed to be one of those rare people who didn’t protest when they knew the other person was right. “I kissed another boy before I knew who I was, too. …”
    The other woman just tapped a tooth with her claw.
    Chloe cleared her throat. “Is he going to be okay? Can you do something for him?”
    The doctor shook her head. “I was … involved in a case years ago with a Mai and a human who had only kissed. He died. The hospital couldn’t do anything—and it was a damn sight better than anything
here
.”
    Chloe was cowed into silence—there was definitely a story behind and beyond what she had said.
    Calie then frowned, looking