Mate revealed

Talking Penny down.

“Ester” they whispered. “I’m here”

Something wound around Ester and it reminded her of her limbs. 

Limbs that were frozen in agony. 

But a heat, a delicious heat oozed into her skin. It burned and warmed all at once. 

“Shh” a voice quietened her. She hadn’t realised she’d been making noise. 

She was weightless once again, as her head rested against something solid. His breath from above, tickling her hair.

She listened to the heartbeat beneath her ear, as she was slowly pulled back into unconsciousness once more. 

*                      *                      *                      *

Thoughts tangled with her sense of touch. 

A screamed jerked Ester from sleep. 

Her eyes opened only to see a muddle of shapes and colours. Light.

A dull ache throughout her body, began blazing into a roaring fire. 

One word forced in her mind: Lucca? 

‘I’m here” The words drifted into her ear. 

She tried to squint at the dark hue in front of her, but nothing would focus.

Ester felt a twinge at her somewhere on her arm, and then her lids felt heavy again. 

Light receded. The feeling of a thumb lightly stroking her cheek floated away. 

*                      *                      *                      *

“Are you serious? For goodness sake, why didn’t you tell me?!”

There was a sharp smell of medicine and washing detergent.

“When?!”

“Keep your voice down.”

The room was light beyond Ester’s eyelids.

Her head felt heavy on her neck and shoulders. 

Her tongue was thick in her mouth and there was a lump in her throat.

I’m going to be sick, she silently groaned. 

The first voice that had woken Ester sounded again. “When did you realise?”  They whispered. A woman.

“Some time ago – but I wasn’t sure. I’m still not.” The second was deep, rich, low.

Lucca.Her muscles seemed to relax slightly. 

“She’s awake” He breathed. The skin on her left side tingled and she knew it was because he moved to stand here. 

Her eyes fluttered, but felt far too heavy to raise.  

Lucca…

And slowly, like the calm creeping of the morning sun, feeling sluggishly slunk down her body. From her neck, moving down her chest, her arms to her stomach. Crisp bedsheets beneath her itched her skin. 

Only until her body was fully bathed in feeling did she become aware of the pain.

Her head pounded, pressure pulsing at the base. Her neck ached as if the weight of her head was too much. 

With each breath her chest was torture. 

Her legs. Her legs were the worst. Splinters of agony seemed to explode along her right thigh. Her knee blossomed in pain, becoming louder and louder.

Each injury vied for her attention. Nausea washed over her in waves. 

Sweat traced across her forehead as a whimper escaped her mouth. 

So much pain…

“Helena help her” His voice dripped in anxiety, fraying at the edges..

I’m here Ester, that deep and rich voice she’d once heard before whispered into her mind. And for a moment she calmed.

I’ve missed you Lucca.

Something rough and warm clasped her palm and she yelped again; the pain scuttled down her arm, another injury realised. 

The warmth was gone. Something smashed, the room shook with the force of it. 

A door slammed. The room trembled again. Then everything fell silent.

A moment later, something was pressed into the crease of her elbow. The colour beyond her lids darkened and the pain in her body ebbed away as quickly as it had come. 

She was fell into a dreamless sleep again. 

*                      *                      *                      *

Humming carefully wove into Esters subconscious. 

A constant beeping broke her out of it.

The same chemical smell assaulted her nose, and she blinked into the white light. The humming stopped.

“Here” a small voice murmured gently and pressed a cup of water to her lips. She gulped greedily, some dripping down her chin. 

Ester attempted to speak, but all that came out was strangled sounds.

“Shh Ester” A dainty hand pressed against her forehead.

Her heart fell; it wasn’t Lucca. Where is he? We need him.

The bright fuzy shapes of the room slowly shoved themselves into the tight lines of a white room. White windows. White blinds. A white cabinet. Pink, red, orange, purple, yellow flowers punctuated the colourless room.  

She tried again “Where am I?” it was no louder than a breath.

“You’re in the infirmary” It was a woman’s voice, not the same one she’d heard when she’d woken before. “In Darkthroat.”

Darkthroat? Memories watered into her mind, a long track into the sky. Thick forest. Wolves. A kiss. Lucca.

Where are you Lucca?

She craned her fragile neck to the side, as was met by two large grey eyes and a dark blonde bob. 

“Emma?”

Emma grinned in relief, and smile bringing out dimples she knew Stevie had too. “For a moment there I was worried you’d forgotten everything. Here.” She places her hands behind Ester’s head “Let me sit you up”

She pressed something, and slowly the bed shifted. 

“s**t” Ester’s gaze fell upon her body. Her jaw dropped open.

Emma grimaced. “Impressive huh?”

Ester’s eyes moved slowly, taking in each detail when her eyes adjusted to the sight. Her right leg was in a cast from foot to the top of her thigh. She could she her toes were black. The nail on her big toe looked ready to fall off. 

Her left leg was mottled in bruises and scratches. She could still see her red nail polish on that foot. When had she painted them?

Her right arm, from wrist to upper arm was in an awkward right angle cast.  She couldn’t see the rest of her body, but with each breath she was beginning to feelthem.

“What the f**k happened?” She mumbled lethargically.

Emma didn’t reply, instead fretted over the curtains, pulling them a little wider to let more light in. 

“Emma?”, and that, she turned back to Ester, her eyes huge and round once more. Emma bit her lip. “Tell me Emma, please”

She signed, defeated “Well, it looks like you got hit by a car, or truck or something”

“Or something?” Ester’s eyes fixed on her blackened toes for a moment. She tried to wiggle them… nothing.

Emma nodded, coming back to sit next to Ester “Yeah, your injuries were pretty severe at first Ester”

At first?! Weren’t they ‘pretty severe’ now? Ester’s heart jerked, “Wait – how long have I been here?”

Emma gulped, “Erm, you – you got hit erm 11, no 12 days ago”

Ester sat back in her bed. 12 days. 12 days she’d missed. What had happened in that time. How had she looked 12 days ago, if this was how she looked now?

“Tell me what happened.” She whispered.

“Well,” Emma breathed “Lucca found you on the main road, about 20 minutes from the Darkthroat track, you’d been hit probably not 10 minutes before. He brought you back here with Helena. She was the one who thought it was a car or truck, well, that and the fact that you were found on the side of the road.”

Shit. Had she almost died in an RTA? Just like her mother had? Penny would’ve been on her own, after her mother, father and her had all – “s**t!” Ester gasped.

“I’m only letting all this cursing go because you’re injured – but in future –“

“Penny!” Ester shouted “My sister, has anyone – she’ll be out of her mind! Oh no!”

Emma smiled and waved her hands “Don’t worry, Lucca sorted it”

“Sorted it? What does that mean”

“He spoke with her, your sister”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, he told her about the accident, maybe a day after it happened”

“s**t, she’ll be coming, or wait – is she here already?” Ester struggled to sit up, but her body was a deadweight. Her one ‘good’ – and she thought that word was far too generous, wasn’t strong enough to drag herself up.

Emma leaped up again, this time her hands dancing across Ester’s half broken body, trying to stop her from moving too much. “No, no calm down Ester please!”

A sting began to swell in Ester’s chest, and a dull ache bloom at the base of her skull. “Emma, please tell me if my sister is here”.

God, Penny would be so mad with her. She’d only been gone a month and already she’d almost died. And started seeing wolves, men turning into wolves and kissed said man – 1, 2… oh quite a few times. Oh God, Ester groaned inwardly, what if she was at Ester’s cabin now? She’d see that Ester hadn’t quitemanaged to work out how the oven worked, or that the concept of folding and putting her clean clothes into the closet was a societal expectation that Ester was quiteready to conform to yet.

“No she’s not here” Emma stated, appearing calmer now that Ester had stopped squirming. She brought a wet compress to Ester’s forehead and dabbed it lightly to her clammy skin. Ester’s cheeks here becoming redder by the moment.

“But she…” Her heart fell – that wasn’t like Penny? She’d be on the first plane here if Ester had some much as twisted her ankle. She sat back again, enveloped by the bedding. It wasn’t until now that Ester had realised, she wanted her sister to be here in American, in Lightwood. 

Her lips turned down.

Reading her expression, Emma’s voice was delicate “Sorry Ester, we can’t… Lucca might have said that Darkthroat isn’t exactly…”

Lucca…Where is he? His dark eyes flickered into Ester’s mind, the curve of his smirk.

Ester shook the thought loose, trying to stay focused on Emma’s voice. 

“… Darkthroat can be a little dangerous, so Lucca told her you were in a stable condition in the ICU but couldn’t have visitors because of the fear of infection, he even made Helena speak with her on a number of occasions. Your sister,” Emma made a scoffing noise “I’ve never seen anyone put the fear of God into Lucca, but your sister can sure handle a werew,“ Emma stopped abruptly and went still. 

“But she’d still come…” Ester murmured obliviously. Her chest grew heavier, the pain there making itself known, the ache in her skull fanning out across her head and dipping down the column of her neck. 

Emma laughed skittishly “Believe me, she almost did about 10 times, Lucca had to talk her down from the plane steps each time. I mean figuratively, not literally of course.”

“He’s spoken to her more than once?” Ester could feel her eyelids growing heavier with each word.

“Oh yeah! He talks to her every day, sometimes more if she calls, but you know now you’re awake you might be able to see her” Emma gave her a warm smile in the hopes that she would coax one from Ester. It didn’t.

“Why didn’t they just take me to the hospital? That way I could’ve seen my sister.” Ester fought the surge of sleepiness now attacking her.

Emma’s mouth opened slowly, as if the answer was only slowly coming to her. Ester narrowed her eyes as she waited for the answer “Darkthroat was closer… Aaaand, Lucca was keen to keep an eye on you”

“Where is he?” Ester mumbled. The pain was waking up, but her body was trying to fall asleep.

“He’ll be back soon” Emma replied through a fog of fatigue Ester was now battling. “You catch some Zs and we can catch later ok?”

She attempted to nod in response, but her head felt too heavy. “Thanks Emma” She sighed before slumping into a stupor.