Chapter two
1064 Words
AMELIA'S POV
The ceiling was white and very still and that was the first thing I registered before the pain arrived.
The back of my head was a specific kind of wrong that made the edges of everything pulse and I tried to sit up immediately.
"Easy." A pack medic pressed her hand firmly against my shoulder. "Stay still."
"Damien." My voice came out rough and wrong. "Where is Damien."
"Alive. Being treated next door."
"I need to see him right now."
"You need to stay still right now."
"Is he okay just tell me if he is okay."
She looked at me directly. "He is alive and stable and currently being treated. You will see him when I clear you to move and not before." She went back to what she was doing near my arm. "Which will happen significantly faster if you stop trying to sit up."
I stopped trying to sit up.
The room came into focus slowly. Medical bay inside the estate, two others being treated further down the row, the sounds of the attack outside fading into something that was almost quiet but not quite.
The door opened and Lydia walked in.
My stepmother moved with that particular purposeful energy she reserved for moments she had already decided how to handle and she stopped at the foot of my bed and looked at me the way she always looked at me, finding me present but not remarkable.
"You're awake," she said. "Good."
"Who got him out." Something kept pulling at the edges of my memory but every time I reached for it the pain pushed it back under. "I went out there. I found him near the back entrance and I don't remember what happened after that."
"You hit your head," Lydia said. "It's completely normal not to remember clearly."
"I remember going out there. I remember finding him."
"Amelia—"
"Who got him out Lydia."
She looked at me for a moment. "Gabriella."
I stared at her.
"She went out after him when the fighting pushed the main team back," Lydia continued, her voice even and unhurried. "Got him clear just before the east wall came down." A small pause. "It was very brave of her."
"Gabriella was nowhere near that side of the estate when the attack started."
"People move quickly when someone they care about is in danger." She said it gently which was worse than if she had said it any other way. "You of all people should understand that."
"I want to see him."
"He's resting."
"I am his wife."
"And he is exhausted and in pain." She clasped her hands in front of her. "Tomorrow, Amelia."
"Tonight Lydia. I want to see him tonight."
"That is not what he has asked for tonight."
The door opened before I could respond and one of the senior pack warriors stepped in, a broad man named Cole who had been with the Ashford pack for years and who looked exhausted in a way that went well past the physical.
"She's awake," Lydia said.
"Good." He looked at me. "How are you feeling."
"Tell me what happened out there."
He pulled a chair from against the wall and sat down heavily. "Rival pack retreated about forty minutes ago. Full sweep is running now. It's over."
"Who pulled Damien out."
"Gabriella Crosswyn." He said it the way people say things they have already said several times, settled and certain. "Went out after him when the main team got pushed back. Got him clear before the east wall came down." He exhaled. "Lucky she moved when she did."
"I moved first," I said. "I was already out there. I found him and I was dragging him toward the tree line and I—"
"Amelia." His voice was not unkind. "You were found near the south wall. Alone."
"That is not where I was."
"It's where they found you."
"Then someone moved me because that is not where I was and I know what I remember."
"Head injuries affect memory in ways that feel completely real," the medic said quietly without looking up. "The brain fills gaps with things that feel like memory but aren't always accurate."
I looked at her but she did not look back up.
"Gabriella saved him," Cole said, not harshly, just finally, the way you say something when you need it to be the last word. "That's what happened. That's what everyone on that side of the estate saw."
The room went quiet.
The medic kept working. Cole looked at a point past my shoulder. Lydia stood at the foot of my bed with her hands clasped and her expression completely composed and the silence did exactly what it was designed to do, made continuing feel unreasonable, made my version feel like the thing that needed defending rather than the thing that was simply true.
I looked at each of them in turn.
Nobody looked back.
"I want to see my husband," I said quietly.
"Tomorrow," Lydia said and her voice was so gentle it almost sounded like kindness. "Get some rest. You've been through enough tonight."
She nodded once at Cole and they moved toward the door together and it closed behind them with a soft click that felt much heavier than it had any right to.
The medic finished what she was doing and dimmed the light above my bed without being asked and her footsteps moved away down the row.
I lay in the white room and stared at the ceiling and reached for the memory that kept pulling at me from somewhere underneath the pain, mud against my face and rain and something sliding from my neck and landing close to my fingers and a voice above me that I could almost place.
The medication pulled harder.
I let it.
But before it took me completely I turned my face toward the door and said it out loud to the empty room, to the white ceiling, to whoever was listening on the other side of whatever this night had become.
"I was the one who got him out."
Nobody answered.
The medication won.
I closed my eyes and the white room disappeared and I did not say it again for three years because nobody ever believed me and eventually I stopped believing it myself.
Until the morning everything changed.
- Writer
