The Warrior King's Mate

Chapter 14

Nova P.O.V.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS" Malcolm bellowed, demanding an explanation from Marcus, the man with the icy blue eyes.

Even as I stood, swaying in and out of reality as I swayed about on my legs, I was aware of something so much worse than the pain in my obviously broken ribs. An emptiness I had never felt before pulled at me. I had always felt lonely and weak, but for a second during that fight - if that's even what you could call that - I felt suddenly warm, and whole and wonderfully strong. Like my consciousness was pulled under a heavy blanket, hearing and feeling the world as if far away from it, knowing that someone else had their hands on the wheel, driving the fight, that they would never let Joe or any one else hurt me ever again.

As soon as this feeling came, it went.

I was thrown unceremoniously against the windscreen of my own mind, crumpling against the sudden awareness of pain, noise and loneliness. I hated it instantly. Life. My life. I would give anything I could to go back to the golden feeling of just a few minutes ago.

Time seemed to both speed up and move impossibly slowly. My brain felt bruised and it was making such a mess of understanding the things that was happening in front of me. Joe was being carried off by some people with medical bags. Amy was making a horrible sound. Mr Marcus stood there, looking at me and making notes in to some sort of diary thing.

Suddenly, Malcolm was there, and he was angry. I couldn't even manage the energy to feel afraid, I just blinked stupidly at him while he spoke at me, unable to really understand why he was there, or why I was in so much pain.

Opening my mouth to speak, I felt a bubble form between my lips, popping as I tried to talk, warm liquid splashing across my nose and chin. And on Malcolm too - I saw the little red flecks sprinkled on his white tshirt. Now Malcom was talking at me a lot more urgently, shaking me a little. I didn't like that, it made my ribs sting.

"Stop," I managed to mumble. Hearing my own voice over the din seemed to streamline the noise and make it easier to understand. Aside from the murmuring and gossiping of a rather large group of people, there was a high pitched ringing in my own ears and the sounds of several people talking to me at once. One of whom was Malcolm, who kept saying something about my lungs. As he spoke to me, people cut open the blouse I was wearing with long scissors, tugging it away from me.

"Wait, no, my cousin bought me this..." I tried to explain.

"Nova forget the f*****g shirt, do you understand me?!" Malcolm sounded scared. I thought he was angry but he was scared - I know because I'm always scared, but now, now, now. Now I'm just...breathing I guess. It even hurts to do that. Can't catch a break. Goddess, I'm tired.

"Your rib has punctured your lung, you need to let them help you," Malcolm was saying as he floated past me. That sounded serious. But I couldn't feel serious right now. I felt...I felt like how Simon used to act whenever he, Logan and the other boys got high in the basement of the packhouse, not knowing I was hiding just a few feet from them, measuring my breathing so as to not give myself away. Lucky the smell of wine and wood was so strong down there, and they were all so out of it. Ha ha, maybe I smelled like wine and wood, so I blended in. God I felt so light headed. I watched Malcom's head as it floated away behind me.

Wait. No, I'm the one floating. I can see the stars and the big bright moon in front of me as I'm carried away. How nice it would be, to be carried away without this silly pain in my side. Silly silly silly.

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I woke up, once again in that room in the hospital, once again in that crinkly little hospital nightdress. The sky was pitch black, save for the ghostly moonlight flowing in through the window. I was exhausted, and waking up felt like crawling out of a very dark cave. For a mad moment, I thought the whole thing had been a dream. The packhouse, the inquisition, the training grounds - all of it. Then I heard them arguing.

"She barely weighs 90lbs, how is it possible she's taken down someone who is quite literally three times her weight AND has had an entire life of training, Malcolm?! HOW?" John was yelling at my cousin, quite hysterically.

"I'm telling you, she beat the s**t out of him and, frankly - I'm f*****g proud of her, she was challenged by him when she was on her own and then forced in to the ring by a crowd of wannabe soldiers, and she held her own!" Malcolm yelled back. A small part of me felt a little bit of pride in his words.

"Don't give me the act, Malcolm! You want her to be okay so you feel better about leaving and saddling us with another mouth to feed and another war to fight, like there isn't enough falling apart in the world!" John shouted back. I felt my eyes sting with tears as my supposed uncle admitted out loud my greatest fear - I wasn't wanted anywhere, then. I didn't even want myself, for crying out loud.

"You think I want to leave her!? I finally have a cousin again and she's - she's f*****g broken, Dad, they broke her and you know what - they laughed while they did it! You really want her to go home to Grace, after what she did?! We KNOW what she did, Dad!"

"Don't you DARE think I've forgotten what she did to him, to US! DON'T YOU DARE!"

"SILENCE!" Came the sonorous voice of Luna Margot. "We will NOT conduct ourselves in this manner in a hospital! I am ashamed of you, both of you! Nova is due to wake from her sedation soon and do you think this is the wake up call she needs?"

I felt each shallow breath like a needle in my lungs. They wanted me gone. They just didn't want me to know that they wanted me gone.

"My love," came my uncle's voice, softer now. "My love, what she did tonight in the training grounds - it's impossible. She beat that White Fang boy into the ground. Even for an Alpha, that's...it's not right. She snuck out of the house without even our son knowing! She pulled the little stunt by shoving that vision into Malcolm's head - for all we know, that's not all she did! She can't even explain how she did it and what, we're just ignoring the fact that she used mind control on an Alpha?! She could be dangerous, Margot! We need to consider your sister had reasons to send her -"

"Enough," Margot hissed. "Whatever motives my sister had towards that girl there ended the day she landed in our grounds, do you understand me? Now, we will take her home and in the morning we will have the results of her blood tests, but until then, no one will be accusing Nova of ANYTHING. I spoke with Marcus, too - he said she won the challenge fair and square. She defended herself, John. She isn't dangerous, she's our niece!"

Silence was followed after several moments by the sound of a door closing forcefully. I lay frozen in bed, my mind turning over what I'd heard. They thought I was dangerous. They wanted me gone. Alpha John thought I had hurt - or would hurt Malcolm. I knew I wasn't capable - but then, I didn't think I was capable of surviving against Joe and by the sounds of it, I'd done more than just live. Margot seemed to be defending me, but she would see soon - eventually everyone turned against me. Eventually, everyone hurt me.

I have money. Money left over from my trip here. She said blood tests - by the morning she would know I was not a wolf, I'd be forced to leave anyway. They hated me, they wanted me gone. Malcolm was afraid of me, of what I did to Joe. I don't even remember it. I don't understand what happened, I just wanted to leave on the buses before all the interrogations started. I didn't want to fight anyone, I just wanted to disappear.

And now they did too. "Another mouth to feed." Alpha John was right - my mother was right. They were all right.

I heard footsteps approaching and swiftly wiped away the few stray tears that had started falling, blinking hard to clear them.

The door opened and Dr Henderson brightly smiled at me, followed by Luna Margot.

"You know, when I said you were welcome to visit anytime, I didn't mean it so literally! You're healing nicely now, and would do better in your own bed. I've asked Luna Margot to take you home and tuck you in - doctor's orders!"

Robotically, I allowed Margot to help me dress and wheel me back through the Dome and in to the stained glass doors of the packhouse. I didn't even wince when she tutted, looking at my numerous scars, or when she accidentally bumped the wheelchair off of the sides of the elevator door as it went PING! on the floor on which I slept. I let her tuck me in and fuss, and nodded absentmindedly as she made me the promise of a cup of camomile tea.

As soon as the bedroom door closed, I sprang lightly to my feet, locking it to spare myself any interruptions.

I had until Margot came back with the tea to grab the money and go. I stuffed the pillows inside the duvet to look like I'd fallen asleep, then tipped the envelope upside down to count how much cash I had left and saw the almost forgotten note from my mother flutter softly towards the floor. I hesitated - for the first time since getting here, my curiosity was winning, desperate to know what the woman who hated me so much wanted me to know.

With shaking hands, I picked up the note as if it had teeth. Opening it, I felt myself slide down the duvet to sit on the floor, the money spilling over the side to land beside me.

Nova,

Do not return to Silver Shore. Your father - a man I hope to one day see burning at the stake - rejected me as his true mate, but not until he forced me to betray my pack, my king and my husband. You are nothing more to me than the face of the man who r***d and blackmailed me, living in my house and using my husband's name. No more.

I tried, Nova. I tried to kill you in my belly and when you lived, I made a deal with a witch to make sure you would never survive in our world. When you were born, I even tried to love you, but no one can love a tumor, a parasite, a cockroach. I hoped the pack would snuff you out but still you persist and I can no more look upon the face of an enemy in my own home.

The money is for you, to get out of my sight for good - a small price for my freedom. You are not my daughter, you never have been and now, you're no longer my burden.

If you step foot in our packlands again, you will be killed on sight, on the authority of Alpha Logan Evans and Beta Simon Blackwell.

I read it twice.

I understood it with perfect clarity the first time, but read it again just to be sure. My own mother wanted to abort me, because I was never wanted. I was forced on her, I was the product of her r**e by - by a man who made her do things. She tried to kill me, all those years. She tried to make the pack...and a witch. What did the witch do?!

This is why the moon goddess punished me - because of what I am.

This is why she never gifted me a wolf.

This is why my own mother wanted rid of me.

Now River Moon wanted rid of me as well.

I wanted rid of me.

The strange electricity I now knew as the strength I usually lacked once more filled my body. I need it now, more than ever. Abandoning the note and the cash - I walked steadily into the bathroom. Looking at myself in the mirror, I wondered how I'd never noticed it. The nose. The eyes, the hair. For the first time, I really looked at myself. I saw the copper and cinnamon - brown hair, still a little ragged looking after the fight with Joe. I looked past the slight bruising around my eye and focused on the dark, mossy green, with streaks of gold and brown. I looked at my button nose, not long like my mother's or hooked like Simon's. My chin was more pointed where Hailey's was more square. I had a faint spattering of freckles along my nose and cheeks. I didn't look the slightest bit like any of them. I watched a tear slowly make its way down from the inside of my eye and drop from my nose.

My nose....

Was this the nose that came from him? Without thinking, I brought my fist up to my face at full electric speed, not even yelling out when I felt it break.

Were these his eyes? I couldn't gouge them out but I smashed the mirror with my fists so they would stop staring at me.

The shards of mirror fell around me, a thousand little rapists staring back at me, smug and terrifying. As my hair fell over my face, I grabbed one of the larger shards, letting it cut my hand while I cut lengths of my hair away, not wanting to see him.

The cut strands fell like feathers all around me.

The blood from my hand ran down over my wrists caught my eye and the idea struck me.

It didn't so much form as an idea, more of an instinct. A flash. An understanding. It was over in a second.

The skin on my wrists was thin. The sound of the slits made the slightest noise, like a miniscule tearing, and for a heartbeat nothing happened.

Then, all at once, the blood came. Thick, and fast and unctious.

The smell of it was overwhelmingly metallic, and my whole body reacted. I wanted to be sick.

I started to feel cold alarmingly fast, running to the door for whatever reason there was. I could feel my heart fluttering in a panic, and realized I was slipping on the pools of blood and fragments of broken mirror, scattering droplets all over the walls and down the white paneling of the door.

I flew backwards and heard the thud of my head hitting the bathtub. I was yelling. Crying. Angry - really, really angry.

Then the banging started. Someone hammered on the bedroom door relentlessly. They were yelling too, the thuds becoming louder and louder. A drum beat to die to. I wondered briefly if it was coming closer, but then realized it was the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, frantically helping to pump the blood out as fast as it could.

I was so cold.

I could hear someone calling my name.

Then, it all went black.