The Warrior King's Mate

Chapter 8

The room is on fire. The oak panelled door is ablaze, the stench of something bitter, like overly-charred meat, making me cough and gag, and the smoke – the smoke is so hot and putrid…I can’t get out, I have to get out!

My eyes snap open as I shoot upright, inhaling loudly, my heart in my throat. My head is beaded with cold sweat and at first, I am in complete darkness. I’m awake.

Nightmare again…although, I think to myself, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to remember there being a fire before. The details of the door, the room, the colour of the carpet – these were so new to me, but a strong sense of déjà vu kept me scrambling to memorise them before the dream cleared. Slowly, I brought a shaky hand to my chest, rubbing my fingers along my bony ribcage, desperately trying to soothe the frantic beating of my heart. I became aware of something dangling from my hand.

Opening my eyes and allowing them to focus on the gloom, I took in the shape of a window on the far side of an otherwise very sparsely decorated room. Wiggling my toes to disperse the tingly pins and needles there, I could feel a thin sheet over my body. I wasn’t cold, covered in mud anymore. I wasn’t wearing shoes. Confusion pulsed through me as I realised I was wearing some sort of gown. As if someone were slowly turning the volume up in the world, I became aware of a pattern of beeps and bloops coming from outside the slightly ajar door, and from beside me. Pushing myself up to a comfortable sitting position, I discovered I was tangled in wires. They came from my hand, my arm, my fingertips. One particularly uncomfortable one came from my nose. It made me want to retch.

I could hear murmuring coming from somewhere, it was a low noise and it sounded important. I tried to focus in on it, I needed to see where it was coming from. Focusing made my head hurt and I felt the darkness spin around me slightly. Leaning backwards, my head found a comfortable softness, my eyes heavy. I needed to sleep.

**

“….I think we can pull back on the fluids this morning, her body seems to be coming back round. Once she’s awake, we can assess how much nutrition we need to compensate for, but generally I think we’re in a good place,” a voice was saying. It was low and male and sounded authoritative.

“Is she waking up? Doctor, I think – yes look she’s coming round!” came another voice, a woman’s. She sounded like she had a cold.

I blinked my eyes a few times. My eyelids were heavy. The room was bright now, sunshine streaming in in dazzling beams through the window, now open, allowing a gentle breeze inside. I could smell something crisp and clean, my body warm and feeling surprisingly energised. Forcing myself to focus my eyes on the two figures at my bedside, I took in the vast differences between them both.

The man, wearing a crisp blue button-down shirt and a long white coat, had a clipboard poking out from under his arm, while the other held the white metal railing of my bedside. His face was slightly lined, handsome, with a salt and pepper moustache and warm, bright blue eyes. The woman was sitting on a chair at the opposite side from the doctor. Her hair was completely white, pulled back into an elegant – and slightly familiar – chignon bun. In her ears, she wore simple pearl earrings. She was dressed in a white shirt, cropped linen trousers and she had a cotton handkerchief clutched in one of her soft, wrinkled hands. The other, I traced down to holding on to my own. Her hand was warm and squashy. She was blinking watery grey eyes at me. Eyes I had seen before were filled with hatred, disdain, disregard, dislike, and cruelty. But never soft with tears.

“Nova?” her voice was quiet, but even so, I could hear a softness, a kindness, a dignity in her tone. She looked at me, her inner corners of her eyebrows raised and mouth slightly open, the corners pulled slightly down. She looked so sad, so lost. I looked back at the doctor, his eyebrows also raised, his forehead lined, his lips pressed together. I looked back at the old woman holding my hand. I nodded.

“Oh Nova!” She sobbed, standing from her chair and reaching for my face. Instinctively, I shrunk backwards into my pillow, the beeping machine springing to life and loudly echoing the fluttering of fear in my chest. The woman stopped, leaning over the railing of my bed. She flicked her eyes over to the doctor who I saw give her a small encouraging nod. She moved her hand to my face, softly hooking her fingers under my chin and turning my face to look into the teary, worried face of my grandmother.

“You’ve been asleep for three days, darling. We – well we had received a call from your mother that you were coming to visit and, well, we were so surprised but so delighted, we had a dinner planned and when you didn’t arrive…well, we got very worried. Lots of young people are coming out this week and we couldn’t think how you had been lost. After two days, a young woman from another pack here for the selection came to Margot and let us know her friend had taken her map in order to get here…” she trailed off, sitting back down, but never letting go of my hand.

“She told us the map was given to her by her father who didn’t know the western corridor has been overrun by rogues for some time. She found out from some of her fellow trainees about the rogues…she was distraught, she said you should have arrived the same day as her but she hadn’t heard from you and when she told us your name I just….” She coughed down a small sob, clasping my one hand in both of hers, screwing her eyes closed to try and stop the tears silently streaking her perfectly powered face.

My brain understood what she was telling me; she knew I was coming and she hadn't sent for me. She was looking forward to meeting me and…I’d been in the woods for two days? I knew I had been walking for a long time…the forest was so dense it must have been low light most of the time, I hadn’t realised how much time was passing me by. I really had been lost…The girl. The girl from the ferry….

“Amy?” I asked. My throat was incredibly dry, my voice sounded hoarse and sore. Grandma took her tissue hand to her face and set about dabbing it dry.

“Yes, that’s her” she said thickly. “She’s been frantic with worry, she thought she had ki-ki-killed you,” she hiccupped. Poor Amy, I thought. She seemed so excited about her trip, and I’d ruined it.

“Hmhm” the doctor coughed politely, seeking my attention.

“Nova, I'm a doctor here at River Moon pack. You were brought to us after our warriors retrieved you from the forest. You were under attack from some rogues. While you don't appear to have been injured in the attack, we had a difficult time trying to keep you conscious. It seems you were very poorly. As a result, we’ve had to place several catheters to get some fluids and calories into you. You were very dehydrated and incredibly underweight. Can you remember anything before the attack at all? Are you able to explain to me how you've become so malnourished?”

His voice was kind but his question was dangerous. I knew better than to speak out against the ranked members. I could explain that I just worked hard in the packhouse, but something about this man’s shrewd eyes told me he wouldn’t be interested in anything other than a truth that made sense to him.

“I- I’m a fussy eater, I guess,” I lied. It was hard to talk, my throat was so stiff and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth sickeningly.

“Hmmm.” As suspected, the doctor was not convinced.

“Nova, when our warriors finally found you, you were very nearly dead. You were so deprived of nutrients that your body was shutting down completely. That doesn’t sound to me like fussy eating.” It wasn’t a question. I didn’t have to answer. I looked down at the crisp white blanket I was wrapped in and let the silence grow loud around us. Coughing, the doctor started his enquiry again.

“Okay then, Nova. Maybe you’ll be able to tell me about some of the injuries we found on you?” at that, the hand holding mine squeezed gently. I looked at my grandmother, her face no longer wet with tears but set, controlled. Angry? I didn't know this woman, but her resemblance to my mother was startling. It was as if she had simply transformed my mother forward in time, even the slight curl of her eyelashes was the same. She wouldn’t want me to tell this doctor about what Beta Grace had allowed to happen to me, she wouldn’t want her daughter judged this way. Maybe if I’m good and I lie for her, she would let me stay with her as my mother instructed. Maybe she won't make me return to Silver Shore.

“I fell a lot. In the woods. There…there were rogues and - ”

“Yes, those superficial wounds healed quite nicely once we got the feeding tube in. No, I'm talking about the historical breaks. Your x-rays were quite a devastating discovery. Some of those breaks have been remodelled several times. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

The doctor untucked his clipboard from under his arm, unclipped a dark piece of transparent film and held it up to the light shining in from the window. It was an x-ray of an arm.

“When a bone breaks, a blood clot goes to the area, to bridge the broken bits of bone. For humans, this is then replaced by a soft type of bone as the cells grow to join the bones together again. Around about six weeks after the injury, regular bone replaces this soft sort of callus and the bone is remodelled. Sometimes, this remodelling will show up as a faint line on the bone in an x-ray. After a while, it looks exactly as it did before the injury. Now – for werewolves who have reached maturity, this process happens in a matter of hours and it’s very rare for any remodelling to be detectable in an x-ray, although we might see it if the injury happened to a pup, or an immature wolf who wouldn’t have their full healing capabilities available to them without their wolf.

“Now I want you to look at this x-ray of your right forearm and hand. Do you see this thin line here?” The doctor pointed to a clearly visible pale stripe on a long bone in my arm. I didn’t like where this was going. I felt my face flush violently red with embarrassment and fear. They know.

“This is this remodelling I’m talking about, right here, do you see?” He looked at me.

There was no way I could lie. It was there. As subtle as a blink, I nodded.

“There are forty of them on this x-ray alone, Nova. Some of them appear to have been re-broken at different stages of development,” the doctor said, looking at me calmly.

Behind me, I heard my grandmother swallow a slight sob.

I was frozen in place, barely able to contain my focus as my eyes darted around the room, trying to figure out if I was really in a hospital or perhaps this was a dungeon. They realised I couldn’t be a wolf, that I couldn’t heal myself. They were going to exile me now. I was sure of it. The doctor had all the evidence, nothing I could say would matter. What could I say?! How could I even defend myself? I was so useless, even my own mother didn’t want me, and literally threw me to the wolves. That’s why my grandmother was emotional. She knew she would have to do the same, she seemed like such a warm lady, nothing like my own mother, this must be so much harder for her to do and here I was still holding her hand!

I had tried! I had tried to keep out of the way, I had tried to work hard, even with the beatings, I had worked hard to keep the packhouse clean, to do my duties. I even passed my exams in school so as to not humiliate my mother entirely, but it was all for nothing. They found out that I was such a worthless creature, not even the moon goddess would waste a wolf on me. I hung my head. There was nothing more now. They should have left me to the rogues.

“Nova,” the doctor's voice came from my bedside again, lower down, as though he were crouching down to my height. He didn’t sound angry with me; he must be very professional. “Nova, who has been torturing you at home?”

My hands flew to my mouth in shock. Torture? I haven’t been tortured! I shook my head at him, unable to speak but pleading with him with my eyes not to say such things.

“It’s alright, dear, you’re safe here. Y- you’re safe now,” my grandmother was tearful again. She rubbed her hand gently along my blanketed leg and I jumped from her touch as if it were a blow. She looked pleadingly at the doctor, holding her hand to her heart.

“Nova,” the doctor tried to engage me again. “You have been malnourished for a very, very long time. There is extensive evidence of torture in all your xrays, and you have poorly healed scars and burn marks - ” his eyes flickered to the left side of my head and I knew he had seen the burn there from Logan and Morgan – “some of them look like they were inflicted by silver…or fire…It is not normal for a young person such as yourself to sustain these injuries, most of these must have been sustained over a long period of time, which makes this evidence of torture of a child. If you speak to us about how this has happened, it will help the elder council when they consult with his majesty about th-”

At the mention of the elder council and possibly royal involvement in this, my body lurched of its’ own accord, ripping the drip in the back of my hand out violently, which stung bitterly, the machine beeping frantically at the separation. I tried to launch myself over the railings at the side of the bed. My only thought was to escape through the window and hope I was several stories up and, if not, to find a way back to the forest to hide. I should never have come here, I should have run with the money when I had the chance.

However.

Three days lying in bed unconscious after the ordeal with my mother, the strange electrical things happening to my body, leaving Flora’s in the middle of the night, the long journey to get here and then being lost in the trees for two days with no food or water, never minding the chase with the rogues, doesn’t lend itself towards perfect coordination or strength. I barely managed to untangle myself from the blankets and get one naked leg over the railing before the doctor managed to detain me and force me back on the bed. His grip was gentle, but firm – he wasn’t trying to hurt me, he just wanted me to be still. He called for my grandmother to press a button on the wall and in seconds, in came a swarm of women dressed in sky blue hospital scrubs, one of them carrying a large needle in her hand.

Unsurprisingly, this did not calm me down.

I began to fight them. If they wouldn’t let me run, I would make them! I refuse to be beheaded by a blood-thirsty king all for the crime of having no wolf!

A sharp stab in my left thigh forced my attention to the sight of a syringe of clear liquid being squeezed into me by a pale woman.

Within seconds, I felt my head fall back on to my pillow and a fog clouded my thought process, making my body feel heavy. I felt myself being rolled back on to the bed and the blanket draped over me again.

“Okay, Nova, that will help make you feel more relaxed,” the doctor said, his breathing slightly laboured and his brow sweaty.

“Wow, even as underweight and exhausted as you are, you put up quite a fight! Now, you might find the sedative makes it difficult to reach out to your wolf, but rest assured, the effects wear off in a few hours and you’ll be able to connect with her again with ease.”

“My...wolf?” I asked, eyes blurry and jaw slack. I don’t have a wolf.

“Your wolf will be affected by the sedative, dear,” grandma was stroking my hair and looking at me sorrowfully. “She must be strong, to have helped you endure so much…so much pain…” The old woman rested her forehead on mine and whispered “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again.

The doctor, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder, said “her wolf has Alpha genes, Moira, you know she’s strong. You heard how the warriors saw her outrun twenty rogues on their own turf. She will be fine. Let’s let her rest. I’d like to meet with Alpha John and Luna Margot to update them on her condition…”

The last thing I saw before the world went dark was my grandmother, a woman who I had never seen before in my life, lean forwards and place a gentle, loving kiss on my forehead.