CHAPTER 4
1049 Words
I stared at Caius Drake sitting beside my hospital bed and tried to figure out if the concussion was making me hear things.
"You're jealous," I said. "Right now."
"I'm stating a fact." He sat forward, elbows on his knees, jaw set.
"His name is Eli Torres," I said. "He works at the diner. He knows my mother. She works there."
"You know him well enough to know his name."
"He saved my life. Which is more than most people in this pack have done." I pushed myself upright. My ribs fired and I pressed my back teeth together but kept my face level.
The doctor came in, flipping pages on a clipboard. Caius stood and stepped back.
"The head swelling is reducing," the doctor said. "The wrist break is clean. Three fractured ribs. The ankle..."
"I need to go home," I said.
"You need at least forty-eight hours of..."
"I can't stay here. We can't afford this." I looked at Caius. "Where are my clothes?"
He said nothing for a second.
"I had them disposed of," he said. "They were damaged."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"You burned my clothes."
"They were damaged," he said again.
I was going to have to walk home in a hospital gown.
I pulled the IV from my arm. The monitor went off. The nurse came in and I told her I was signing myself out and she stopped arguing after Caius said one quiet word I couldn't make out from the bed.
The doctor gave me a look that said he thought I was making a serious mistake and then examined my injuries anyway before producing the release form.
"These wounds," he said, pausing over the stitches above my eye. "They shouldn't be this far along. You came in six hours ago. This level of closure in six hours is unusual."
"My father was a warrior," I said. "I heal fast."
"Even so. For your rank, this is..."
"For my rank." I looked at him. "My father was the Beta of this pack. He was a warrior and a fighter. That is something nobody in Ironwood gets to take from me."
I felt Caius watching me from against the wall.
The doctor signed the form. I signed the form. He left with the expression of a man who disagreed with everything happening in this room.
I stood up.
My ankle took my weight and sent a shockwave up my leg. I kept my face even. The hospital gown tied at the back and I was grateful for small favors.
"I have to find my father's watch," I said.
"Here." Caius reached into his jacket pocket and held it out.
I crossed the room and took it from his hand.
The moment his fingers brushed my palm I felt it. The same thing that had hit me in his office. That pull, that warmth running from my hand up through my arm and settling somewhere behind my ribs. I closed my fingers around the watch and held my breath.
"The diner worker had it on him when he carried you in," Caius said.
"Eli," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"Thank you," I said, and I turned and limped out of the room.
The walk home was forty minutes on a fractured ankle in a hospital gown in the rain.
Storm was quiet. The good kind, giving me room because she knew I needed it.
When I got back to the trailer I pushed the door open, sat on the couch, and put my face in my hands.
I sat like that for exactly one minute.
Then someone knocked on the door.
I looked up.
"Come in," I said, expecting my mother.
The door opened and Caius Drake walked into my home.
He had to duck for the doorframe. He straightened up and looked around, the fold-out couch I slept on, the small kitchen, the c***k in the ceiling, my mother's three coffee mugs lined up on the counter. The whole trailer could fit in his office.
He looked at me and his eyes were changing at the edges. Amber going dark. He was fighting with Luca and losing.
He walked toward me.
I leaned back.
"I have to ask you something," he said.
"Then ask."
"How many?" His voice was controlled. Barely.
"How many what."
"Other boys." The control cracked slightly. "How many are there."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"You're serious," I said.
"Answer me."
"There are no boys." I held his eyes. "There is one person named Eli Torres who pulled five wolves off me in an alley and carried me to a hospital where your pack staff almost let me die on a gurney because of who I am. That is the entire list."
He was close now. Too close. The trailer was small and there was nowhere to go.
I stood up and he was taller than me by three inches and his scent in this small space was almost unbearable.
"You need to leave," I said.
"I'm not done."
"Caius." I said his name, not his title, because I had run out of deference for one day. "You told me this morning to be invisible and act like this means nothing. Now you're standing in my home asking me about other boys." I looked straight at him. "Either you're in this or you're not. But you don't get to treat me like nothing and then stand guard over me. Make a decision."
Something cracked open in his expression. Just a second. Then it closed.
He reached out.
He put his hand around my throat, not squeezing, just there. His thumb against the side of my jaw. His eyes were fully dark now.
"You should be afraid of me," he said, very quietly.
"I know," I said.
And I reached up and moved his hand away.
The moment my skin touched his wrist the pain in my ribs went quiet. The ache in my ankle dropped. The throb in my broken wrist softened.
I looked down at my arm.
Back up at him.
"Why does the pain stop when you touch me?" I asked.
He stared at me and for the first time in the entire day, he had no answer ready.
- Writer
