AllFreeNovel
Share Us
#1 hauled me back and punched me in the floating ribs.
My liver spasmed, I choked, and my body froze for a few seconds as it tried to decide if I should faint or puke.
Blood obscured the vision in my eye. #2 was crippled, but I still had #1 and maybe Maya to deal with.
“Enough!” Maya snapped over the bedlam. She cradled She-Wolf #2, who had gone silent and panted around her broken arm.
#1 released me.
I spit out a mouthful of blood and pushed myself up along the lockers. She-Wolf #1 snarled, blood on her teeth. I growled. She still looked pretty damn fresh, but nobody would ever say I quit.
Blood smeared the floor, the benches, the towels, the walls, lockers, the three of us. Head lacerations bled like hell, and I’d managed to coat everyone nicely. The stench of my own blood mingled with bleach and soap and humidity. My field of vision narrowed as one eye began to swell shut.
Nobody moved, so I did, pointing at #2 and telling Maya, “Take that back to your Luna as a token of my esteem.”
Maya snarled something. I steeled myself for a fresh assault, but she turned and jerked her head at #1. She went to the cleaning closet.
I braced myself when the mop was brought out.
Maya helped #2 get to her feet and limp to the least-blood-splattered bench. She cradled her arm and panted around the pain, skin clammy and eyes starting to glaze over. Bruises formed on her arm as it swelled while I watched. Her packmates filled a big bucket with hot water. I continued to bleed everywhere. Shivering set in, along with raw, pure exhaustion.
Maya splashed a hefty amount of bleach into the bucket. “Get cleaned up so we can all leave.”
“What?” I asked, feeling stupid. Now that all my anger had been spent and channeled and fed blood and broken bones, the reality of all of it slammed down on me.
“Go fucking shower. You’re a mess,” she spat.
For all their posturing and audacity, when someone’s arm got broke, they cracked like quail eggs.
My reflection in the mirror grabbed my attention: two black eyes, upper lip split, bitten my tongue, a few mice on my face, a laceration above one eye that bled prodigiously, and a cut on my scalp poured blood down the back of my neck. I looked like I’d just walked off the set of a horror movie. Everything had started to dry into a sticky mess. My left hand hurt, and a throbbing pain had set in over my kidney.
In wolf form I’d been chewed on by a bear, war-form I’d been sliced up, but human form getting beaten up was a new experience. My mangled reflection stared back at me in one-eyed disbelief.
“Go bleed in the damn shower and not the sink!” Maya flung a bar of soap at me.
“Don’t you know when you’ve been beaten and you should shut up?” I spit out another mouthful of blood. Hopefully that tongue chunk would grow back.
“You’re bleeding on the floor we’re mopping, you stupid feral.”
I left bloody footprints on the way to the shower. Maya swore again.
The water ran red in the shower and my scalp stung. My eye and scalp had no intentions of stopping their little horror show audition.
I rummaged in my bag for petroleum jelly. I usually kept it for sparring and blisters, but it’d temporarily clog up bleeding in a pinch. I smeared a glob into my hair and over my eye. It’d hold for five minutes so I could get out of the gym.
Maya and #1 slathered every surface with the heady-smelling bleach solution they’d mixed. #2 sat on a bench, clutching her arm, as white as the tiles, eyes glassy. Her arm had swollen up like a sausage. She met my gaze, but I couldn’t read her expression under her mask of pain.
Nobody in the gym paid attention as I left. Hat over my hair, scarf around my face. Someone leaving with a black eye and a gash? It happened.
Hamid had gone to retrieve the car once I hit the shower. I got into the backseat and cursed the blood trickling down the back of my neck and the side of my face.
Hamid yanked around in his seat.
“Drive,” I told him.
He didn’t budge. He’d observed my entire session, so, Hamid being Hamid, deduced, “Something happen in the locker room?”
“Yes.” I felt around in my hair. Great. Now I had drying blood, wet hair, and jelly. So nasty. Exhaustion crawled out of my bones and tainted my muscles.
