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It never came.
MoonDark Confessions
I huddled on the couch next to Jun while Cye tried to bribe me into not huddling with several varieties of cookies. He even broke out the chemical lemon ones and put them on a plate when all else failed.
“I’m okay,” I told both of them, although I was not fine. The stitches and bruising didn’t really bother me. I’d washed off all the blood and goop (and gotten my stitches wet, but I didn’t care) and crud and grossness, but the churning fear that I had come so close was what had me shaken right to my core.
The beast deep inside me was sated. That was the really scary thing. I hadn’t realized how angry I was until it’d almost erupted, and only raw bloody bone-cracking violence had purged it.
I’d come terrifyingly close. Too close. Too close to being the end and beginning for my species.
“You don’t smell okay,” Jun said worriedly, “and you really don’t look okay.”
“Here.” Cye offered me a fresh ice pack wrapped in a towel with a little bit of some minty-smelling oil, although he looked green and had his head averted.
“Please don’t faint.” I pressed the compress to my face with my not-broken hand. My eye was still swollen shut. I looked pretty wrecked. But it was my back—all welted up from getting smashed into the lockers—that really had started to hurt.
“I won’t.” He didn’t sound all that convincing as he kept his head turned and wrapped some ice on my broken hand.
Burian took the remote and, with one eye on me, turned to our favorite obscure sports network, which currently played some weird sport involving people in giant inflatable hamster balls and an empty in-ground pool.
Sterling came in from his jaunt to Connecticut, and although Hamid (and Jun) had warned him I looked worse for wear, he was pretty unprepared for it. He stared at me, mouth moving as he tried to formulate some response.
I looked at him with my good eye. “Maya brought her girls to the gym to teach me some manners. They jumped me after I worked out.”
Sterling canted his head, took inventory, then asked, “So… who won?”
“Thank you for your faith in me, my Alpha.” I would have frowned if I could have.
“Winter, you’re… five-seven on a good day? A hundred and twenty pounds?”
“A hundred and thirty-three!” A hundred and twenty! I was a wolf, not a bird! “You’ve picked me up! You know how damn much I weigh.”
“I do, and it’s not much.”
“A hundred and thirty-three, thank you. Working towards that one thirty-five. I’m no strawweight.” I flipped him the bird on principle.
Jun offered his hand for a high-five. “Eat up and work out.”
Sterling’s hazel gaze smoldered, and his jaw shifted as he sorted through his inventory of words and gestures. He settled for sitting down next to me and examining my face, then my hair. “How many stitches?”
“Six. Four in the eyebrow and two in my—hey!” I hissed as his fingers found the tender skin on my scalp.
“Is this orbit broken?” he asked, still feeling around my face.
“Only a cracked bone in my hand.” And a crack in my soul, but that had been there so long I’d ceased to recognize it until the dam had broken. “I just look like I lost. They lost their taste for me when I snapped one of their arms.”
Since there was no male for him to beat up, he was sort of stuck in the realm of being forced to not get angry. “I suppose we’ll be hearing from Alpha Kyle and Luna Thessa shortly.”
“I told Maya I wanted a Messenger before dusk. I figure they’ve got an hour.”
He surveyed the cookies and general evidence of nursemaiding, and said, slowly, “Is it safe for me to go shower?”
“She’s fine with us,” Jun said defensively. “You haven’t been here.”
“And I’m glad you were here,” Sterling said, still studying my eye like he didn’t believe my face wasn’t fractured.
I followed him to our bedroom. Closed the door behind me. Kept my hand on the knob.
