Penny
White noise blasted from a speaker somewhere in the room, waking me with a start. I looked around, trying to see what was going on, but wherever the speaker was, it had already been hidden before I’d gotten there, because the room looked exactly as it always had.
I shook my head, wincing in pain as a killer headache bled through my skull. The white noise was all around me, echoing through my throbbing skull, and I wondered what kind of game he was playing now. What did he even hope to gain from this? I shook my head and closed my eyes, letting my thoughts drift to another place, another time. Anywhere that wasn’t there. But I didn’t have an awful lot of good memories to hold on to—just small pockets of happiness in an otherwise unfulfilled life.
I was a Benite, but I wasn’t anything special—not to me, my daddy, or his club. It had been the same for my mom too; she’d been a piece of ass until she’d gotten herself knocked up with me and my daddy had had to claim her. It hadn’t stopped him from treating her like dirt though. So much so that I was two years old when she couldn’t take it anymore and left him and me. I didn’t remember much about that day, barring that it was the day my daddy had started putting a guard on me at all times. Part of me thought he feared her coming back to snatch me from him, but the other part of me wondered if it was to make sure that I didn’t run from him too.
My daddy didn’t love me, but I was his, and what was his stayed that way until he decided otherwise. I’d learned that from an early age. And so had my best friend. My only real friend.
“I’m hungry!” I screamed into the air, deciding I had nothing to lose but my voice. I was feeling dizzy and nauseous, but there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. I sobbed, unwillingly, before gritting my teeth against the noise. I refused to cry. That man didn’t deserve my tears.
My vision was blurry, and light-headedness made my head spin. I groaned loudly. “Please, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but please let me go. I’ll pay you whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”
And I would and could. I’d been hiding money for years, because one day I intended to get the hell out of that town, away from the Vipers and my daddy, and go find my mom.
“Please,” I begged again, my voice cracking.
I clamped my mouth shut as dizziness washed over me and more nausea climbed my throat, my mouth filling with a little liquid in preparation for spewing. I felt hot and shaky, my muscles aching and twitching.
I closed my eyes and whimpered again, willing away the hypotension I could feel building in me. I hadn’t eaten or drunk in days, and the stress and strain on my mind and body, the loneliness of that place—it was all too much.
I felt the darkness sucking me under as the white noise mercifully cut out. I wanted to cling to the sounds in the room—the footsteps, the voices—but I couldn’t. I needed to sleep. I had to sleep. It was all I could do to keep myself alive right then.
Sleep and pray, although praying had never gotten me far in this life, so I doubted any god was listening to me now. It was worth a shot though.
“Dear God,” I mumbled, “please let me be okay. Let me live…” Pain clawed at my insides, and my head spun. “Let Scratch be okay too. And my mom, wherever she is.”
And with that I passed out.
*
Fighter
What the fuck was she saying? Mumbling to herself like a crazy woman, talking about living and dying, about her mom and Scratch. And who, or what, the fuck was Scratch?
I scowled at her unconscious form. Scratch better be her damned cat, or a dog, because anything more—anyone more—was going to ground. Slowly.
Her cheeks were pale, her features slack. She already looked like a corpse, but she wasn’t. Not yet. She was still there, alive—just.
Fuck, she was strong. But even the strongest fall. It was how you dealt with the aftermath of your fall that decided your fate.
Fall and crumble, or fall and climb back up on dirty, bloody knees…
I unscrewed the lid of a water bottle, placing my hand under her head to lift it up before gently pouring water into her parched mouth. She wasn’t dying on me today. If it had been anyone else, I would have left them to suffer for at least another twelve hours, but there was something about her that stopped me.
Maybe it was her prayer, maybe it was her wolf eyes.
Whatever it was had made me take pity on her.
Water spilled out of her mouth, dripping down her cheeks and onto her chest. She choked and coughed in her sleep, her pretty throat bobbing, greedily swallowing as the water slid down it.
When the water bottle was empty, I threw it to one side and laid her head back onto the pillow, staring down at her with a frown.
“She okay, brother?” Gauge asked, and I looked up at him.
He was standing in the doorway, his hand running over his beard as he stared at Penny.
“She’s fine,” I grunted.
