Heading over to my desk across the room to grab some fresh supplies, my inner wolf perks up his ears. A trickle of satisfaction rolls through me with her words, giving mesomethingthat I can actually do for her. “I’ll get it when we’re finished with this.”
She pivots so that I can stand on the side of the bed where the footboard won’t be in the way, lying horizontally across the mattress. “Well now IknowI’m living in a fairy tale, because there's no way that I have access to such good healthcare in real life.”
Carefully lifting her leg, I untuck the wrap bandage at her thigh and begin unwinding it. When it’s fully exposed, my stomach flips at the sight, though it’s the kick in the ass needed to wake the sulking beast in my chest. Gently, I ease it back onto the bed like the limb is made of glass. She’s just so... fragile. Breakable. That bastard almost took her away from us permanently, away fromme.
There’s a sinking feeling where my counterpart resides, like when a roller coaster crests its peak and begins to plummet; a sort of weightless, ominous sensation before reality catches up. Then with the flip of a switch, the demand for blood, the fire that was missing before, is reignited with a vengeance.
“You’re growling,” Sabrina points out in a whisper.
Biting my tongue, I reach for an antiseptic wipe and tear it open. “I’m angry.”
“That I killed him before you could?”
My eyes snap up to meet hers, the once bright blue now ringed with coral in a hypnotic way that settles me down damn near as quickly as Slade can, yet without a touch. “That you were in the position that you had to defend yourself at all,” I counter. “But, yeah, a little revenge on those bastards that call themselves men would go a long way to making me feel better.”
She sucks in a harsh breath as I run the cloth down the length of her leg in a single, steady swipe. Five days later and it’s still a raw, mangled mess, the flesh bruised to high Hell. Four deep gouges are carved damn near to the bone, starting in the middle of her outer thigh, down the side of her calf, and rounding to the top of her ankle and foot. Even with all of the stitches and butterfly strips, the discarded bandage had several spots of blood where the wounds were pulled open from overdoing it yesterday.
Can’t let her push herself so hard. We shouldn’t let her walk until it’s scarred over, maybe even after that. What if she trips and falls down the stairs, breaks her neck? If she’s always strapped to one of our sides, nothing like this will ever happen again.
Switching out for the antibiotic ointment, I slather it on as delicately as I can while she randomly states, “Thank god the conference room is practically abandoned.” I look at her in utter confusion until she clarifies, “So that I can steal one of the empty chairs as a footrest to keep my leg elevated.”
It takes a second for it to click, but when it does, I balk. “You cannot seriously be talking about going back to work.”
“Not like I’m a waitress or anything.” She helps lift her leg as I begin wrapping it with a fresh bandage. “I literally sit on my ass all day looking at a screen, so not exactly what I’d call a strenuous activity. Might need some help getting set up initially, but th-”
“You were working from home at your apartment,” I interject. “So can’t you do that, only here? I know in the chaos dealing with the aftermath of the attack that we haven’t gone back for any of your stuff yet, but I can easily make a run if you give me a list of what you need.”
She gives me a small smile as I tuck the end of the new bandage at her thigh, my fingers lingering longer than necessary. “That was for my independent portion. I ended up going hard enough that I was a little ahead of schedule, but I’ve lost almost a week now, so I’m actually behind again. And the next part is integrating Jonathan and Reid’s new sequences into what I’ve already verified, section by section, line by line check and test, and there’s no room for error when the deadline is under four weeks away. I need access to their work, but also tothemin case I have any questions real time without waiting for an email reply.”
Yeah, I have no clue what the fuck she actually does beyond computer shit with Reid.
“Reid’s already here. We can bring Jonathan in and set you three up in the dining room; same thing.”
Her small smile grows into a teasing grin. “One might argue that you’re trying to keep me trapped here. What happened to the fact that I just need an escort if I leave the house? Reid will be with me so it’s fine, right?”
Not me, not Cinjin, her actual mates. Reid. Always Reid. The only one she texted when she was avoiding us. The first one that kissed her. The one she’s actually happy with.
A low rumble vibrates through my chest and throat as I crawl up on the bed, hovering above her. “Being with us isn’t a punishment, and you’re not on house arrest. But after someone tried to poison you, broke into your apartment, thoroughly pissing offeveryfamily in the vicinity, and now three strangers taking up rooms in our house that flat out declared they want to slit our throats and take you away from us? You’ll understand that I’m a little fucking paranoid to let you out of my sight.”
Wrapping an arm around my neck, she closes the last few inches separating us to press a soft kiss to my lips. “So come with me. You make a more comfortable chair than the ones at the office anyway.”
Such simple words, yet they take the wind right out of my sails.Why the fuck am I being jealous? It’smyscent covering her right now,mybed she was sleeping in twenty minutes ago. Sabrina doesn’t do anything that she doesn’t want to do. She may be sweet and awkward, but she’s quick to temper, too. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’d have picked out a room of her own and locked us out if she wanted to be alone.
“Though I admit, it’ll be rather boring,” she continues, oblivious to my inner rambling. “So you might want to download a couple of new games onto your phone. And you knew what I meant, so don’t make me out to be a jerk. I never said, nor implied, that being with you guys is a punishment.”
Then why did you leave?
Immediately, I shut the thought down. It would only serve to instigate a fight, and things have been going alright the last few days; at least in regards to this. She hasn’t tried to bail, isn’t holed up in a room by herself, crying and lamenting her fate. She took some time to process, was overwhelmed and hurting, the same as the rest of us were. That doesn’t mean that she was disgusted by what she’d done, horrified to be tied to us.
‘I’m here because I want to be, not because I have to.’Gods, I’m going to end up getting that on a coffee mug for her simply to see the reminder every morning.
“Besides,” she adds, “Kaige, Damian, and Hunter sticking around is actually a good thing. If they went back empty handed right now, my not-dads might come investigate themselves. This gives us some time to come up with a plan on how to approach the situation when we travel there after the new OS launches. We can appear non-confrontational and cooperative, and have a rational discussion about this whole mess. If they’re on our side instead of the men they grew up around, we should look at this as our luck finally turning around.”
Scowling, I roll us so that I’m on my back with her draped on top of me. “Yourside, not ours. They’d shove any of us in front of a bus without missing a blink.”
Crossing her arms over my chest, she rests her chin on them with a teasing twist of her lips. “Not sure if you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror recently, but pretty sure you’d do more damage to the bus.”
Grumbling, I toy with a lock of her dark hair. "I know ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, but I hate that it’s been one thing after another lately. There are too many unknowns. At least here we know the packs, the terrain; what they want. Out there, we’re flying in blind.”
