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My head snapped up, turning in his direction. “What?”
“I told you before that my memories of losing my sight were sparse. I was so young and in so much pain, I blocked a lot of it out.” He said it almost like he was ashamed, and that rocked me out of my own self-pity.
“You were six,” I pointed out uselessly to a man who obviously knew that voluntary shifts happened with puberty—and almost never before.
“I was,” he said from behind a sigh. “My parents were hoping for a miracle, but that never came. Eventually they got over it. I had good therapists, and it seemed like each year new tech was coming out that helped.”
I didn’t mean to perk up at that, but I couldn’t help it. “What kind of tech?”
He laughed again, and this time it didn’t make me want to put my fist through the wall. “There wasn’t much at the time, but there’s a lot more now. That was going to come with day two. The Major left a note that you were to be provided with an accessible phone as quickly as possible.”
“Who the fuck does he think I’m going to call?” I muttered.
Cameron snorted and drummed his fingers on the table. “Him, probably, and eventually the Alpha Council, I have to assume.”
I grimaced and shoved the thought out of my head because I so wasn’t ready to deal with any of that. I opened my mouth to say it—maybe a little nicer than the way I was thinking it—but before I could speak, the flashes began again.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
Cameron made a small sound of concern. “I think you should get seen again. I’m under orders to report any abnormal symptoms, and if there’s something that got missed on that MRI, your doctor needs to find it before it gets worse.”
I wanted to argue, but I had no way of knowing whether or not this was normal—and I wasn’t sure the doctors did either. My blindness, my heart and lung damage, they were all caused by the toxic shit they’d dumped into my body to keep me from shifting. But there could be more wrong with me. Three months was plenty of times to experiment on me, and I wasn’t sure a few vials of blood and an MRI were going to tell the medical team everything they needed to know.
“I’m going to call the Major,” Cameron said after a beat. “Then see about getting you a ride in.”
I didn’t put up a fight. There was no fucking point in resisting. I’d go through more tests, I’d let them poke and prod at me, then I’d go home. I’d see if I could clean up the glass shattered along the counter without cutting my hands open, and tomorrow I’d start with Cameron all over again.
And then again.
Rinse, repeat until this felt like life rather than a waking nightmare.
* * *
Instead of being carted into the hospital, Orion showed up with a new bottle of pills and an appointment card for another scan the following morning. He also showed up with Chinese in a plastic bag which made my mouth water and the frustrations of the day melt behind my need to indulge in the small comforts of freedom.
“How many restaurants we got here?” I asked, my mouth sticky with rice.
“None,” he answered with a grin in his voice. “I had to brave the wild outdoors for this, so you’d better appreciate it.”
He was seated in the chair, which was somewhere to my left, and I didn’t have to see to know that he’d kicked his boots up on the table. I was still on the fence about getting rid of it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Cameron had said. About learning to navigate through obstacles.
“There’s a taco truck though. The owner and his wife showed up about two weeks ago with it. His brother was killed in one of the attacks after the treaty.” Orion sighed, and I heard his paper box hit the table, then the soft hiss of his beer opening.
It was strange, honing in on sounds like that, but it was fascinating the way my body seemed to re-route my attention. “This has to be temporary though,” I told him. I took one last bite, then leaned forward and set the almost empty box down before stroking my hand over my stomach. I could no longer feel my bones, and I knew that was mostly due to healing and my muscles regaining mass, but the rich food didn’t hurt now that my stomach was starting to tolerate it more. “This place isn’t sustainable.”
“No, it’s not meant to be. It just has to last until we find something better. Stronger,” he added on a soft breath. “I haven’t been to a Council meeting yet, but I get briefed, and they’re planning on the long game.”
I growled in the back of my throat, irritated. I’d never been a particularly patient man. I was a man of action, which was why I’d been so damn successful on the front lines. But I knew this was a different type of war now. Now that there was the idea of peace between humans and Wolves, the battle had moved underground.
“They want to meet with you,” he said after my continued silence, and that had me sitting up straight. “Don’t act like you didn’t know this was coming, Kor.”
I dragged a hand down my face and leaned forward over my thighs. “I can barely walk from my bathroom to my bedroom without running into the fucking wall. The only damn point in meeting with them is to assure them that I’m not fit to lead.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said. My mouth opened to argue, but his growl shut me up. “No one is asking you to take up weapons and lead men into battle. There’s shit going on that we need to dismantle from the inside. On both sides.”
I dragged my tongue over my lower lip. “Both sides? That’s a fuckin’ joke.”
“It isn’t. Unrest is growing within the human population too. Their volunteer program wasn’t enticing enough of them, and people are starting to go missing on their side as well.”
