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Taking a deep breath, I pushed my hair back, and with determination, I stood. Ha! My eyes found him. He’d been suspiciously quiet, and that in itself would make me quiet if he wasn’t the reason I was awake right now. Or that I had suffered blood loss because he shot me.
“What did you say?” I asked him, my voice firmer than my legs right now, and I tried to make it casual as I reached for the bars for support.
“Sit down before you fall down,” Cannon ordered me gruffly. “You need to sleep.” He was walking back to the cell, and for the first time, I noticed the cell door was open.
“You left it unlocked?” I blurted in surprise.
He shrugged as he got back in the cell with me. “There’s a lot to clean up,” he answered without looking at me. When he reached me, he didn’t ask but picked me up and carried me the three steps to the cot. “Sit.”
“I can walk. You don’t need to carry me around all the time.”
“Trust me, it won’t become a habit.” He grunted at me as he stepped back. Cannon turned to look at the others. “I’ve got this,” he assured them. Royce hesitated, but whatever message his alpha sent him made him dip his head, and he led Mal out of the room.
I didn’t know why I waited until the door was closed, but I did. We both seemed to be transfixed by the door. Weariness pulled at me, but I was also strangely alert and nervous. Really nervous. Maybe I wasn’t alert but just nervous. I licked my lips as I waited.
“I’m thirsty.”
“I’ll get you water.”
“No.”
“No?” Cannon looked at me briefly before looking back at the door. “You want to dehydrate too?”
That earned him a glare. “Dick.” Shimmying up the cot, I leaned against the bars as I watched him. “So? Mate? Are you for real?”
He turned his full attention to me, and I swallowed hard at the look in his eyes. “I am very much real, pup. This isn’t a dream. Unfortunately,” he added bitterly.
“I know you’re real, asshole,” I mumbled. My throat was so dry. “I really do need a drink.”
He said nothing as he left the cell, the door still open, and had I had more energy, I might have relished getting out properly, stretching my legs, but I’d been shot with silver, lost a shitload of blood, and was weaker than a newborn foal. So instead, I leaned my head against the bars and closed my eyes. Just for a minute until he came back.
Later, I woke up curled in a ball on my cot, in a cleaned cell, and wearing fresh clothes.
Groggily, I lifted my head and looked around. There were two bottles of water in front of me and a sandwich. I drank a bottle of water in one go before I half staggered to the corner of the cell and took care of the pressure on my bladder. I ate the sandwich in about three bites and washed it down with another bottle of water.
The door opened, and Cannon walked in. The pause in his step was his only tell that he wasn’t expecting me to be awake. “She lives,” he joked lightly.
My eyes narrowed as I watched him. “No thanks to you,” I said under my breath, but his stupid alpha hearing heard me perfectly because he grinned at my sullenness. “How long was I asleep for?”
“Two days,” he told me, coming to stand in front of me. He looked at me and then at the floor. “On the one hand, the experiment worked because now we know more than we did…” he began. He must have known I was about to tear him a new one because he hurried on, “But it was risky, and I…I shouldn’t have.”
I gaped at him. “That’s it? You shouldn’t have?” His eyes flicked to mine, and he grimaced. “That’s your idea of an apology?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“No! You really didn’t say anything of the sort. To say you’re sorry, you say, hey, Kezia, I’m sorry I’m a dick, and I’m sorry I shot you with a silver bullet.”
“I’m not a dick.”
We glared at each other.
“I’m not sorry I’m a dick,” he amended. My glare got harder. “Fine. I’m sorry I shot you. Twice. Once with a silver bullet.” Cannon let out a dramatic sigh. Okay, it was just an expelled breath, but to me, he was acting like a diva, so “dramatic sigh” fit. “It was helpful, though.”
“Not to me.”
“You’re fine.”
“Two days later.”
