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“Where am I?” I whisper, wincing, thanks to my dry throat.
He hands me a bottle of water, which I accept gratefully. “This is our infirmary,” he explains while I drink.
“Obviously.” I hold up my arm, indicating the tube I just noticed coming from it. This isn’t the kind of set-up you’d find anywhere else. “But I mean, where? Is this a hospital?” In other words, why are you here, of all people? I can’t imagine him taking the time to visit me unless it was on his way somewhere or he had nothing better to do. How I know that? I’m unsure. I feel it, is all.
“It’s here in our house.”
I try not to give away my lack of surprise. I knew he wouldn’t do this unless it was convenient. “This is part of your house?”
“Sure.” Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Even Daniel doesn’t have anything like this. I’m starting to think he’d just about burst from jealousy.
“We have an infirmary back in my territory,” I explain, “but it’s in a separate building.”
I look around, noting the emptiness of the other beds. “Nobody got hurt? In the battle, I mean?”
“There were some losses,” he explains, his voice tight. If there’s one thing I believe, it’s how deeply he cares about the wolves he fights alongside. That much, I’ll give him credit for. “Otherwise, there were a handful of injuries, but none as serious as yours. We’ve already set up tents for triage on the battlefield—sometimes, injuries are too severe to worry about getting the wounded all the way back here.”
“That makes sense.”
I settle back against the pillows, taking stock of myself. Everything feels pretty much the same as it did before the alarms began to blare. I wiggle my toes, move my legs, then do the same with my hands and arms. I can breathe easily. There’s no pain anywhere.
Then, because I can’t help it, I take a look under the soft, flowered nightgown I’m wearing. There’s a very faint, thin pink line in the center of my chest. Smack dab between my breasts. “This hasn’t gone away yet,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
“Yeah, but the healers say it will be completely gone in another few days.”
“There was magic on the arrow, wasn’t there?”
“It seems that way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been out for three days.”
Three entire days? They passed in a blink, at least to me. “I don’t remember anything that happened after I passed out.” He pulls up a high-backed chair that sits to the right of my bed and settles into it. I don’t know whether I’m irritated or glad that he wants to settle down and explain things to me. I mean, I don’t like being in the dark—lying here with a tube in my arm and nobody to tell me why I need it would probably drive me out of my skull. It was hard enough being locked in that cell with nobody to talk to and no way of knowing when I’d be released. Add an infirmary setting to the mix, and I don’t even want to think about it.
He grimaces. “Trust me. You didn’t miss anything good.”
“What happened to me?”
“For one thing, you ran a high fever. Dangerously high, according to the healers. That’s why you’ve got this.” He reaches out and brushes a finger over the tube.
“What is it? I mean, what’s going into me?”
“Mostly saline to keep you hydrated since you were sweating so much. That’s like the eighth or ninth nightgown they had to change you into. You were soaking through them like they were nothing.”
“Seriously?”
“But there’s more to it,” he continues. “They added some special shit to help heal you inside. Whatever spell was cast on the arrow was poisoning your blood.”
“Wow,” I whisper for lack of anything else to say. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t asked.
Actually, it’s more than that. I do want to know everything anyone can tell me about what happened after that arrow pierced my chest.
I just wish the information wasn’t coming from him.
That’s a startling realization. I wasn’t exactly enjoying our time in the kitchen before the battle started, but I wasn’t actively grossed out and irritated by his presence either. I could at least spend some time hanging out with him, even if he did make me uncomfortable. If anything, those minutes we spent together gave me a little bit of peace—now that I have time to think about it, I’m glad his wolf rejected mine. I’m not sure there would’ve been anything but disappointment and dissatisfaction between us if he had claimed me. It’s not only that we’re nothing alike. It’s that he actively repulses me with his attitude.
Is it possible for fate to get things completely wrong like that? I guess it must be because here I am, looking at this person and wishing he was his brother instead. It’s like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Wilde isn’t much better than him in many ways. They share too many of the same shitty qualities. I still can’t quite get over the whole sharing mating partners thing, either, or the way they’re so casual about it.
