AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No. I didn’t want that either. If he was happy with my sister and she with him, they deserved their happiness. Just because I was harboring a long time crush, that didn’t mean they needed their lives derailed. I needed to adult up and embrace their happiness. Sure, it would hurt, but hurting them wouldn’t change that.
“I can call your house and make sure she got back safely. I didn’t see her when I found you, but the wolves are… long gone.”
“No.” I shook my head and pushed myself to sit up. My head weighed forty thousand pounds and I wasn’t going to be siting for long, but this was a conversation that needed happening. “She wasn’t with me. I… I took off after she told me the news.”
His brow furrowed. “What news? Is everything okay?”
I stared blankly at him. “That you and she are getting married. She never told me until today.”
The furrow in his brow deepened and his nostrils flared. “I’m not marrying your sister. I think you hit your head harder than I thought.” He tapped the pillow. “Lay down. I’m going to get you something for the headache.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine never means fine.” He repeated something I used to say pretty much every time he told me he was fine, which was quite often when we got close to his sixteenth birthday all those years ago. “Please stay. After that I can help you home.”
I agreed and watched him walk out, but the second he left the room I climbed out of bed. It was too hard being here with him like this. As much as I’d been fleeing home earlier, it was where I needed to be now.
I padded to the dresser where my phone sat and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like shit. And I hit far more than my head, my neck and shoulders covered in blood. I ran my finger over it, wondering why it didn’t hurt. And it felt almost healed under the crusted blood. The skin tingled when I touched it and a shot of pleasure went through my body. That was weird.
“I thought you were staying in bed.”
“What happened to me? This doesn’t feel like a falling and hitting my head type injury.”
He grimaced. “That’s because it’s not. We need to have you sit down for a bit. This is a pretty long story.”
“Cliff Notes version?” There was so much more I wanted to talk about with him. Where had he been? What was he up to now? Did he become a nurse like he’d wanted to be? He might be shocked to find out that I went into the IT field since when we were in high school, I loathed computers.
“Those wolves were there, but they weren’t your normal wolves.”
“Like they’re endangered or something?”
“More like they’re sometimes human.”
Chapter Six
Nicholas
“Morelikethey’resometimeshuman.” That was an oversimplification, to say the least. It wasn’t as if I’d ever practiced this conversation or expected to have it. They taught us how to avoid humans finding out about us, not how to tell them that we existed.
Christopher closed his eyes tight. His hand touched his neck.
“And that wound on your neck? That was from me.” I hated what I’d done, but I couldn’t be sad for it. He was my mate. Any other wolf would have reacted similarly, especially after so long of an absence. We’d been apart for years, and then suddenly he was there with other wolves threatening him. I did what I had to do to protect him.
“You?” He reached up and felt the bandage we put on him when he came in. If he had been a wolf, it would’ve healed already. But this was a human. I mated a human… on accident. There would never come a time when that realization wouldn’t continue to slam into me. Never. Not only was it against our laws, it was… he deserved better.
A mating bite was an intimate thing, and I’d ruined the whole experience for us. On the lonely days I let myself imagine what a courtship with Christopher would look like. It wasn’t a mistaken bite in the woods under threat of attack.
“Did you hit my head too?” He reached behind his head to where he hit the ground—hard.
“No. I… I was the reason you did, though. I was trying to block you from getting hurt and I hurt you myself.” I tilted my head to the side instinctually, baring my neck to him. He was my mate. He deserved all of my respect and more. “That was from the fall backward.”
“And those wolves are people? That’s what you said, right?” His eyes darted around as if he was having trouble focusing. I was throwing a lot at him. I hadn’t even checked to see if he had a concussion.
I nodded to answer his question.
“And this is your mark on me.” He ran his finger along the bandage.
I nodded again.
