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Chapter32
Tori
I remained at the hospital and allowed the shifter doctor to restitch my wound. It hurt twice as much the second time around. But then, I’d barely felt them stitching me up the first time, having been damn near knocking on death’s door when I’d been admitted. Wolfsbane and a silver knife were known to do that to a shifter, but I didn’t think too hard on it.
There were more important things to worry about than a little pain. My father had taught me that, and it was one of the few lessons I’d taken with me when I left. Feeling pain was a good thing. Dead men don’t feel pain.
“Can you make the stitches more secure? I’m going after my fiancé, so I need them to be as robust as possible.” Maybe I should have asked for staples.
The doctor eyed me as he continued working meticulously. “As a doctor, my professional advice is that you should stay here in the hospital and rest and recuperate properly.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a hand to stop me from interrupting him. “For legal purposes, I needed to say it. But yes, knowing that’s not going to happen, I’ve made them smaller and am giving you more stitches than usually required to bolster their stability. It’s important that you are cautious about shifting. You need to heal, and every time you shift, healing becomes pointless.”
Even though I was annoyed by the warning, I nodded. There was no way I would be able to stop myself from shifting if I needed to get Ridge out of the compound. I wouldn’t let anything stop me from bringing him home or the others.
Hating that I was struggling to heal as fast as I usually did, I asked, “Is there any way to speed up the healing? Some kind of magical shifter aid? A drug?” I kept my frustration behind a wall of determination. After all, my situation was hardly the doctor’s fault.
I knew exactly who to blame for everything that had gone down: the double-crossing librarian with the weapons that could take shifters down.
The thought that this injury would slow me down fed my impatience. Since waking up from the drug-induced sleep my brother had oh-so-kindly put me in and realizing they’d taken Ridge, the desperate need to have him back had become all-consuming.
All my anxious energy crawled just beneath the top layer of my skin. I’d given my word to wait till morning, and not being able to take off on my own only amped up my frustration. I hated waiting around and having to rely on others.
In the years I’d been on the run, I’d quickly learned that the only person I could ever count on was myself. Depending on others was not something I was accustomed to, and I hated that I needed to do that now. I’d only just started to really let Ridge behind the walls I’d built to shield myself, and now I’d have to trust Clawson.
With nothing else to focus on, the antsy feeling that Sheriff Clawson had somehow tricked me and already left town kept running through my head. I was battling hard against my long history of mistrust, but I trusted Ridge, so I held onto his belief in his longtime friend. At the same time, I kept my fingers crossed that Clawson hadn’t duped me out of some misguided misogynistic belief that he was saving me.
If it turned out he had, I’d catch up with him and, with no qualms about doing so, would do everything in my power to make his life a living hell.
“Well, we don’t have rapid healing of any sort for silver,” the doctor said. “Now, if we had a witch on hand, they’d probably be able to whip up a spell. But since we don’t have any witches, this is one of those times when shifters have to learn a little patience and recover from the wound like a regular human.”
I frowned, wishing I had access to the witches the hunters kept on hand. But I needed to drop that useless line of thinking and focus on what was in front of me.
It didn’t take the doctor much longer to finish his diligent stitching, dress the wound, and leave. His explicit instructions were for me to get the rest my body desperately needed, especially since I was heading out first thing in the morning.
I wanted to laugh. The guy had to be joking. Rest was a lovely thought, a worthy concept, but not something I could do. While Ridge, Diana, Audrey, and Zander were missing, there was no way I’d be getting any rest. At least he hadn’t tried to talk me into staying past the morning. He’d have a better chance of a snowball fight in hell than me staying longer than absolutely necessary.
My wolf yearned for Ridge, and it took all the control I could muster to keep her in check. I tried reasoning with her and assuring her that I was doing everything possible, but since we weren’t actively doing anything, she fought me constantly. Her growling and constant tug-of-war with our control made me afraid to rest.Once I let my guard down, she might take over, force a shift, and set out on her own to find Ridge.
At this point, there was no reasoning with her. It had to be the feral part of her sneaking through. I’d been terrified that this exact scenario would happen, and that I wouldn’t come back from it.
Settling down in the room where I had last been with Ridge, I tried to let his waning scent calm me.The room was dark. I’d convinced the doctor I’d recovered enough not to need all the machines hooked up to me again. I wanted to lie here in silence, but my mind kept churning and refused to calm down. Unsurprisingly, given that Kyle’s stench was newer, and therefore stronger, the time I’d trained as a hunter came flooding back to me.
I’d repressed those memories for many years. It had been a grueling period in my life because not only had I been forced into twelve months of hard training, but it had happened the first year after my mom’s murder. The heartache never healed and still upset me. At the time, I hadn’t grieved because I’d been instantly forced into becoming a hunter of the highest caliber. But that hadn’t happened. It wasn’t a natural fit for me.
Add on my father, William, who had drastically changed after losing my mom.My father had always been a hard man, but after my mom was killed, he’d become positively merciless—toward everyone, not only his children. He’d changed so much, she would never have recognized him. He’d become a tyrant, demanding so much from everyone around him, but he’d expected so much more from my brother and me, particularly during training.
“Victoria, what the fuck are you doing out there? Keep track of your surroundings. In the past twenty minutes, you’d have been dead at least a dozen times. Use your fucking head.” My father snarled at me from the side of the clearing as I staggered to my feet, holding back my winces. If he caught sight of that, I’d for sure have to run several more laps. His motto was to beat the weakness out of me.
Getting back into position with my fists guarding my chest, I took the proper boxing stance and willed myself to stop swaying, banishing the dizziness occupying my head.
Three of the hunters who were assigned to train me didn’t break a sweat, attacking me in rotations while I had to maintain a steady defense. Two of them looked at me with pity, though they made sure my father never witnessed it. Otherwise, we’d all be punished.
The third hunter took far too much pleasure in my pain. His kicks to my solar plexus were dead-on, and he never held back like the others did. A part of me wished they didn’t because I feared the repercussions if my father were to catch on. Sometimes, from the way he watched our sparring, I figured he was clued in and waiting to bring it out in some horrifying fashion.
“This is for your survival, Victoria. I don’t enjoy this. I need to know that you’ll survive. Do you think for one minute those monsters will stop because you broke a fucking nail? Get your shit together.”
Panting, I cracked my neck from side to side, resisting the urge to roll my eyes in defiance. My teenage angst beckoned strongly, but let’s be honest, I hadn’t been a teenager in a long time. If my father really cared, then he wouldn’t have had me training as a hunter so young. He’d have let it be my decision.
The moment slowly ticked by, and without warning, I ran and launched myself at the closest hunter, getting in a couple of strong hits. I jumped over a low kick, extending my leg and popping him in the shoulder. He fell back but regained his balance, and without warning, the hunter who took pleasure in kicking my ass grabbed me from behind and flipped me face-first onto the ground. Dirt flew into my eyes, nose, and mouth.
