Chapter 35
“Do you think I look sexy, covered in blood?”
Jayden says raggedly, and a small, crooked smile pulls up one side of his lips.
“No!” Kira chokes, outraged, and she wishes upon wishes that she didn’t laugh, but it escapes her lips before she can stop herself, almost hysterical.
“What the hell, Jayden! You think it’s like it is on television? It’s fucking awful. You’re bleeding, and I’m crying, and I don’t know what to do and how dare you leave me behind knowing you were coming to fight that thing!”
Jayden laughs, but the sound is too close to a death rattle for Kira’s comfort.
“He could have hurt you.” Jayden croaks out
“Hurt me? He has ripped you apart!”
“Just a scratch,” Jayden murmurs. There are teeth marks buried in his abdomen and the gashes from claws torn over his chest. His leg is badly bleeding, and it’s nothing compared to the steady drip of blood from his ear. “You should’ve seen the other guy”
“Let me get him up,” Frank says, nudging Kira aside to wrap an arm around him. How he can be strong enough to move him when Jayden must be the heaviest of all of them, Kira doesn’t know, but Frank manages to help him up, gesturing for Kira to take his other side.
The wolves circle them. All of them. Jayden’s feet drag on the ground, too slow to find a path one in front of another, and Kira almost buckles even though she knows she’s taking only a fraction of the weight that Frank is.
She keeps reminding herself to be strong, like Jayden was during the fight.
As they stagger over the uneven terrain of the woods, Kira thinks about deadlines and reference books back in the city, and realizes in a rush the reality of the life she has just signed herself up for.
No amount of protests, no amount of shouting, can convince them to take Jayden to the hospital.
Kira rages. She threatens to go to get her car and haul Jayden into the back seat to drive him there herself.
She yells at Noel until she’s blue in the face. And then, defeated, she collapses onto the only other chair in Jayden’s small living room, and refuses to speak to any of them.
She can not out-argue an entire pack and a town that likes to keep their secrets safe at home, but she’d try. What she can’t even try is out-arguing Jayden, who is pale-faced and semi-conscious, is somehow more stubborn than the rest of them.
They treat him on the couch. A nurse from the town and Ezra assist Frank’s father in patching him up, assuring Kira that wolves heal fast even outside the full moon.
They also promise that he doesn’t need any blood transfusion, but Kira isn’t so sure. Jayden looks so ashen. She sits back moodily in her chair and watches, like Jayden’s sentinel, while they work.
Noel makes her coffee, which she holds to warm herself up, but she doesn’t think her body will be able to stomach eating or drinking anything.
Every time she closes her eyes she sees blood. Every time she opens her eyes, she sees Jayden weak and sick on the couch.
If she closes her eyes a second time, she hears the snarls and the tearing of flesh, and she fights the urge to be sick again.
She had already done that twice since getting home. Seeing the extent of Jayden’s wounds reminds her that somewhere out in the woods Liam is limping, maybe even worse, with no pack to care for him.
“Where will he go? Liam?” She asked Noel hoarsely.
“Anywhere but here. Maybe the next town. If he’s lucky, they’ll take him in.”
For the first three hours, Jayden slips in and out of consciousness.
Only when everyone moves away from him does Kira step forward and rearrange the pillows loaded on the couch.
She squashes one under his head and neck to support him, and pulls a blanket up around his chest because she knows Jayden is always hot, but she doesn’t want his feet or hands getting cold.
If his pallid color is anything to go by, then he isn’t pumping a lot of hot blood around his body.
She dampens a cloth to dab away the clammy sweat on his forehead.
Jayden’s breathing was less ragged than it was in the woods.
Wrapped up in white dressing and bandages, modesty protected only by a blanket, he looks very vulnerable.
Kira wipes away any dried blood left on his skin, kissing his hands and his tattoos as she does, and checks his breathing with the back of her hand, his pulse too, to make sure that everything is as it ought to be.
The wolves must be right.
Anyone else would be in an intensive care bed after an attack like this. But wolves don’t heal the same way as other people.
Jayden takes only two more hours to wake up, groggy but alert, and he tries to stand immediately.
Kira had to pin him back to the couch. The wounds mean that Jayden is, for once, weaker than her.
“Don’t you dare,” Kira says.
“You’re staying right here.”
Jayden coughs and tries to get upright again, but he’s powerless against Kira’s grasp.
When he gives up, he starts to laugh. It’s more of a wheeze but as charming as Kira has ever heard.
“You know...” Jayden swallows and reaches to take her hand. A lazy smile plays on his face.
“You told me you could’ve been a lawyer or a doctor. I’m thinking maybe you should have chosen a doctor.”
“Not a chance,” Kira says , but her lips twitch in spite of herself.
“I have no bedside manners.”
“You’re not going to tell me off again, are you?”
“I will once you’re better,” she sniffs.
“Right now, I think our main priority should be getting you a tetanus shot. I dread to think what that mangy dog had in its teeth.”
Jayden laughs, but his laugh is interrupted by another gasping cough and his hand jumps to his chest, face contorted in pain.
“Dr Lowen says that you’re badly bruised. You need to keep still and rest. He says most of your wounds are superficial; most of the blood on you wasn’t yours, and half of the rest is from your ear. He took a chunk out of it that you won’t get back,”
Kira adds with disdain. She has not been able to face lifting the dressing from his ear to look.
She shudders. “I can’t believe you left me here, pretending like nothing would happen.”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” Jayden whispered.
“Worry? I was terrified when I found you in the woods. I thought you were going to die!”
“There’s a reason I didn’t want you nearby. He could have hurt you.”
“I don’t care about him hurting me! I care about him hurting you!” Kira says, her voice lifting in pitch.
“I’m your mate. You and I are supposed to stand side by side and fight together. Next time I’m coming with you, and you won’t like what will happen if you try to stop me.”
Jayden laughs again, resting his head back on the pillows and watching the ceiling.
“I hope this won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t. Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“I thought you weren’t going to tell me off until I felt better?”
“If you’re well enough to joke around, then you’re well enough to face my wrath,” Kira huffs, but then her face softens. Her anger abates.
Jayden is looking at her with such love in his eyes that it becomes hard to think straight.
He doesn’t look like the Alpha here and now.
He’s in pain; his eyes are wide and longing; his body is broken and Kira can’t know how long it will take to heal.
Smoothing the hair gently back from his forehead, she wipes at a speck of blood that she missed on his hairline with her thumb.
“I never could have forgiven myself if you were hurt,” Jayden says. “I knew Liam wanted to challenge me and the closer you and I became, the more afraid I was that he’d try to use you in some way. It was better for us to fight alone in the woods, once and for all, than to continue playing games. Noel was supposed to take care of you if anything happened to me.”
“I can take care of myself,” Kira reminds him, but she doesn’t have it in her heart to chastise him any longer.
“Noel followed me. I could find you in the woods just by closing my eyes and reaching out to your wolf, like we’re connected. I found you quicker than he could have done.”
“You did call yourself my mate.”
“What? No I didn’t!” Kira stammers. “Yes you did, not five minutes ago!”
Kira bites her lip, embarrassed at the slip of her tongue.
She spent too long in her wolf form tonight. Those instincts are rubbing off on her.
“I think you’re delirious,” she says, and she catches Jayden’s laugh with a kiss, sharing his breath only for a second because Jayden must be weak. Their lips brushed together, Jayden’s sore and scratched.
“Or maybe you are just shy.”
“Mating is a very sacred process for us wolves, you know,” Jayden says to her once they break apart.
“Don’t talk about it now. You might get excited.”
“How did I get so lucky as to have a girl like you walk into my life?”