Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
There was a reason why solitary confinement was the worst punishment imaginable in a prison. It was a way to force someone to confront those vile parts of themselves they had tried to ignore and to now live with them.
Wolves, especially, suffered in isolation.
We were social creatures by nature, belonging to a pack, and I’d found my own along the way. A better fit than any of the Alderidge wolves had ever been.
Kendrick’s visit and the blow he’d dealt were my only companions for the rest of the day.
Alone in the room, I tried to rest and found myself awake and wondering, always wondering. I tugged my hair free from any knots and re-braided it, using familiar movements to organize the discordance of my thoughts.
Despite several classes at the academy, I hadn’t had any in-depth or formal training in healing. Mike, in fact, had more of a natural gift or inclination toward mending broken things. He’d found me, after all.
Did I know enough to try and heal my own internal injuries from the gunshot?
Bodies were complicated things, more complicated than any spell or magic word.
I risked causing more damage, but if I had to face Kendrick at the altar then I wanted to have a better range of motion at the least. If I couldn’t use magic then at least I’d get a good punch in and break his damn nose without winding myself.
Better to try.
I stood in the sunlight and lifted my shirt up. A star-shaped bruise fanned out from a circle of puckered skin below my heart. Kendrick hadn’t been lying, although I’d almost hoped he was. I hadn’t been able to look at the wound until now.
Dorian had healed just enough of the wound to keep me alive but weak and practically incapacitated. Alive, but not whole by any means. Even my wolf’s natural capabilities would take a long time to correct damage of this magnitude.
“Absolute assholes,” I grumbled, pushing my hand to my chest and closing my eyes.
What would Julie do?
I summoned as deep a breath as my lungs allowed and pictured Julie in my head, the way she’d been the night I fell off a balcony and broke my arm during my first semester.
She’d used a combination of herbs and spells to make the pain manageable. Broken bones were one of those things the academy left for students to heal on their own—another test.
The strength of Julie’s gifts came from her knowledge but also from her goodness. She was a decent person through and through and it spilled out of her. She made people smile whenever they were near her.
I reached for a similar sensation to harness but found only more pain.
The first wave brought tension and shoved the hurt deeper into my bones. This healing was cold when I needed it warm. I needed sunlight.
Delving deeper, I imagined the light as golden and green, Mike’s colors, spreading like a salve over the area. The chill only rooted in place, as stubborn as me.
This has to work. Please.
My body knew what to do, didn’t it? It understood how to heal and to bring order to the chaos. Being injured threw everything out of its natural rhythm. You want to be whole again. Blood vessels, torn ligaments, veins and tendons, all worked symbiotically.
I held the picture of Mike in my mind, his smile and the way I felt when we were together, all of us.
Sunshine. Healing. Wholeness.
Energy.
The pain trickled to the periphery of my awareness and a new heat spread from beneath my hand. It eradicated the chill in my ribs and the next breath I drew was comfortable.
That’s it, I urged. You want to be healed.
I let the magic filter away and I leaned heavily on the window seat.
When I finally looked again, a star-shaped bruise remained but the skin was no longer raised and angry. My wolf released a sigh and the edges of the bruise shifted to pink and then faded.
“I did it.” My voice rang out stronger. I straightened, pulled my shirt into place. “I actually did it.”
All the power inside of me, even with the magic-damping runes on the room, this had proven exactly how powerful I’d become.
All the new things I’d been able to do proved I had enough magic in me to get the hell out of this prison.
I held out a hand toward the window and imagined the rush of energy pouring outward, aiming it at the glass. Glass should be easy. If brute force wouldn’t work, I’d rearrange the molecules and melt it.
Magic splashed against the panes and spread like an oil slick. But the glass held.
I threw another blast toward the corners and the weak points where the metal bars were welded together. No luck.
Whatever enchantments they’d put on this place, I couldn’t break the windows.
I turned and aimed at the enchantments around the door, any halfhearted hope soon dissipating when it held firm. Not a splinter out of place.
My arms fell limp at my sides.
Checking the rest of the room yielded the same results, and with nothing left to do except enjoy every easy breath, I lay on the mattress with my arms cradling my head.
Dawn arrived too soon. A clatter outside had me bolting upright, heart in my throat. I braced for Kendrick—
The door swung open for a slender young woman. Head lowered to her chest, she shut the door behind her with a low pulse of power engaged like a deadbolt sliding home. No key this time.
“You don’t have to reset the enchantment. I won’t run,” I assured her. “I promise.”
She refused to look at me because she probably knew I would knock her out and run like hell.
Whoever she was, her pretty features and blunt chin marked her as human. I drew in a breath hoping to find some scent to use but even that led nowhere. She definitely wasn’t one of Kendrick’s wolves. A witch?
“What’s your name?” I tried again. “I’m Tavi.”
“Master wants you bathed and dressed for the wedding.” Without looking at me, she crossed the room and tapped out a pattern on some stones.
They slid free and the bathroom beyond flickered into existence.
That would have been nice to know before I had to do my business in a bucket.
The woman held out her arm. “Please. There’s hot water and soap, oil for your hair. He wants you presentable.”
I think the word you’re looking for is docile. “Thank you.”
I took my time in the shower, scrubbing until my skin reddened, making the woman and ultimately Kendrick wait.
The water never ran cold, and soaps, as promised, lined the tile shelf of the stall.
All of them were floral, as if someone had decided smelling like a garden was the only acceptable scent in the world.
Finally clean, I wrapped myself in a fluffy white towel. The woman rose from the bed with her gaze still lowered. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were. She hid her expression well, the consummate professional or the beaten-down laborer.
She helped me step into the wedding dress, a clean white sheath cut low in the front and back. It left my arms bare, with a skirt too tight to maneuver well.
I was getting married. To Kendrick Grimaldi.
This is it.
Any hunt for a way out stalled.
The woman sat me on the edge of the bed and twisted her fingers through the air, pulling at invisible strings. My hair arranged itself on top of my head in a tight bun, tugging my skin into place. Sterile. Austere.
Not at all the way I would have thought I’d look on my wedding day.
Mike had asked me to marry him not so long ago. Now I shoved that thought down so deep I wouldn’t have to acknowledge its existence. I had to get through this and find my way home.
If I lost it now, we were done before we started.
Another flick of her fingers and something glossy slicked itself over my lips. She’d shut the door to the bathroom after my shower, an exit now off limits although I hadn’t seen any other windows or doors leading out of that room.
“This is definitely a weird way to have your hair and makeup done.” My last try.
She refused to answer.
The moment she finished setting my makeup, a knock rang out against the door, a heavy pounding of flesh to wood.
“Is she ready?”
The woman jolted out of reach to avoid collision when Kendrick forced his way in. His gaze landed on the top of my head, the tamed auburn hair and lipstick. I matched his sneer with equal menace.
“Well then. Let’s get married, mate.” He held out his arm for me to take, an escort.
More like a monster dressed in expensive Armani.
Disgust shriveling my insides, I slid my arm over his. He took long strides through the hall, which forced me to increase my mincing pace in the tight skirt to keep up with him.
Another silent punishment.
Another equally quiet control.
We walked arm in arm like the connection meant something, and with his proximity the awareness came, spreading from the scar across my neck. It tugged on my soul and latched me in place, the sensation of fullness stretching my psyche.
The mate bond.
Kendrick scoffed, a low chuckle under his breath. He knew exactly what I felt.
A staircase descended at right angles toward the ground floor and flagstone foyer. From there he marched me, the borrowed shoes a size too small and squeezing my toes, into a banquet hall.
This room hadn’t been stripped of decoration like my bedroom. Tapestries hung from invisible threads, delicate needlework depicting battles as well as hunting parties, stags and equally helpless prey taken down in bloodied masses by wolves.
“Nice decor. You pick it out yourself?” I muttered.
“Here.”
Kendrick ignored me, dropping my arm from his to shove a wedding gift sans bow at me. My stomach took another steep dive.
The jewelry box locked at the front with a fragile looking hook. Under his watchful gaze, I slid the hook free, urged onward.
“Women like jewelry," Kendrick said as he watched.
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, if you say so.”
The rectangle, small enough to fit in my palm, held a dragon’s trove of expensive gems, too large to fit in the confines of the small box. More magic. A large sapphire pendant as wide as an egg was looped on a chain of solid gold at the top of the pile.