Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
C hristophe
I flinch awake from the prick in my arm.
The worried expression of a woman in a pair of light pink scrubs meets my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I was trying so hard not to wake you.”
Her voice is gentle.
Too gentle.
I blink and shake my head. When I open my eyes again and she’s still there, I move to rub my eyes with my fingers.
But my arm gets stuck.
I glance down to see a pair of handcuffs locking my wrist to the side of the hospital bed.
The nurse frowns as she looks from the cuffs to me.
“I had them undo the other pair so that I could give you your fluids through your IV, more easily.”
My gaze trails behind hers as I look up at the pole next to the bed. At the top hangs a bag of clear liquid.
“No,” I growl and move my arm to pull out whatever this solution is they’re trying to poison me with. Unfortunately, the handcuff around my wrist stops me.
I grit my teeth as the metal of the cuff bites into the skin of my wrist. The pain is minor compared to what I’ve been through, however. And I continue to fight to get the solution out of me.
Whenever they poisoned me before, it always hurt worse than their physical torture.
More than the beatings and the verbal taunts and piercing burns from the cattle prod they would use. None of that pain compared to whatever poisons they pumped into me.
“Take it out.” I know I shouldn’t fight—that usually only makes it worse—but my wolf lashes inside of me to get free. He’s stronger than I’ve felt in a long while.
As if he’s been rebooted.
“Christophe,” the fake nurse calls as if trying to console me.
“Fuck you,” I growl, making her jump back.
For a heartbeat, I see genuine fear in her eyes. But I don’t let that stop me. She must be a good actress. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them use a woman to do their work, and her face isn’t covered.
But I’m not fooled.
She’s just as vile and vicious as the rest of them.
The handcuff around my wrist proves it.
Though …
I tug and yank at the handcuff again, and the plastic of the bed’s handrail starts to crack, giving way to my strength.
My shifter power hasn’t been this strong in months, maybe years. I don’t know how long.
And …
My wrist. It’s not burning from the metal of the handcuff. This isn’t silver.
“Please, you have to calm down. Your leg,” the fake nurse says.
My eyes fall farther down the bed. That’s when I notice for the first time that my leg is propped up on a couple of pillows. It’s bound in a cast.
“The doctors were going to let your natural healing take over, but the bone …” She pauses, swallowing down a pained expression. “It was so badly broken and displaced that they thought it needed to be set to heal correctly.
“You should be able to get it off by tomorrow,” she finishes.
Her words don’t make any damn sense to me. I shake my head, my now long hair brushing against my face as I do.
She’s lying, my conscious mind and my wolf hiss at me.
“Liar!” I yell out and fight like Mother Moon to free myself from the bind. I have to get the solution out of me. Who knows how long the pain will endure this time.
“Get it off of me! Take it out,” I scream and flail, trying to dislodge the IV. If I had been in my right mind, I would’ve realized that this nurse, unlike my captors, didn’t beat and try to tie me down to the bed.
She tries to console and comfort me to calm down.
But after Mother Moon knows how long of torture, I can’t think straight.
“Get the hell away from me,” I shout again when she attempts to calm me down again.
“Christophe.”
My wolf freezes, recognizing the thunderous voice instantly.
Alpha, my wolf calls out.
Hot flames of shame immediately fill my belly. My gaze flies across the room.
Both of them stand there.
Chael and Chance. My brothers. The alpha and head beta of our pack.
Their pack.
The Nightwolf pack no longer belongs to me. Not since I betrayed them.
I squeeze my eyes shut to dislodge the obvious hallucination of them standing here.
More tricks.
This has to be more games played by our captors. They’re looking for different ways to torture me. To remind me of my shame. However, they’ve never used such life-like images before.
Not for my brothers, anyway.
There was that other image they used ? —
Shaking my head, I cut off that line of thinking. Nothing they did to me makes sense and there’s no use in trying. It’ll only drive me deeper into insanity.
“Christophe,” the phony image of Chael calls.
The voice sounds so real, though. It’s almost too life-like to be an impersonation. Is it?
I squint and look between them. Then I widen my eyes and then blink again, making an effort to really see the two men standing before me.
“I'll come back later,” the nurse says.
I catch her movements out of the corner of my eye and allow my gaze to follow her as she strolls out of the room.
Is she real?
Was that woman a nurse? A real nurse?
Not someone in scrubs or a lab coat whose only intention was to prick and prod me like I’m a science experiment.
“Christophe,” Chael—or the image of Chael—calls.
I look at him again in time to see his jaw tighten and flex as he must be grinding his teeth. Are 3D images that life-like these days?
“Are you—” My question is cut off by a sudden bout of coughing. My throat is so dry.
This time it’s Chance who moves forward, pouring a clear liquid into a plastic cup and handing it to me.
“Take it,” he orders. “It’s water.”
I watch him warily.
“Just water.”
My eyes drop to the pink plastic cup. A typical hospital pitcher and cup. Could I really be in a hospital? Not the dungeon of that prison.
I lift my free arm and slowly take the cup from him. He takes a step back, watching me as I bring the cup to my lips, sniffing first, then sipping the water.
The first few drops go down smoothly. No more coughing, and it doesn’t bring on a sudden bout of throwing up. That’s been another one of our captors’ forms of torture. The taunting of food and water only to poison it with something that made us sick once consumed.
My body’s base nature takes over, and I drink the rest of the water in one gulp. I’m so thirsty.
Chance holds out the pitcher again, and I allow him to refill it. I drink once more, this time in only two gulps.
Only after the third refill do I pause to catch my breath. It’s then that I look up at Chance, who still stands by my bedside. There’s a pinch between his eyebrows. As if he’s in pain.
It’s at this moment, that I realize he’s not a mirage or a 3D image.
Chael and Chance, my brothers, are standing before me. This time when my gaze sweeps around the room, I take it in, fully.
No concrete walls, silver bars, or metal tables where they placed us for examination and their sickly cruel experiments.
“Where—” I clear my throat. “Where am I?”
Chael steps forward. “Wilson-Johnson hospital.”
I scrunch my brows, searching my memory bank for the name. “The shifter hospital?”
Chael nods. “Yes.”
Wilson-Johnson Medical Center is the premiere hospital for all forms of shifters in the country. It’s located in Northern Washington state, along the U.S.-Canadian border. I’ve never been here before, but every shifter knows about it.
“We brought you, and the others, here after we pulled you out of …” His voice becomes clipped, and he clamps his mouth shut.
“Why?”
My question must startle him because he blinks down at me. Chael doesn’t answer immediately.
“You were hurt,” Chance actually answers.
My head juts back in surprise. Chance rarely speaks beyond a few grunts and growls. Nothing is making sense.
“So?”
Both of them frown and look at one another.
“That’s what I deserved, isn’t it? That was …” I trail off, my voice giving out before I can even talk about the way in which I betrayed them and our pack.
“Why would you?—”
“We took everyone out of that place,” Chael cuts Chance off. “That is not the true shifter prison.”
It’s my turn to frown. “What are you saying?”
“We were tipped off about that place by a former prisoner,” Chael says. “Us and the Blackclaw pack. They had Serafina in there, too,” he explains. “We killed about ten of the guards that were there that night, but a few escaped, along with two of the supposed doctors in there. We believe there are more.”
He says all of this as if I should be following, but my mind is too scattered to make sense of anything.
“Wait, you’re saying …” I trail off and shake my head. “You’re saying you rescued me … us? All of us in that place?”
Folding his arms across his chest, Chael nods slowly.
I turn my attention away from him, looking down the length of the bed as I attempt to piece together what I’m hearing.
“And we need your help capturing the rest of those responsible for what happened to you.”