4. Elara
Chapter 4
Elara
G oddess, I hate hospitals. How long will I be trapped in this forsaken place?
The stench of illness is only overpowered by the sanitary scent of bleach. I hate the paper hospital gowns, the scratchy sheets, and the thin-pilled blankets.
Who laid on these sheets before me? Who died beneath these blankets?
And the flickering fluorescents—ugh. I wish I could go back in time and punch whoever invented them right in the face. Hard. We might now have areas of society keyed in on paranormal, but a lot of progress still needs to be made.
Number one on the list. No fluorescent lights in the paranormal unit of the hospital.
I close my eyes, trying to escape, but the moment I do, I’m back in that graveyard. Naked, mud-caked, trembling, and staring into the half-rotted face of a young woman that could have been me had circumstances been even a fraction different.
Why me? Why did I survive when no one else did?
Squeezing my eyes shut tighter, I try to push the images out of my memory to no avail.
Kato’s harried expression fills my mind. Fear and anger simmered in his eyes, the way his lips pressed together, and jaw tightened. I hadn’t seen him for years, and this was how we reunited.
How absolutely humiliating.
Those late nights when Ezra was fast asleep beside me, and I let myself indulge in thoughts of what could have been and how my life would be different if Kato and I were together again. This is not how I’d imagined that would go.
I’d have given anything for Kato not to be the one who found me. Why couldn’t it have been a couple camping or a scout on a hike? Heck, I’d even take Discovery by Poacher over this.
Goosebumps erupt on my skin. Nervousness settling over me. Rain, leather, and whiskey. I smell him before I feel his presence.
I don’t open my eyes. Childish, hoping that he will go away if I keep them shut. As if he wasn’t the lead agent on this case. As if I wasn’t the only victim who ever escaped alive, at least that we know of. As if I didn’t tell the nurse to call him.
“Elara,” Kato says his deep voice tentative and soft as he says my name. My wolf whines. Oh, shut up.
“Elara, I know you aren’t sleeping.”
Reluctantly, I open my eyes, offering a half-hearted smile, “Hey, Kato.”
“How are you?” he asks, eyes flickering across my body like he’s trying to find something broken or wounded. I’m healing too fast for that, and he knows better, but that doesn’t stop him.
“Where’s the pretty blonde you were here with earlier?” I hate myself for asking. Hate me for the jealousy brewing inside.
“Callie,” he says, a hint of amusement sparking in his eyes, “She’s at the crime scene. Why? Are you afraid to be alone with me?”
“Not in the slightest,” I smirk, “She’s a lot easier on the eyes than you are.
I’ll have to ask her who her hairstylist is.”
Licking my chapped lips to hide the smile forming, I push myself up, straining against my sore, dehydrated muscles to sit upright.
Before I can finish adjusting myself, Kato puts a pillow behind my back. ”Comfortable?”
“Thanks,” my lips form a tight line as I lean back into the hospital bed—heat prickling beneath the surface of my skin at his proximity.
My wolf whines again; I wonder if Kato’s is doing the same.
His deep blue eyes look into mine, a longing in his gaze as my cheeks bloom pink and my stomach flutters. After a moment too long, he clears his throat and takes a seat in the chair at my bedside.
“I need to talk to you about what happened. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation. Are you up for it?”
“Would it matter if I wasn’t?”
The painful expression on his face tells me what I already know. No, it wouldn’t matter. A pang of guilt stabs me in the chest.
He’s got a murderer to catch; out of all the victims, I was the lucky one, if you can call surviving something like that lucky.
“I’m up for it.”
“Thank you, Elara; we need your help to solve this case. I know it’s unfair to you, but unfortunately, that’s how these things go.”
“I want to know something. Earlier, I said I didn’t think my attempts to humanize myself helped, but you did. Callie seemed to think otherwise also. What aren’t you telling me?”
Kato hesitates. I can see him formulating the right words as his eyes darken, “There’s no easy way to say this, but you weren’t just the only one left alive. We are still waiting for more information from the medical examiner, but the other women… they were brutalized before their deaths.”
My throat feels like it’s closing in on itself—those poor women. I need to stop thinking about myself as a victim in this situation and start thinking like a psychotherapist. It’s what saved my life, and it’s what is going to help catch this guy.
“When you find out more from the medical examiner, I want to know everything.” I say louder than I intended.
“I don’t think you need to put yourself through that,” he looks like he wants to reach out and take my hand and behind that softness, there is something else. A flicker of rage igniting at what was done to those women, at what could have been done to me.
“Last time I checked, you don’t think for me,” I roll my eyes, “and it’s a good thing, too. If you want me to help you, I want to know everything.”
“Otherwise, what? You’ll withhold information?” he growls.
“Otherwise,” I say, raising an eyebrow, “I don’t foresee any memories returning to me.”
Kato’s eyes darken as he looks at me. For a moment I catch a glimpse of the Alpha Wolf in him, the force that is feared by so many. But then he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as he closes his eyes. After a long beat, he says, “What can you tell me about what happened to you?”
“The man who took me,” I take a deep breath. My Goddess, this is harder to talk about than I expected. “The man who took me was odd.”
My heart races, and I take several deep breaths to calm it before I can continue.
“You don’t say,” Kato cocks his head to the side, frustrated. “Even I can tell you that much. I’d expect more from a psychotherapist.” A bit of that fire of his still burning beneath the surface.
“And I’d expect more patience from a trained agent, but here we are,” I shrug, biting back worse.
“I’m sorry,” Kato’s eyes soften. “I know this is difficult for you.”
“When I say the man who took me was odd, I mean he didn’t seem to have friends or much of anything going on in his life. He might be able to hide his deviance from the world, but he’s still off-putting enough to be a relatively lonely man.”
Kato writes down what I’ve said in a small, leather-bound notebook.
“I think he works nights. That or he doesn’t work at all.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He only spoke to me in the daytime. The birds were chirping, there were signs of life outside, and the edges of my blindfold had light creeping in.” I squeeze my eyes shut, swallowing hard. I don’t like returning to that place.
Anger burns beneath Kato’s calm exterior. I can scent his rage and sadness, I can hear the elevation of his heart rate, and I find myself watching him struggle with his instincts and his duty for a moment. That’s how it always was with him, but seeing his commitment to his duty stirs up a different set of feelings in me than it did in the past.
Would he be that serious about a commitment to his wife? As a father? Could I ever get over the fear of not knowing if he will come home or not? I sigh, tearing myself away from these fruitless thoughts and clearing my throat.
“He did give me water and food sometimes, but not often. It’s like he forgot that I’d need them to survive, or maybe he didn’t care to keep me alive because he’d intended to kill me all along.”
“When I find the man who did this to you, I am going to kill him,” he finally snaps, letting the mask drop, his teeth are barred and his claws are pressing against the flesh of his hands desperate to escape.
“No,” I sigh, “You won’t. You’ll arrest him and have him prosecuted. You’ve dedicated your life to this country and to upholding its laws. You must continue to represent the law now.” Even if it is likely to get you killed.
Defiance crosses Kato’s face. He grinds his teeth together, but he doesn’t contest what I’ve said. He knows that I’m right. There’s something beneath that defiance, sadness? Longing?
Perhaps he is longing for the life that we could have had together. But in the end, he chose his path and so did I. It doesn’t matter that we are mated. Sometimes, fate has no idea what it ’ s doing.
“When I was put in that grave, I was unconscious. I can’t tell you how long I was underground before I came around. That’s all I remember for now. I’m tired,” I say, readjusting the pillow to lay back down. “You should go, leave your card. I’ll call if I remember anything else.”
I can’t spend another second alone with you.
“Thank you,” Kato says, getting up, pulling a business card out of his wallet, and setting it on the table near my bed next to the landline. “I might be sworn to the law, Elara, but I am sworn to you first and foremost.”
“And you’ve made your allegiances abundantly clear,” I snap, turning my back to him as I lay down.
Kato’s heart rate quickens as he heads to the door, stopping in the doorway momentarily; he whispers, “I’ll check on you later.”
My heart aches the moment he steps down the hall. Goddess, I want to call out for him to beg him to come back, to beg him to stay by my side. But, what good would that do?
It wasn’t always like this between us. There was a time when our lives were filled with passion, pleasure, and laughter. There was a time when we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.
My skin prickles with heat as I am flooded with memories of nights spent together in the bed of Kato’s pickup truck. The pillows and blankets, a makeshift bed, parked in the middle of a meadow as the stars shine brightly above. We were invincible then.
Our lips swollen, lust dripping from our sweat-soaked bodies. A tangle of limbs. Oh, Goddess, the way his lips trailed down my neck, across my collarbone, and down, down, down beyond my navel.
The aching I felt for him I have never felt for another male. That’s the curse of the mating bond, no one can ever compare. With him, I never had to fake an orgasm or be insecure about the world around us. I would scream at the top of my lungs with him, not caring who might hear us.
No one knows how to touch me, excite me, love me like Kato, and I’m not sure anyone ever will. No one can stretch me and fill me to capacity like he can, while still being gentle and loving. He always knew how to make me feel like the only woman in the world.
Goddess, I gasp for air, drinking in the sick chemical air. Working with Kato is not going to be easy.